The Hurricane Jackpot

Last week I was preparing for my family to come visit AND a hurricane.  My family never made it, but Hurricane Irene did. 


Living on the east coast for almost 10 years now, I have never experienced a hurricane.  Once when we lived in GA the remnants of a hurricane hit us, but it was just a ton of rain/ flooding.  We didn't have to prepare for it if that makes sense. 

This was a completely different experience.  I spent 3 days shopping/preparing for this.  I still thought I was going to have a house full of people so I had to buy extra supplies and food in case we lost power for a period of time.   According to the projections we were going to be very close to a direct hit here in New York so I didn't want to be unprepared.

Well come Friday night my parents flight was canceled so then the rest of my family decided (and I encouraged) to stay home too.  It was just too risky in case we were hit hard. 

Waiting for the storm was the worst I think.  Saturday we were pretty much ready and just had to wait.  I put the kids to bed early anticipating they would be up with us in the night.  The winds started around 10pm, our power flickered by 10:30. I took this as a bad sign LOL.  Curtis and I decided to stay up since we would have to move the kids if things got bad.  Around 1:30 a.m. the winds picked up a lot.  We prepped the downstairs for the kids to come down.  We moved Brooke first and she thought it was awesome that we were having a campout.  Then we got Madeline up who was WILD.  She was body slamming Brooke on the air mattress, running around the room, etc.  We let the kids play until about 3am and then put Madeline to bed in the hallway.  Brooke decided to stay up to see when the power was going to go out.  Around 5am we all were dozing off and on.  Around 7:30 we got up and I really could not believe we still had power! 

We have so many trees around our house.  Two fell last month when no storm was happening so we figured it was a given that we would lose a tree or two.  Around 8:30 the eye of the storm passed and the winds got stronger.  Power flickered some more but never went out!  By 10:00 in the morning it started to calm down, but really we had major winds until 10:00 p.m. that night!  Longest storm ever!

We lucked out.  We had no damage from the storm, were one of a few blocks left in our neighborhood with power, and never even had to use one hurricane supply I had purchased.  At least I know I am set for the next major disaster (which hopefully never happens). We had a lot of debris in the yard but that was the worst of our hurricane experience. 

My family is already rescheduling their trip, but I think that was the hardest part.  We watched the storm closely, hoped they would make it, but there was nothing we could do.  Mother nature had another plan.  This was definitely an experience we will never forget!