Irene

So in our own little piece of irony for the weekend, after spending 7 days stressed that my parents were going to get clobbered by hurricane Irene down in the Outer Banks, we were the ones to have a power outage thanks to the storm. After deciding to stick out at home despite the mandatory evacuation, we were anxious my family had made the wrong move until we saw Irene was going to be down to a category 1 storm. My parents live in a fairly high area of the OBX (if you can call 20 ft above sea level high) so weren't worried about flooding, just wind. Their neighborhood has buried power lines and due to that and being pretty sheltered they never lost power. With the exception of some downed branches and a few paint shingles that need to be replaced, they fared really well. Hopefully this doesn't lull my family in to a sense of security that makes them stay on the island the next time a big storm comes around!

So after checking in on my family about 5 times yesterday around Noelle's rainy but fun 2nd birthday party, we cleaned up the house as the gusts of wind began last night. While the rain had been bad since noon or so, the wind didn't pick up until night fall. When I woke up for one of my 6 nightly bathroom breaks around 3, I immediately could tell the air conditioning was no longer on. Just before 7 I realized the rain had let up substantially. The power was still out but I got up to race Maddie out for a bathroom break as she had refused to go outside the night before due to the downpours of rain. The rain was just a drizzle but the wind was crazy! I didn't see any noticeable damage outside though.

Noelle and Bryan got up soon after we got back in and we actually enjoyed a nice powerless day. Noelle played with toys and we did lots of reading. Noelle asked for Dora a few times and told us the TV did work when we explained the power was out, but she didn't get frustrated when it didn't turn on. After we quickly removed a bunch of food from the fridge at noon to have a big lunch and naps for all 3 of us, we took a super long family walk around 3 to the main road to check for downed trees and the status of the traffic light. Despite thinking to myself a few times that this was the kind of walk that would throw someone just a little closer to their due date in to labor we returned to our street just as the power was coming back on around 5. It was actually a pretty relaxing day.

So after trying to convince my parents to evacuate here we were the ones that lost power. But overall we both fared really well. Even our milk was fine in the fridge, no trees in our yard came down, and with the exception of a little dampness in the basement, our house is fine. We hope everyone else faired well!