Hurricane Irene

With hurricane Irene baring down on New England, we are scared to stay in our home due to the structural issues with our poorly constructed roof.  We are not really bracing for a hurricane, but a roof collapse.  I have put all of my scrapbooks, photos, memorabilia, home videos and other assorted valuables into rubbermaid bins and stacked them in the main bathroom which is the innermost room of the house.

6:00am - We woke up ready to evacuate the home, but there was very little going on outside. We had some heavy rain, but no wind yet. So, we stayed at the house long enough to let the external hard drive finish the backup (started that at about 10:00pm last night).

7:30am - Backup finished, bathtubs filled with water and interior doors closed and towels lining the bottom of the doors, we felt we had done all we could. We left the house and headed to my dad's to ride out the storm. We pray that nothing happens to our home.

9:00am - We have settled in at my dad's and plan to be here for most of the day. Katie is coloring, I am blogging, Mike & my dad are monitoring the weather...lol. The storm has now been downgraded to a tropical storm.

10:30am - The rain is fairly heavy with winds about 50 mph.

12:00pm - Mike just got back from a trip home.  He went back to check in on the house and said that there is a lot of large trees and limbs down, but the house looks good. He said the roof is intact and there is no water inside the house at all. He did say that we are without power though.  Hopefully it will be back on by the time we get home.

2:00pm - The storm has pretty much fizzled out. Mike has called the house and the answering machine answered, so we have power back on.  We will be going home soon (after our afternoon coffee).

3:00pm - Mike & my dad went outside to put the tar paper back on the roof of my dad's new shed.

3:30pm - We left my dad's and went for a short ride around Grafton to see the destruction. There really wasn't much.  There were a lot of twigs & leaves on the ground and a few split/toppled trees.  But as far as hurricanes go, there was very little damage (that we saw anyway). 

The house made it through without a drip of water. We ended up at home with Steve, Kerrie, Sophie, Charlie, Meme & Papa over here because they had lost power at 9:30am and weren't expecting it back anytime soon. They came over so that the kids could play and we ordered pizza for dinner. By the time they left, it was almost bedtime for the kiddos, so they were hoping they would fall asleep in the car on the ride home. I hope that they get power back soon...eek!!!

I spent some time getting all the bins out of the saferoom (bathroom) and put back into the spare (scrapbooking) room. I unpacked about 1/2 of them, but left all of my completed albums in the bins.

I am happy that Irene forced me to do a few things that have been sitting on the to do list for a while - like back up my external hard drive and spend some time updating the blog...lol. Mike got the yard cleaned up and the cellar window bubbles installed. So, if there is a bright side to the insanity of the last few days, I guess that is it. I also realized that all of my "valuables" fit into about 25 rubbermaid bins...lol.