By Tuesday, I had a raging sinus headache, so I took pain reliever and laid down on my bed while I waited for some relief. I woke up to the bed shaking so hard, I thought my teens were messing with me. I immediately looked up and my ceiling fan was shaking so hard, I thought it would fall on me!
As I rolled off the bed with an action hero's finesse, I thought it had to be at least TWO of my children jumping directly over the spot in the attic. "One could not make it shake that hard," I thought to myself. (I do not know why I thought they'd do that since our attic is kept locked, but that's what I thought.) Before I even made it off the bed, Brandon came busting into my room yelling "MOM!!!! Did you feel that?!!!! We just had an EARTHQUAKE!!!" That's what I had been thinking, but his two cents helped anchor it. I posted on Facebook "What just happened in XXXXX County? It felt like an earthquake!!" My friend Ricky in Suffolk wrote back "That was weird. It was an earthquake." I thought "If Ricky felt it down there too, it was BIG!"
Brandon told me our old, heavy tv set nearly toppled where it could have killed one of our smaller children. Our dining room table walked across the floor, and our pictures were all crooked on the wall. Clint anchored the tv that night.
Before we could recover from the freak earthquake that was felt as far north as Canada, we had to start preparing for Hurricane Irene. Because the winds were expected to be near 100 mph for our home, we planned to evacuate. We prepared all of our animals to survive the flooding and time that we may have been kept from returning home. As the storm got closer, the wind estimates became lower and lower. So, after prayerful consideration, we rode it out at home.
The storm was pretty noneventful for us. The winds weren't as bad as we were expecting. The flooding was about 2' lower than Hurricane Isabel. We had minor roof damage, lost an old metal shed to the winds, a pear tree toppled, and we had less than 2" of water in the new sheds. The winds at the end were horrible. The house creaked and shook! They lasted for hours and hours. We had a forewarning from our OBX and Suffolk friends who told us not to think we were in the clear one the eye passed. "The worst is yet to come!" Clint and I did not sleep a bit. Our power was out for only 16 hours. Our exhausted family laid down for a nap mid-day the next day.
I normally take a picture in the middle of the road when it is flooded, but the wind was pushing on those pine trees so hard I was afraid to go under them. This was one of the few pictures I was able to take of Irene. The wind literally blew the rain into the cracks and crevices of the camera, and it would not work for a couple of days until it dried out. Clint gave it "rice therapy."
Please pray for our friends in Hatteras and other areas of the OBX. Some lost their homes and others lost friends. Thank you to everyone who called, wrote or came by to check on us. We love you too!
