As many of you know, Hurricane Irene swept up the east coast on Saturday afternoon and evening, bringing lots of wind and rain along with it. Sadly, our neighborhood didn’t fare very well with high wind gusts slamming a bunch of giant trees down on power lines, roads, and even homes.
Thankfully, our house was spared. But many of our neighbors and friends weren’t so lucky. It broke our hearts to look out from our patio to see that a tree in our neighbor’s yard had fallen onto their home (it easily could have hit ours if it fell in the other direction).
Thankfully although they were both home with their two dogs at the time, no one was hurt. But parts of their house are flooded and shattered, and we’re so sad for them – and anyone else whose family or house has been affected.
When it came to what we did during the storm, we just hunkered down at home between 6pm to midnight when the winds were at their worst. And after hearing/seeing a few large trees come down on our block we decided to sleep in interior rooms, just to have a bit more protection in the event that something fell on our house (since our basement is below grade, we worried it could flood – which is why we opted for interior rooms over lower level spaces). Clara slept in the hallway in a pack and play (since it was insulated by rooms on all sides)…
… and John and I dragged the not-as-heavy-as-ours mattress from the guest room into the kitchen (which is also in the middle of our house).
Thankfully our basement didn’t flood and although we have a bunch of branches and debris to clean up on our yard (along with a few larger tree limbs in the back) we feel incredibly fortunate.
We’re still without power along with what we hear are around 800,000 other Richmonders (ours went out around 5pm on Saturday, so we’re on our third day without it). We’re hoping to have it restored soon, but realistically know that it could be a few more days or even one to two weeks (a statement that they just released alludes to the latter of those timelines). A number of trees on the power lines in our neighborhood means that it might be a while for us, so our blogging schedule may be a bit irregular until our area is back up and running. We also might not be able to keep up with comments, facebook, and twitter as much as we’d like (since you know we’re usually so chatty), but we do have plans to stop in with the afternoon giveaway as usual, and hope that everyone else who is dealing with any sort of storm repercussions is doing ok.
Oh and we felt compelled to check on our first house and were so relieved to see that it appeared to make it through. Although there was a huge tree on the house across the street. Scary stuff.
Between this and the earthquake on Tuesday, we’re ready to be done with natural disasters for a while – especially since it’s rare for either of them to affect Richmond so much (the last major storm in our area was Isabel in 2003, and most Richmonders were without power for about a week). Let’s hope we’re back up and running sooner than that. Luckily a few of our relatives do have power and enough food/water to go around. In fact here’s Clara on Sunday morning after the storm passed and we headed over to Grammy’s house, where there’s power, glorious power (which seems to be a rarity in our city). We joked that all of the chaos drove her into the arms of her cousin John…
… where they watched a video together and had a grand old time.
Thanks so much to everyone on twitter, facebook, and here in the comments who checked in on us this weekend. You have no idea how much we appreciate the love and send it right back atcha. And for anyone else who was affected, we’d love to hear from you about how you’re doing.
Lorien says
I’m so glad everyone is ok :) I’ve only been ‘back East’ once, but we have lots of family and [online] friends & acquaintances there and my heart was in my mouth all weekend.
Zhaleh says
I love the new background. I kinda wish you would open up shop again and market it as a textile.
YoungHouseLove says
We were actually just thinking about how cool it would be on spoonflower fabric… we’ll keep you posted! Haha.
xo,
s
Katii L says
We’re in Glen Allen less than 2 traffic lights from Virginia Center Commons. We lost power at the same time you did, and we got it back yesterday. We didn’t get cell or internet until this afternoon. Thank goodness we ate or gave our neighbors almost all of our fridge and freezer items (sparing milk for our 16 month old). I’ve never been so grateful to live in an apartment!! We are on the first floor but there’s a basement below so we were pretty insulated.
Side note- it might be a small trek, but Cartwheels and Coffe in the fan (right next to The Byrd) has power AND Wi-Fi if you’d like a place for Clara to play and check emails etc. I went 2 days straight this past week!! Lol.
So glad to hear your house survived the storm. Are your neighbors contacting the red cross or their churches? I know they are offering lots of help at the moment.
YoungHouseLove says
Wow- so glad you have power again! Isn’t it the best feeling? As for Carwheels and Coffee, my sister in law has been bringing her little one there a bunch and said it’s such a nice relief that they have power and wi-fi! Now that we have power back at home we’re all set, but we’ve been meaning to check it out just for Clara to have some fun, so maybe we’ll get to go this weekend. As for our neighbors, they’re staying with relatives and are in great spirits (they have such good senses of humor). And yesterday they finally removed the tree! It was so crazy to see all the trees on the homes in our area just sitting there for five days or so, but I guess with insurance and finding a tree-person who’s not booked up that’s how it goes. So happy to see them being removed now!
xo,
s
Stephanie says
Wow! I’m glad you guys are okay. We barely even got 1/2 the storm (southeastern part of MA), and we lost power for 4 days. Other parts of the state were either flooded or under flood watches. Irene was a very rude guest. (And I really want to show your post to all the idiots in my area that have been throwing rocks and saying horrible things to the National Grid workers – one guy even stalked one of them to the worker’s house! People can be so crazy.)
Heidi P. says
I don’t know if you guys believe in God or not, but I do – and I must say, Heavenly Father was totally watching out for you guys. You must be doing something right! :) So glad that you’re all ok. Now go help your neighbors! ;)
Amanda C says
So I am passing some time on a slow day in the office by reading some older posts on your site and saw this one…it sure brought back memories, because I was married on Saturday, the 27th!!! And let me tell you, no amount of planning can prepare you for a hurricane on your wedding day in freaking PENNSYLVANIA! I mean really. Fortunately, aside from a few guests who couldn’t make it, the wedding went off without a hitch. But getting to Alaska for our honeymoon, well that is a WHOLE other story!!! By the Grace of God we made it, but it was quite an adventure, wish I could share it with you guys but it’s a LONG story!!!
YoungHouseLove says
Aw, it sounds like a giant adventure! So glad it ended up working out!
xo,
s