. . .and WE'RE BACK!

After a long 5 days, without power, the Lord has blessed us with our electricity again! He has been so gracious to us, seeing as our parents (Tim's parents) are only about 5 minutes away from us, and they had power the entire time. They let us stay there all day and all night. Peter started getting restless further in the week, and not sleeping well, because he thought this was an extended 'party at Grandma's time. So, the last 2 nights, we had him sleep in his room, in the dark. Now, we have the boys go to sleep with their own music in their rooms, but Peter was so tired from the excitement of our days there that as soon as his head hit the pillow he was OUT! James stayed at Grandma's every night because he fell asleep a lot sooner and slept solid for them. Tim and I also came home to sleep. . .Tim REALLY loves HIS bed, and I REALLY love MY Tim, so that's where we went each night. First thing in the morning, for breakfast, we headed over to the Weldons. Had a lovely lunch every afternoon and then a big dinner at night. It worked out beautifully.
We are back in business here, now. Here's some pictures of our house, and our neighbors on our street, and the damage that went on here. . .
This is our tree, in the backyard. As you can see, we lost about half of it! (my favorite tree, our cherry blossom - blooms beautifully in the spring) And yes, that on the bottom of the picture are just some of the shingles off our roof!

A closer picture of our tree. We hope to save it and not have to cut it down, but a lot of the branches now are sagging badly. It doesn't look too bad in this picture, but there is a whole other huge branch that we had to remove at the back of the tree.

My poor little planters. The wind snapped my sunflower in half and the other ones are just pitiful looking. At least they lasted through Spring and Summer on my watch!

My hanging plants were hanging up during the storm, and Tim said that he was going to go take them down because he was afraid that they were going to blow right through our front window. Shortly after he did this, we were all sitting on the couch, watching Ike work his way around and suddenly we heard a loud crack and snap sound. Tim stood up and said "All right, now it's time to GO!"
. . . .this is what we heard. . .

Our neighbor, down the street, had their beautiful pine tree snap in half. It fell, thankfully, in their driveway and NOT on their house or car.
Some other pictures of our neighbors.


This neighbor had their tree fall on their house, but there doesn't seem to be too bad of damage done.

This would be our gutter. . .

We were really blessed not to have any more damage than what we had. In fact, today we were able to cut down the rest of the broken branches and throw them on the curb. Peter was such a big helper too!
Please continue to lift up those who were less fortunate in your prayers!