Irene...

Before we left our home near the shore, I called out to God, "Lord, protect us and our home"

And he did. The Lord's provision is always so much more then what we can fathom.

Saturday 4pm the rain started. We had just left Wal-Mart, we were actually just out photographing people and what the stores looked like. The shelves were bare and lines at the gas stations were unreal.

We let the girls outside to play while the rain was light.

After a supper of fried chicken, mac n cheese and salads, we got in our "comfy clothes" to wait out the storm. By this time the rain was heavy, the weather channel was continually on, and talk radio was on so we could keep on top of what was happening in our area.

I knew I wouldn't be sleeping that night, but the rest of family did attempt it. We put the little ones down to bed around 9:30 pm, wind whistling away, rain coming down..but with some cartoons on we were able to keep the younger one settled. They were all bunking together downstairs.

Mom decided to retire to her room, upstairs around 10:30, My mom is a nurse and wanted to get rest in case she got called into work.

Ashley, was also upstairs laying on the sofa, listening to talk radio and attempting to sleep.

I took the downstairs recliner and basically switched between weather channel and House Hunters International, ( i love that show) .

Around 11:30, I heard a loud crack and scrape, I went running upstairs, mom came running out of her room, Ash got up in flash as well as Big Daddy, the house shook just a bit.

A Large tree came down in moms yard. One of it's branches scraped against her bedroom window while it fell and since I was down stairs I heard it all.

That pic was taken the next day from the deck. Praise God the tree fell in between the house and the pool narrowly missing everything, and did minimal damage.

After we checked it all out. Mom went back to bed. As did Ashley, Big Daddy and I were chillin downstairs, when the power flickered, and we thought oh no... We went out front to the porch were the sky was lighting up in green and purple hues, that would be multiple transformers blowing up.

We look and we see a HUGE branch just teetering on the electrical wire supply to the house.

Again God is sooo good, that thing teetered their all night and the whole rest of the next day and we NEVER lost power!!

After a long night of loud cracking, tornado warnings, and such the next morning during the eye was soo calm, a awesome breeze was blowing, I opened up the back sliders and just let the air in. Let all the dogs out the wandered around a little thrown off by the big tree. This was about 4am. It was just starting to get light. It was peaceful.

Around 8 am, me, mom, big Daddy and Ashley walked a few houses up and down my moms block to survey the damage. Lots of trees down!

Around 11am Sunday, My mom got called into work, and My stepfather came home from work, they had asked him to stay as his facility to help with any damage that might get done during the storm. We decided to see if we could make it home. Many roads were closed due to down power lines, or flooding. But our path was clear to get home. Again, Thank You Lord. My mom had to try three different routes before she made it to work.

Upon entering our neighborhood we see this:

And that was just the beginning....that was a downed tree on a live line. Still not fixed yet. That should give you an idea of how bad this storm hit our state.

God protected us, from any major damage. We had small leak in the roof, no flooding in the crawl space and just this in the backyard:






God was soo good to us.. Some of our neighbors did not fare as well. They was major flooding!!!

Our neighborhood is still in clean-up mode. Many are still without power.

Blessings