The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Irene

(Best buddies. They were watching their favorite, Cars, right before the power went out for good)

THE GOOD:
~ Irene lost her gusto the farther up the coast she came. She was down graded to a Cat 1 by the time she hit the Hampton Roads area.
~ We spent the weekend with good friends, nestled into a cute wooded cottage east of Richmond. Our kids played and we just hung out and watched the rain and wind and ate lots of food. It was good.
~ We had minimal damages, just some wet flooring in our garage, a downed tiny tree and half of our fridge and freezer.
~ Because of power outages, I went to bed at 8:40pm. Probably the earliest bedtime in 5 years.
~ The power came on at our house after being home for just over 2 hours.
~We HAD to have steaks and chocolate cake from the freezer for dinner, ya know, so it wouldn't go bad.
~ Above all, everyone was safe and sound.

 (The men bonding...with technology...while it lasted)

THE BAD:
~ It was still a Cat 1 hurricane, so that wind was wicked. We watched two large trees fall at our friend's mom's house, barely missing the house. The back end of the storm was nasty and that wind whipped those trees around like they were nothing. Not cool.
~ We lost power at our house in Chesapeake by 9:30am on Saturday, so we lost half of our fridge.
~ We lost power in Richmond around 7pm. Jack did not understand that we could not turn his movie back on. He kept asking for a different movie, hoping that that movie would work. No luck, so he had to go to bed.
~ Driving back and seeing the massive amount of large trees down all over the place. Loads of clean up is coming.

 (One of the downed trees in Richmond. Missed the house by a few feet)

THE UGLY:
~ Mornings after going to bed with no water or power. Yeah. It wasn't pretty.
~ Husband forgetting to shower BEFORE the power went out...
~ Two 3 yr old boys who did not nap. The boys did beautifully for most of the day, but there was some moments and they were not pretty.
~ Raw chicken that was left in the garbage...in a house with no A/C for over 24 hrs. Welcome home.
~ Jack trying fruit cocktail from a can since all of our produce had spoiled. He could not identify any of the fruit, thus would not eat it. I mean really, what IS in fruit cocktail?!



All in all, it was an eventful day. I am so thankful it was not worse and that we had as little damage as we did. Let's just pray this is the last hurricane of the season. That sounds like a great idea. No more hurricanes.