Ohio Hurricane!

Who knew that a hurricane could hit Ohio? It was quite a surprise to us as the winds--remnants of Ike-- reached 79 mph here and the shingles started to blow off of our roof. Thankfully, we had wind only (no rain), so this was really just a glimpse of what a hurricane would feel like, but it has certainly had far-reaching impact here. 125,000 people in our city are still without power 3 days later. We're very grateful that our power was out only for 12 hours. Cable and internet were just restored last night-- hence the delay in the blog.

Before I share more details about our windy adventure, let me back up a little and fill you in on the rest of the week. On Wednesday Caroline woke up with a case of the pukies, so I spent the morning with her and Jamie did the afternoon shift. We had a lot of fun playing together and I was thrilled that I only had one vomit incident on my watch. Even better, we made it to the tiled kitchen floor. We try to provide images to coincide with our stories, but we'll spare you the visuals here! She was better all afternoon and back to normal on Thursday.

That evening Katie went to a princess birthday party. The girls were to arrive in their dresses and then the moms did the girls' hair, make-up, nails, tatoos and provided a bunch of accessories. Katie LOVED it. I joined her for the second half of the party and it was a lot of girly fun.

The next two photos of Caroline are just random shots- the first is of her running with the basket to pick veggies from the garden. We handed her the basket and she started running. The second image is of her being a sumo wrestler.


Saturday we enjoyed the Irish game and the girls broke out their cheerleader uniforms. While the sizes are correct 4T and 2T, you can probably see that perhaps they run a wee bit small.

On Sunday Katie met her Sunday school teacher and we are ready for her classes to start up again for the school year. Katie really enjoyed it last year and we recognized a lot of the same children from her previous class.

That afternoon the wind kicked up shortly after lunch time and by 3 p.m. our power was out. Katie called from her room during rest time as she watched a piece of flashing from the eave over her window fly away and she asked me several times if our house was going to blow down (darn the Three Little Pigs). I reassured her that we had the strong brick house, but as you can see we did lose some pieces and parts of the roof. For those concerned about the playhouse, I can report that not even a shingle blew off. Some very fine construction!


While the power was out and the girls were worrying about the loud wind, we watched a DVD and had a campout, complete with uncooked s'mores. Jamie and I tried to keep the girls busy and distracted while we took turns going outside to collect pieces of our roof from the neighbors' yard. We ended up grilling burgers for dinner and as it got darker we used the last of our hot water to give the girls a bubble bath in our tub because their bathroom has no windows. All in all, I think they thought it was kind of fun. We all went to bed earlier than usual and then our power came back on at 4:11 a.m. at which time I got up to finish the laundry and check to see how cold things were in the fridge. As I said earlier, we were very fortunate to have power restored so quickly. Our daycare had power so the girls had their normal week. My office was without power Monday and Tuesday, so I got a lot of non-computer work done and even organized my office. Jamie's office was back online yesterday, so he's been back to normal for two days now, although now their sights have turned to the stock market and the fate of Morgan Stanley.