An Anniversary: Part 2

I guess you could say the whole Hurricane Ivan experience started around 7pm on the 16th of Sept.  That’s when the lights went out.  It was barely dark out, slightly breezy, drizzling rain.  We all sat on my parent’s porch, watching and waiting.  The sky would light up with green bursts as transformers all over town were hit and more and more people were losing power.  We came in and began preparing to ride out the rough night ahead.  Ds1 (just started his freshman year of high school) and ds2 camped out on the couches in the living room.  Dh, ds3 and I set up a mattress on the floor (yeah, remember I’m 9 months pregnant?  Yikes that was rough!)

Soon I could tell the barometric pressure was falling and fast…the baby inside me started tossing and turning like nobody’s business!  It hurt, of course, but I was more worried that he was getting too excited!  We called my brother at the hospital and he assured me he’d seen this before…he even asked the labor and delivery nurses and they, too, said the baby was just adjusting to the whole experience and would soon calm down.  Okay, first storm problem taken care of. ;)

Next we soon realized it was just too darn hot to be in the house with no windows open so we opened a few.  Oh the sounds the winds made that night!  The wind would have a steady howl with higher pitched screams (wind gusts) in between.  Every 15 minutes or so the higher pitched screams became the steady howl and things just sounded worse and worse out there.  We could hear trees being broken, things rolling down the street, and a series of tiny tornadoes all around.

At the height of it all our ears started popping, like we were on an airplane or something.  We could see the ceiling and roof over us lift up and settle down, lift up and settle down.  The front door (a very heavy all wood door) blew in and it took ds1, dh and my father all to get it closed again.  They had to put some chairs in front of it as well.

Somehow ds3 and ds2 slept.  That is until the roof began leaking…right on ds2!  We kept moving him to other spots in the room and the water seemed to follow.  We got a call from another brother who lived down the street…a tree was in their living room!  They wanted to come to my parent’s but there was just no way…they made sure to move to another part of their house and just wait it out.

Not until 7am the next day did it ever calm down any.  12 hours!  This storm was not only big, but slow moving.  But it was almost over.  Light at the end of the tunnel.  Or so we thought…