Ok so I can't totally blame one silly (not-so-silly) storm for me being gone from this space for something like 11 days, but it made for a sort of hectic start to last week which then ran into a whirlwind long weekend roadtrip to Philadelphia for our friend Ellie's wedding (pictures from that trip coming soon). The storm hit the Sunday before last just as church was letting out, which kept us trapped inside the building for a good 20 minutes until the worst of it had passed. Indy must have had some sixth baby sense about it, since every time I went anywhere near the door she shrieked and hugged my neck and smothered me in terrified kisses even though she couldn't even really see outside. When we finally made it to our car, it was obvious that some sort of micro-burst had come through; it was easily the worst storm I can ever remember seeing. Trees and telephone poles were snapped in half like toothpicks, and power lines were down everywhere. We didn't get power back until early the following Tuesday morning, and Joel and Kate didn't get their power back until late Wednesday night. For others it took much longer. Of course, this all happened to coincide with an intense heat snap with temperatures in the 90's and all the way up to 100. We lit all the candles we had and toughed it out the first night (if Alan running out at 2 a.m. to get a marine battery to hook up to a box fan still counts as toughing it out), stayed at my parents the following night, and then everyone stayed at our house Tuesday night to escape the heat. 

I'll leave you with some pictures I snapped while driving around surveying the damage, and I'll be back with some much happier Philadelphia trip pictures soon.

That half of a tree was in Joel and Kate's driveway. Thank goodness no cars were parked there when it fell.

Oops, can't go that way I guess. . . there is an entire pine tree in the road.

And this one was ripped out by its roots, along with a nice 15 foot chunk of earth, and their pretty park bench is still perched there by the trunk.