Why I may seem quiet...

I think if you're a reader of this blog you probably already know that we're without power. Today is day 3, and they're saying it may be another couple days at least until our power is back. We had a "derecho" storm Monday morning. It didn't seem too bad from our perspective, and it was quick, but I guess the wind got very powerful for a bit there. Chicagoland had over 800,000 without power. So, we have a long extension cord going across the street to our friend's house and that's powering our fridge. We had also brought some things over to Sharon's house to put in the freezer, just in case. I say "brought" because the kids and I are at Sharon's right now. She's out of town for a while and said that we could move in if we wanted to. We haven't gone that far, but I have spent the morning here, powering my phone, doing laundry, roasting a chicken...
I'm also trying to catch up on email a little bit and take care of other general online things. But I think I'll take the easy way out and just direct you to Dad's blog for pictures from our trip to Wisconsin. There's a link to his blog on the right, if you aren't already familiar with that.
In the meantime, we are remembering to be thankful for all of the things we have. This is just a very, very minor inconvenience in the grander scope of life.

Aftermath

I have so many other things to post about, but I'm still interested in sharing pictures from the storm. I took these pictures from my car today, with my phone. Yesterday we didn't leave the house at all, which was a good thing because traffic was still tied up all over town with lights out. 

This picture was taken on Maple, across from the jr. high. It shows the branches waiting for cleanup. (It also shows the reflection of my ipass.)

 Here's another picture taken on Maple. This huge tree was broken in the backyards about a block away from our house. There were another couple on the same block just as big.

 Even closer to our house, just around the corner, this power line has been down. I suspect the huge tree in the last picture (a couple houses down from this one) landed on the wires and snapped this pole.

Our power never went out, thankfully. But the library is closed for the 3rd day in a row and some friends and neighbors are just getting their power back.

Watch? Warning?

I can never remember which one is a watch and which is a warning, but we had the bad one tonight. In the 6 years that we've lived in Northbrook I've never heard the actual tornado sirens go off until tonight. The kids had been in bed, but could tell that Pete and I were agitated, so they weren't sleeping yet. I let them come sit on the couch, then started to throw pillows into the hallway, thinking I'd close all the bedroom doors and we'd be away from the windows, but when the sirens actually went off I grabbed the kids and told Pete we were going to the neighbor's. He tried to say we weren't going out in that weather, but I think I was already out the door. He grabbed Franklin and we ran across the street. Our friends Oscar and Kelley had their 2 kids in their sub-level semi-basement laundry room, as well as Kelley's sister and two friends. I called Helena who said the kids were asleep, so Pete and Oscar went to help her get them over to the basement too. We ended up with 8 adults, 7 children and Franklin in the room. We also had at least 4 iphones and one ipad.

 Anyway- long story short- we were all fine. There appear to be some trees down in the area. Emily and Alex were supposed to be flying back to Utah, but I guess no planes are leaving tonight, so Tom will probably be going to get them pretty soon. It obviously wasn't as severe as other storms around the country recently, but with all of those on the mind I wasn't willing to mess with being tentative or feeling embarrassed.

And now both kids are sleeping in our bed.