Hurricane Update

A little update...

As you may have figured out, I scheduled some of those previous posts so that they'd go up while I figured we'd be out of electricity. Since our power went out early Saturday, on Sunday we left to go stay with my parents for the week. We had power restored to our house Friday evening, so we came home today. Our house didn't smell funny (I'm glad I cleaned out the fridge because the garage STINKS) but we did have a couple of minor fatalities- 2 fish. We have a tank full of mollys and platys, and when the power went out so did their water filter. It appears one was suicidal (he was foundcurled up on the carpet) and the other apparently donated his body to feed his companions. The rest somehow survived the week without freshly-oxygenated water. Our neighbor was kind enough to come to our house and use his chainsaw on our trees to make it a litte easier to haul out to the curb. Our street it filled with debris; 6-foot high piles of limbs are on everyone's curb. Since we're in the cul-de-sac, we don't have much of a curb so our pile stretches from the curb almost to our house, and we've barely begun putting limbs and tree trunks out there.

We did manage to have a nice, unplanned vacation at my parent's house. Ryan and I were able to spend a lot of time together since my mom and sister jumped at the opportunity to take care of Beth! The two of us actually went out and saw a movie!!! (If any of you personally know us, you know what a huge deal this is.) We received free movie passes from trying on pants at American Eagle- so we had no excuse. We went to see The Dark Knight (the Batman movie) and it was totally awesome, I'm glad we went. Another day we went to daily mass at the Cathedral we were married at, went to lunch and did some window shopping. I keep thinking these will be our last "alone" moments before we have Luke but somehow we keep having the opportunitity for more little dates. It's really nice. :-)

It's probably coincidental, but Beth has been highly-medicated this week also. Nothing serious, but a few days before the hurricane business started I took her to the pediatrician for an infected cut. He told me she had cellulitis and gave me a prescription cream for that. A few days later I noticed the peeling on her big toe (which I thought was a blister) was getting worse and spreading to her other toes... so now we're treating her for athlete's foot. Then a day after that she took a little tumble and scratched up her face and got a few minor cuts on her legs, so I'm smearing Neosporin on her three times a day. All of this on top of the usual mosquito bites and 3 ant bites and our girl is slathered in 4 different creams at the end of the day! The good news is everything is clearing up as it should be, especially her athelete's foot and the scrapes on her face. It's taking awhile for the cellulitis to clear up but it is getting better. Don't ask me how the child got athlete's foot, but it seems to be responding to the cream really quickly!

Enough typing. Here are some pictures:

Ryan had Friday off from work so he could prepare his family for the storm. We prepared by spending a lot of time outside with Beth and Finley to try to get some energy out! Ryan had a whopping 6 days off from work (plus 4 weekend days) so this might be his longest vacation ever!

There was a beautiful sunset the night before the storm...

During the eye of the storm, Ryan went outside to inspect some of the damage.

Two trees that snapped in half were right outside of our bedroom windows. Thank you guardian angels for watching over us!

What's left of my garden, lol. Time to work on my fall garden now I guess!

She was splashing around in some run-off water as daddy gave the car its first bath to wash off bugs from the trip.

My poor Pookah kitty! Beth adores "mow mows" and Pumpkin is just old enough to not really care how she's being treated, lol. Hence, Beth was able to pick her up for a minute before I rescued my old geriatric kitty. She's about 16 years old!

A sweet picture of Beth and Maw Maw. :-)

Beth and Uncle Alex. My brother is 6 and loves being an uncle!

This is how it looked today when we got home- it's not so fresh-looking anymore. This is part of our backyard, you can tell the lightning tree has been sawed into multiple parts waiting to be hauled to the curb. Not to mention the millions of limbs!