Hurricane Irene photos at last!

We did get hit pretty hard with wind, but never lost power at our house. Two streets over (and actually, the next street over) lost power for three days. My mom 15 mins away, lost power for almost a week. We had her in to our house every other day (she babysat my grandson) so she had power/phone/bathroom facilities. I'll post some photos that I took after the storm went through...Lee & I just walked a few miles to see our daughter, Amber (they lost power for a few days)...

This is the tree on Center Street that we heard come down...

This is how my hubby decided to divert the water that usually comes into the garage....Notice the mini sandbags at the right side of the garage door? The bottom of the garage door is pretty muddy, but it won't stay clean so I gave up long ago....LOL.

This was our back yard.... lots of leaves everywhere, but not a tree down. Good thing since we have so many of them back there....

This tree snapped in half (it's trunk is on the far left of the photo). It was up the road from our house although the swish and the 'thunk' Lee & I heard may have been behind our back yard (see the above photo).

This branch feel from a really tall tree at the elementary school at the end of our street.

This was a a street a few blocks away. They hadn't had power for two days. (Boy, were WE lucky)

These were more on the streets surrounding us...

This is the tree that cut off my daughter Amber's power... it was across the street from her house. 

This one was on my way home from work. They were in the process of cleaning it up.

We had half power all week at work, so a few of our machines in my two depts. didn't work... All in all we faired well.

Home safe, so Far.....

Mom and I got home from VT safely.....Now to brace for Hurricane Irene! I'll post photos when we have power (hopefully, we won't lose it)...

We did have a great time in VT...

Coming onto Rte 30 in Brattleboro, VT, it's always nice to see the highway I just left (Rte 91), except that this is interesting with the low lying clouds hanging on...

What is more picturesque in VT but covered bridges?

 You can tell they had some kind of storms the day before, as the weather is starting to clear this morning (Friday).This shot is looking at Bromley Mountain and it's just at the spot I always thought was the best plot of land to build a house!

 Stopping in at the Vermont Welcome Center is always a pleasant stop. It always has some non-profit organization offering weary travelers some food and drink (donations only). Malakai couldn't wait to have the chocolate milk and I picked up some muffins and breads for the trip.

Without having anyone else up at the cabin to play with, this is Kai's entertainment... running up the stairs to the deck...

 ... and jumping off!!! Many, many times! (I know this photo is out of focus, but the expression is priceless!)

How sad to 'stop playing' to come in for dinner... At least he found a great fishing hat (in the bathroom on a hook) to wear. Yes, I know it's not good manners to have a hat at the table, but we made an exception at the camp. And besides,... he was tired!

Somehow, he thought this was gonna be his bunk...on top. But he was so tired, he fell asleep on the bottom bunk, so I moved up top.

Due to the fact that I didn't want to babysit a campfire, we decided to do the 'cheater method' to making s'mores....use the gas stove.

He liked them... although he tried to put a majority of it in his mouth all at once.

After a nice sleep, we woke up to deer in the back field! Three of them (actually a fourth one was by the pond to the extreme right of this photo.

oh! I forgot!!!

I woke up at 4:10am to use the bathroom and as I'm watching out the screen window (I LOVE looking up at the night sky off the deck, usually, since it has such a HUGE expanse of space. You can actually follow the satellites across the sky if you are still enough!), I heard this awful sound! A barking/howling/yipping kind of sound which made me think of a pack of foxes/wolves. It went on for a few minutes and THEN I heard the grunting/growling!!! It was the bear I ran into a few years back! the soulnd was coming from the pond area. I am SO glad I wasn't outside in the dark watching the sky!

These are some shots of the sunrise before it got too cloudy. Beautiful....

Here is my buddy, coming out to get dressed and run in the grass...

Notice the footprints? He loved it...

We even made it home before the Hurricane Irene hit!

We may not have much power for the next few days, so I'll check back in when we do. In the meantime, I have knitting (kids hats) to keep me busy.