Good Riddens, Dolly!

We need to find a t-shirt that says, "We Survived Dolly". Even though the eye of the Category 2 hurricane "hit" just 20 miles North of us, we didn't experience too much drama. Just as we expected, we lost power for 30 hours and we had a little bit of water inside the house, but other than that we were safe.

Of course, there was A LOT of water outside....in the streets, in fields, in creeks, and in some homes. Our backyard looked like a small pond at one point during the storm.

And with all of the rain came humidity. After we lost power, our home quickly reached 80-90% humidity INSIDE. Needless to say, it was pretty miserable.

So what do you use to decorate your front lawn? For the last couple of days, we've used a Port-a-John. Thankfully, the "john" travelled down the street and back before it ended up in our yard, so all of its contents had been emptied. :-) This gives a whole new meaning to having "crap in your yard".

And we thought for sure that we would have rain for at least 1 day following the storm, but on Thursday morning, we woke up to the sun shining.

As much as I dreaded having no power and our fridge/freezer contents perishing (I was able to "save" the breastmilk once again), we were blessed. Our fence did not fall, our street did not flood, our house stayed relatively dry (minus the windblown rain coming in through the windows and roof), and we had enough food. There are still sections of town that still have no power--meaning no A/C, which down here is ESSENTIAL. Some people had their roof literally peeled off their home/business and/or water up to their waist. It's amazing to see Emergency Command Centers operate....with as much as I was involved in Emergency Preparedness, I never had the opportunity to see the EOC resolve/work a "real life" disaster.

The Lord also used Dolly to help me "connect" with the other ladies in the program as well as a couple mommies from our local MOPS group. For a while, I was feeling a little disconnected...for a number of reasons: getting TWO kiddos ready is a time intensive process, we live in a different subdivision than the other residents, and I'm constantly having to consider nap and feeding times into my day--which makes leaving the house sometimes impossible. But with the storm, I refused to stay inside my powerless home--nursing in the heat is nothing short of miserable. So we headed to one of the Faculty Physician's home--they never lost power. We, along with about 20 others, spent almost 2 full days with the Pattersons. They were very gracious hosts. So I used that time to talk with the other resident wives...it was a lot of fun and look forward to when we will all get together next.