Come On Irene...

The view from the side of the road, looking down the easement between our fence and our behind us neighbors.

How "Crabbie's" top didn't end up in Williamsburg is beyond me, but the sand is now mud.

That is a big tree

So blessed - it missed the girls swing set and our neighbors house

Two houses down from us, didn't fare so well...but everyone is safe.

Avery and I took a walk this morning (at 6am) and holy smokes, we are very lucky.  In our small 39 home neighborhood, trees were down in most yards and only 2 homes were hit, the others all managed to fall away from the homes. Talk about blessed. 

Two natural disasters in one week...I think I've had my fill of feeling totally out of control. For a control freak like me, watching your huge tree sway back and forth, knowing its just a matter of time before it comes down is not easy.  I just wanted to go out there and hold it up, or carefully take it down, I didn't want to roll the dice on where it was going to fall, but of course, I didn't have control over that, and while we have a mess to clean up (I hear the roar of chainsaws as I type) we are beyond thankful that it was just the fence, it could have been so much worse.

We do have a rather large leak in our Morning Room window, which we can imagine is going to be a small fortune to repair, but hopefully our Home Owners Insurance steps up to the plate on that puppy.  It was a long day inside for the girls, Olivia watched a lot of TV (parents of the year, I know) and Avery played pretty well, but holy toledo, they were freaked out and getting them to bed was a small nightmare.  We ended up having them camp out in our bedroom because our lone soldier of a tree (the only one standing) would have made a direct hit on their bedrooms had it come down, so we didn't want to chance it. 

The bugger took out Zack & Jules Play Set...

We are now saying our prayers for our friends and family in Western Mass who are facing what is left of Irene. I hope we weakened it just a bit for them because while Richmond isn't overly prepared for Hurricanes, we are light years ahead of Western Mass. A big thank you to all the guys outside helping Brad cut up that huge tree (Brian wanted to start chipping away, he figured we'd have a family size canoe in a few years if we just starting chipping away now - HA!) there is a chainsaw quartet preforming in our backyard right now and its music to my ears.