Instead I took some before pictures of the house and yard and it started to rain just as I took the last photo on Friday afternoon and didn't stop until Sunday night.
The power went out for a couple hours during the night but was back on Saturday morning for a few hours. Then it went off and stayed off until Monday evening, for a total of about 50 hours. I spent most of that time in bed with a terrible headache, which is probably why I did not take any video and only one photo during the hurricane. This is the only during the hurricane photo I took and it is one of the ways the kids entertained themselves. Do you like their "helmets"?
Saturday afternoon, after the power had been out for a few hours, hubby decided that it was time to hook up the generator for our fridges and freezer. He then went for a leisurely stroll to check on the neighbors, yes, he went out in the middle of a hurricane!!! I thought to myself - there is no way I am going outside today unless Irene blows my house away! Well, thoughts like that have a way of coming back to laugh at you....
A few hours later one of the neighbors called to say that he had not been able to get a hold of his son who had his generator and could they borrow ours for a few hours. She has medication that needs to be kept refrigerated and his regular oxygen pump is electric. He had been using his portable oxygen which was nearly gone. Obviously their needs were much more important so hubby went out to take it over, I followed him to the carport, quite interested in how he was planning on accomplishing this.
It is not a huge generator, but it weighs about a billion pounds and there was no way I was going to be able to help lift it into a vehicle. After pondering for a few minutes he ended up putting it on a dolly, but still needed to cover it to keep the rain out. There was no easy & quick way to do that with what we had on hand at that moment so I finally suggested using the table cloth we used at the beach house. But the only way to keep it on without blowing away was for me to hold it on, while we rolled it down the street - in the middle of a hurricane!! When we got there our neighbor invited me up on the porch to get out of the rain - to which I replied laughing - there is no way I could possibly be any more drenched than I already am!
When we got it placed, hubby started to work on getting it set up so I headed back to the house - I mean I got blown back to the house. In the few minutes that it took us to get down the street the storm got really, really nasty! It was tough to even keep my footing - although in hindsight wearing flip flops when walking around in the middle of a hurricane is probably not the wisest decision!
Anyway, when I got back to our house I noticed that the cord for the generator was lying on the ground. Ummm he is probably going to need that, I say to myself. So I picked it up and turned around only to be blasted in the face with the driving rain. As I started to head back to the neighbors house I could barely see it was raining and blowing so hard, but I plodded on and finally got the cord to hubby so he could get them up and running.
I was relieved to know that they would be ok and then I was so grateful to be able to turn around to again head home but now with those nasty hurricane force winds at my back. I had our dog Lucy with me who seemed to be oblivious to the fact that we were in the middle of a hurricane, instead she thought she was in a doggie playground - she tried to chase every leaf and stick that was blowing down the street. She loved it and I laughed my head off!
The next morning the neighbor got his generator back and hubby brought ours back. He played around with the fuse box and tried to figure out how he could get the ceiling fan on in our room. I thought it was really sweet that he was trying to do that for me, just so I would have a little comfort. But I was also praying that we would not blow the house up - although then I still wouldn't have had to wash the floors, which were beyond disgusting after almost 48 hours of rain, three dogs, three kids, and hubby who was in and out without taking boots off! Well, after he messed around for awhile he got a fan working for me as well as the ceiling fan in the living room, then the kids figured out that the TV and DVD player worked! Yeah we were roughing it!
After it was all over the worst we had was a bunch of leaves and branches in the yard and a couple big limbs broken....We were blessed to survive this hurricane with such minimal hardship and damage!
Here are some of the photos....
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| The dead branch that you see is a huge branch from the top of one of the trees that broke some time ago but remained stuck up in the trees. We were often worried about when it would come down. Took a hurricane, but at least we don't have to worry about it anymore! |
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| Swimming anyone? |
