Hurricane Irma

This past week Irma made her grand entrance all over the state of Florida.  She was a BIG storm.  We decided it would be better to hunker down in our home than to fight the lack of gas and long, long lines of traffic out.  We made a blanket fort with the kids Sunday night, and read together, and then we had a "sleepover" downstairs.  The most scary thing was all the tornado alerts.  We didn't get hit with one, but a couple of them did touch down in the cities nearby us.  The worst of the storm happened, again, at night.  The kids slept beautifully.  Even when Esther fell off the couch, she stayed asleep.  Reid and I didn't sleep so well, and we lost power around 11:30 pm. We did hear a big crash, which we assume was the playground equipment outside that fell over.  Monday morning, we woke up to water all over the street, and almost up to our garage.  The water had already receded a bit by the time I took the pictures below.  We allowed the kids to put on swimsuits and just play in the water.  Some might shudder thinking about this, but when I asked them their favorite part of the hurricane, this was a good memory for them.  The hurricane is starting to creep into their play and art now.  They play hurricane and Esther made the a lovely drawing of us in the rain.  It's kind of magical how children can make such a scary, overwhelming event into fond childhood memories.  Today Reid is busy down south helping other hurricane victims recover.  All in all, we feel very lucky and blessed not to have been hit hard.  The worst part was that we lost power and some shingles.  The power was back in 2 days, the water is gone, and we are almost back to normal.  Our only hope is that the others hit hard will be helped until they have also recovered.