Whew!

We're fine!!! You've all been waiting so patiently for news of our safety, sending all those care-packages and cards, the email alerts for "hill" in the columbus obituaries, the prayers for our safety, well it all worked and we're ok!

No but seriously, that was, um, fun. This first picture is actually from a few weeks ago in a bit rainstorm. It's taken from inside my garage a little before noon. the water flooded everyone's yard up the street from us but it stayed in our ditch where it goes so that was lucky. There's a pipe under the driveway and the water was just as high on the other side.

Then, on Sunday, (Chris' Birthday), we met Ike. The wind was getting pretty bad, but when our cable went out we went outside to see what was going on. The first thing we saw was the shingles flying off the roof as fast as they could. Still not realizing this was Ike Chris borrowed a ladder from a neighbor to climb up and check the damage to the roof before the rain came and soaked through. While he was up there (with me holding the ladder), this happened:


I was standing with the ladder right in front of Zoe's window there, and when I heard it I thought it was the close tree and I couldn't figure out whether to run and have both the tree and the ladder fall on me, or stay where I was and hope it didn't hit me. Unfortunately, my neighbor (who was helping me hold the ladder) decided to run and flung the contents of her coffee cup all over me in the process. I didn't notice at the time because I was so relieved to still be alive. So Chris wisely got off the roof and we all went inside to huddle around the windows.

Here's a better picture of my poor tree. We lost part of another on on the north side of the house, tons of shingles, our cable/internet/phone for a week (which explains why I haven't posted in a while), and our water was rationed. However we never lost our power for which I am extremely grateful considering there are still people in the city without it. We had more that 350,000 people lose their power and it was pretty scary for a while. Ice was in major demand, people were buying it right off the truck, bottled water was flying off the shelves (lots of people here are on wells so they didn't have any water at all). We had potable water but it was such low pressure it took forever to shower and I was really happy I'd already done all our laundry that morning. It was cool though, to see people come together. People were driving around with chain saws to help remove downed trees, businesses were making room in their freezers for other businesses product so it didn't go bad, people had extension cords hanging out their windows so their neighbors could have a microwave and a lamp. Apparently it was a category 1 hurricane still when it reached us, 75mph winds, and though we didn't get the rain the rest of the mid-west got we got harder hit with wind than they did. I think I'm going to get a kit together to keep in the garage--water at least, but a full 72 hour kit wouldn't go amiss I think. I've heard too many horror stories about the freezing winters here.