That Was a Doozy

We had a heck of a storm last week.  It went above and beyond an ordinary summer thunderstorm.  A little before 6pm on Tuesday, a tornado warning was issued for our area and a little after 6pm, the clouds started to roll in and soon after the rain started to fall, the power went out.  And then I looked out the window and saw the clouds moving quickly and making super-weird shapes:

Soon after that, the rain started to pour heavily and the wind kicked up another notch, so I took the kids to our ground floor and set up a little fort between two closet doors...

They colored by cell phone flashlight - SOMEBODY had been playing with our two reliable flashlights earlier in the week and had forgotten where she had put them :-)

After the wind died down and the lightning stopped flashing, we went outside to see what we could see.  Immediately we noticed that there were several fallen trees right down the street.  Also, we noticed that our landscaping had gotten a little roughed up (the hostas had been nibbled on by deer earlier in the week):

Eventually the storm cleared out and left us without power but a beautiful sunset and sky:

That night we all slept in the living room - the kids thought it was great fun to camp out in their sleeping bags with Mommy and Daddy!

Wednesday morning dawned bright, clear, and cool - such a welcome change from the hot, muggy weather we'd been having.  Clare helped me make blueberry pancakes for a special Wednesday breakfast while we tried to find out if the kids' camps were open or not.

Both kids' camps were without power and therefore closed, so I got to stay home with the kids since my train was out of service - the whole line was shut down due to the storm!

Mid-morning, we set out for the beach, figuring what a better way to spend a beautiful day without power - but we couldn't get out of the next town due to the immense traffic from all the roads closed down in our area.  We turned around and headed for home.  Not to be too disappointed, we had a picnic lunch outside and the kids had fun with the camera:

We spent the rest of Wednesday playing, napping (or trying to nap), and playing outside.  We were lucky - our power came back on at about 3:30 or 4 on Wednesday while we were outside playing in the sprinklers and with the water table.  During the next few days we kept spotting signs of the storm around our town:

The "tree tunnel" that the kids love to drive through: