Hurricane Years

It was 5 years ago today that Hurricane Charlie blew through our neighborhood. Hard to believe it has been 5 years already! Wow... I still remember how scared we were. It was our first hurricane & we did not prepare at all. No covers on the windows or anything! Tommy & I were in the laundry room with the dog and a mattress in front of the door. Abbey was in her cage in the alcove between the 2 spare room doors. She was totally silent, probably terrified, for the whole day. The noise was incredible, especially when the next door neighbor's tree came down about a foot and a half from the side of our livingroom! If we had the addition already done, it would have wiped it out. But when all was said & done, we made out ok. We lost power for a few hours but luckily we are on the hospital's grid, so it came back pretty quickly considering. We sustained minimal damage, mostly to the pool cage... lost a few screws, all on one side. We also lost our trees. But considering some of our neighbors lost their entire roof, or even worse, some houses were completely destroyed, we came out of it relatively unscathed. We were SO blessed. So now we can say "Happy Anniversary Hurricane Charlie... hope to never see ya again!"

Yesterday, I was so wiped out that I didn't post, so this is a twofer... We went to the beach for a couple of hours yesterday. Margie & Charlie came with their grandson Baby J... the kids really had a great time but I was a totally bad mommy and didn't take a single beach picture. I know, don't beat me up... but I did manage to take some shots of the kids in the car when we were ready to head home! They got along MUCH better in the car than they did on the sand!

Baby J was not into playing with girls. Rachel was filling her little bucket with sea shells and his bucket was full of water. Well, Rachel wanted a scoop of water so she reached her shovel into his bucket and he took HIS shovel and wacked her on the head! Margie gave him a little smack on the side of the head and said "Don't do that!". That's when Rachel leaned over and tapped him in the head too! LOL... no tears were shed from either kid, so no need to panic... it wasn't a knock down drag out free for all or anything!

After the beach, we headed for home, totally exhausted. We decided to enjoy our newly clean pool for a while to get the excess sand off! Rachel had a ball, especially because she was able to swim, which she really couldn't do at the beach with the waves and stuff... Tommy cooked BBQ chicken for dinner, and I promptly fell asleep at the table. 38 hours awake was just more than I could handle! But it was a GOOD tired... Even Rachel slept like a rock. It was her first trip to the beach, and just like the rest of us, the salt air seemed to knock her out.