Storm Update

Well, that was an unexpectedly long blogging break!  Last Tuesday, a massive storm blew through Connecticut, wreaking havoc everywhere it touched.  Our area was hit hard, so we have been dealing with power outages and tree clean-up ever since!  Now that we finally have our internet back up, I just wanted to pop over here and say we’re all fine and thankful that our family is safe.  The kids have been telling me about how so many of their classmates’ homes and cars have been damaged by fallen trees, and it just drives home how blessed we are that all the trees that fell on our property were far away from any structures.  In fact, the craziest damage we had was not tree-related at all – the wind picked up our entire swingset and playhouse and tossed it down the hill!

I didn’t realize what a bad storm it was until well after it happened.  I had gotten some notifications on my phone earlier that day to be on the lookout for a severe thunderstorm and tornado, but I kept thinking, “I don’t live in Kansas, tornados wouldn’t do much damage here!”  And when the sky got dark and I saw the trees start to sway, I nonchalantly called the kids all down to the basement “to play,” because I didn’t want to freak them out, especially Danny, who tends to be scared of storms.  I sat on the floor in the basement playroom together with the five kids, and almost as soon as we got down there, the power went out.  I still wasn’t thinking this was anything more than a thunderstorm, but I felt the need to cover us with God’s words, so I asked the kids to start taking turns saying Bible verses out loud.  In the meantime, we heard loud banging against the house, which I figured was hail (I still don’t know whether it was hail or debris).  A few minutes later, the storm had passed and the sky lightened up, and we bounded upstairs not expecting anything other than to see a few leaves blown around.  It wasn’t until I saw the swingset in the wrong place that I realized this had been no ordinary storm!

I’m missing some of the pictures of the trees across our road (Jim had to park and walk to our house right after the storm because the roads were so blocked with power lines and downed trees, and then he sawed his way back to his car with a chainsaw later that night), but here are a few that have uploaded:

Here’s the pic of the missing swingset (it should be located on the patch of woodchips on the distant lawn):

And here is Jim and the kids setting it back up, with the help of the tractor.  How he carried it back up the hill with only that little tractor is beyond me!

Here is Susie proudly displaying the pile of brush that she helped to collect on our church grounds:

Here is Tazie helping Jim to move the generator.  Boy were we thankful for that thing!