Surviving Derecho 2012

Well, we can add a new experience to our list of life adventures. It might not have been on my bucket list or anything, but it was definitely an experience! We have just spent the past 5 days without power in the Harden Household, and to add a little more misery interest to it, it was also in the 90s to 100s every day. The outage began on Friday night when a terrible wind storm known as, Derecho, started in. I heard the wind picking up outside shortly after I had put Ryder to bed, so I peeked out the window and saw full grown trees bending in half from the strength of the wind. It was at that moment that we realized we needed to move Tyler's car out from under a tree and take down the umbrella on our deck. I've never seen such powerful winds, it felt like being in a hurricane only without any rain. The winds blew for about half an hour or so at about 80 mph, and before it was all said and done, our power was off, there were tree limbs and branches scattered all over the yard, and damage was all around us. We thought the power outage would only last a couple of hours, but as time wore on and the temperature in our house began to rise, it was clear we needed to make a decision about where we were sleeping. So I did what anyone would do, I texted my parents to see if they had power, totally out of complete concern for their well being of course, and was dissappointed sorry to hear that they had lost power too. So we grabbed our pillows, flashlights, pack n play, and Ryder and headed to the basement where it was cool enough to sleep for the night. We repeated this again on Saturday night, but by Sunday, we were desperate for relief from the heat.

Thus began what I like to call the power outage shuffle! For Sunday and Monday night, we stayed at Hotel Roanoke since no one in our family had power yet and Tyler found a great rate, but thankfully my grandmother got power Sunday night, so Tuesday we made the move to her house and stayed there the next two nights. Thankfully, our power returned Wednesday evening and by Thursday we were finally in our own cool, comfortable home. We are so grateful to so many for their help over the past week of adventures! We had friends offer to let us stay in their homes or watch Boston, we were able to keep some of our groceries in another friend's refrigerator so we didn't completely lose everything in our fridge, and we were able to spend lots of quality time with family and eat lots of yummy, slightly fattening foods while at my Mawmaw's.

Some highlights of this week included playing in the hotel pool,

 playing with lots of new toys and favorite family members,

 watching fireworks on the 4th of July,

 and staying in an awesome hotel.

Ryder entertained himself for quite some time picking up the ice bucket, seting it on the shelf, knocking it off, and then climbing through the shelf to pick it back up and start the game over again. There were lots of squeals of delight! :)

Some of the not so fun parts were moving so often in terrible heat, driving all over town, having to throw out food, cleaning up the yard, and Ryder not sleeping well most nights. However, in comparison to what others faced, we know how fortunate we are. We had no damage to our house or car and none of us were injured from the storm damage.

The experience has definitely given me a better appreciation for having electricity and air conditioning, the people who have to work outside in these extreme temperatures daily, and for family and friends who were so willing to open up their homes to us during this time.

I'm happy to say we survived Derecho 2012, and Ryder was an excellent trooper through the entire ordeal! Let's just hope the reports are right and that it will be 50 years or more before another Derecho hits our area!!

By the way, I haven't forgotten that I need to do our monthly update, we've just had a little going on recently, but I will work on it very soon, but for now I will leave you with a very cute 10 month picture with Cookie Monster! :) Enjoy!!