We're back...sort of

It's good to finally be able to write this. I'm sure that some of you have been waiting patiently for word on how our family is doing in the aftermath of the hurricane, and in all honesty, we are fine. The hurricane was a neat and frightening experience, but one that I don't really want to live through again anytime soon.

As far as the hurricane goes, it hit our area around 1:30 in the morning and finally passed us around noon, so about 11 hours. There was a lot of rain and lots of wind, as you can imagine. I was awake most of the night, mostly because I was nervous. Like many of you, I've seen the footage of major hurricanes on the news, so each time a 100 mph gust of wind hit our house, I was worred our roof would go with it. Luckily that never happened, but it was a long night to say the least. I did manage to get some sleep, but about 5:30 I woke up because something didn't sound right. For several hours, the wind had been howling around us and the rain had been pounding on the windows, etc. but at that moment, everything was completely quiet. I got up from bed and went to the window and sure enough, there was no wind and the rain had let up to a very slow drizzle. It was then that I realized that the eye of the storm was right on top of us. It was a very neat experience, and to say it was surreal would be an understatement. Of course, the heavy wind and rain started again about an hour later and lasted for another 6 hours or so.

Once the storm passed, we decided to take a drive to see my in-laws house (they were out of town at the time) and the scene around us was scary. I've never seen so many trees, some of which had trunks to large to get your arms around, just snapped in half. The streets were literally littered with tree branches, leaves, etc. and in some areas, the roads were more of an obstacle course, as we had to weave around different obstructions. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures, but even then I don't think they would do the scene justice. What was even more impressive was to think that this was a catagory 2 hurricane, one of the weakest.

There has been some good from this hurricane however. We have seen the goodness of people in the worst of situations, we have finally met our neighbors after almost a year, and we have made strengthened some relationships within our ward, and we have learned the importance of food storage and emergency preparedness, as we have been without power for almost a week.

We know that many of you have been thinking of us and have kept us in your prayers, and for that we are grateful. We look forward to actually talking with you soon.