The Hurricane Post

We knew the hurricane was coming and it was going to be bad. I did everything I could think of to prepare: bought tons of extra water, cleaned the whole house and did the laundry in case we were without water and power, bought downspout extenders to direct the water away from our house, filled the bathtubs with water for toilet flushing, bought food that didn't need to be cooked or refrigerated, but I was still scared. I think deep down inside I knew something bad was going to happen and I think I knew it would be The Tree. The Tree that I've been worried about ever since the other tree fell last year. We even slept in the basement just in case. After a pretty restless night, I got up in the morning and went up to my bedroom where I heard this ominous creaking sound. Something was putting a lot of pressure on our house. I went outside and saw that The Tree was leaning on the point of our roof, right above our master bedroom.

After some debating, we decided to call 911. They sent a fire truck out and they said there was nothing they could do and that we should evacuate the house. We went to my parents' house, where Greg called a tree company and amazingly they said they'd be there in twenty minutes. The tree guy came and said that they couldn't do anything until the wind died down. Not long after that, the wind blew the tree and it slid down the roofline and landed on our deck.

This is the point where the tree was leaning:

That is Greg's shed underneath the deck:

It didn't rain at all after the tree fell, that's just how much water was in the ground:

That evening the tree people came back and chopped up the tree and took it away. Our cable was out for three days which also meant we were without internet and phone. Our power was out for 5 days and 3 hours. Luckily we have a generator that powers most of our house so we didn't lose any food and I was still able to cook. But it doesn't power our dishwasher and washer and dryer. I had never been more happy to do laundry and dishes than after the power came back on.

Since then we've been playing the waiting game . . . waiting for the insurance adjustor to come, waiting for his report, waiting for contractors to give us extimates. Nothing is fixed yet and it will probably be a while until it is. But through it all, I feel extremely blessed. Before the storm came I kept praying and asking Heavenly Father to protect our home and I really think my prayers were answered. It was a miracle that that massive, heavy tree didn't break the roof and crash into our house.