Hurricane Hermine

As everyone knows, Tallahassee experienced some serious weather a couple weeks ago. It started out "Tropical Storm Hermine" and quickly changed to a hurricane. The day before it was to hit landfall, my county announced that schools would be closed for 2 days to keep children safe. That is when Dustin and I realized that we might need to take this one seriously. We had been through "hurricane warnings" in the past in Tampa and they always ended up being nothing. This time, however, people were preparing and we decided to jump on board. Better to be safe than sorry.

So Dustin closed his office early on Thursday and canceled patients on Friday, headed to get some sandbags from our local park. We also got all the essentials from the storm that week: ice, flashlights, batteries, candles and plenty of food and water. We were ready!

After all of the preparation, all that was left to do was wait. X knew the storm was coming and you could see the excitement on his sweet little face.

Watching for the storm

Thursday night we put the babies to bed and waited for it to hit. The thunder, rain and wind hit us around 10 PM and that is when we lost power. Dustin and I headed to bed and were up most the night just waiting. The power came back on and off a couple times but was out the majority of the night. The wind was insane and we could hear the destruction all around us. Limbs fell on our roof all night long and Dustin and I were just waiting for a tree to fall.  It was scary! Luckily, the babies slept easily through the night.

When we woke up the next morning, we were only without power until 7:00 AM. It popped back on at that time and we never lost it again. This was HUGE considering at least 80% of Tallahassee was without power for at least 3-5 days, Dustin's office included.

We went outside to survey the damage and were pleasantly surprised. There was no damage to our home! We were so lucky! The hurricane had wreaked havoc on some of our neighbors. As for us, it was just 2 days of yard work and LOTS of LARGE limbs. Dustin worked diligently to get our home back in tip top shape immediately :) I am so thankful for him!

And I can't forget Beanie! He was out there working right alongside daddy!!

After one day, Dust had the whole front yard complete and 2 brush piles the size of a large car!

The next day he worked in the back and got it cleared up in no time. We also watched as our neighbors had several trees cut down that weekend. The boys were thoroughly entertained :)

We are back to our normal schedule and while a hurricane is not ideal, there are NO words to explain how nice it was to have 5 full days home with all 3 of my boys. We NEVER get time like that and to have electricity was icing on the cake!