We had our first hurricane in the new house and it was a doozy! There was an entire week where everyone was planning and getting ready for the storm. The gas stations ran out of gas multiple times days before the hurricane even got here! We thought about whether we should evacuate or not, but since the storm was going to go through all of Florida we decided it wouldn't make much of a difference to go anywhere unless we went really far away (which we couldn't do because of our animals). So we made plans to stay put. Anthony build an outdoor pen for the baby tortoises and the iguana, but it worked out perfectly as an overnight pen for the chickens. We took them out of their coops (since we didn't know how the coops would fare in the winds) and put them in the pen inside our metal outbuilding.
We went ahead and bought a generator in the week before the storm hit so that we would be able to keep our refrigerator and freezer running and not lose our food. We ended up losing power in the middle of the night when the storm was closest to us and it took about 24 hours to get it back. It was the best feeling being woken up by the lights and ceiling fans kicking on!
The hurricane was all anyone talked about for weeks, and these were my favorite posts on facebook about it. It is so true!!! I am seriously more afraid of the ac being out for long periods of time than I am of the roof caving in or anything else.
And can't forget how important Publix is to every Floridian:
The morning after the storm went through, we had quite a lot of tree limbs and debris in our yard. But nothing got damaged, so we were really happy! We spent the entire morning clearing off the driveway and Anthony got our temperamental lawn mower working so we were able to mow most of the yard too. We still have a lot of limbs in the back to clean up, but we are going to take our time with those and probably wait until it gets a bit cooler to tackle them.
Some impressive limbs broken and trees completely pushed over by the wind:
It was actually a beautiful day the day after the hurricane, so we spent a lot of time outside trying to escape the heat of no air conditioning. I relaxed in our net swing for a little bit.
Anthony did some grilling outside since our stove wasn't hooked up to the generator.
Since they cancelled school for the rest of the week, we've been trying to come up with things to do with the boys. We took a walk down our street so that James could ride his scooter and ended up talking to some neighbors. It is kind of sad that it takes natural disasters for us to get to know our neighbors, but it just takes you completely out of your routine so you end up spending a lot of quality time with your family and people you are usually too busy to meet.
James found a slug:
Rett got so hot and tired he kept asking me to carry him. So I told him to turn on his engine and be a race car and then he was running all around us :)
Our easter egger chicken finally started laying!! We love finding pretty blue eggs in the coop.
A local church rented a few bouncy houses and invited the whole community to bring their kids and get their energy out. It was a great break!
One morning we drove over to beachside to help someone unload a heavy generator. I think we know why their power was still out. The transformer fell off the pole and was on the ground!
Our power came back on pretty quickly, but it took about a week for our internet to come back on. That meant no netflix or youtube for the boys, combined with no school...it was a long week. We don't have good cell service at our house, so we usually use Wifi calling for our phone reception which made having no internet a little more annoying. When it finally came back on, I told the boys and this was their reaction. Pure joy!
Once the beaches were cleared to reopen, we went and played for little bit one evening.
The weekend after the hurricane, Anthony went to Jacksonville with a group from our ward to volunteer with Mormon Helping Hands. They spent Saturday and Sunday cleaning yards, roofs, and cutting down trees.
They thought they were going to have to camp in tents, but they ended up using a member's apartment since he was out of town. It was a pretty nice place on the 17th floor of a building in the middle of downtown Jacksonville. Anthony sent me these pictures from the balcony:
On Sunday one of their work assignments was in the middle of a bad neighborhood and while they were there, they heard lots of gunshots a few streets over. Sure enough as they were leaving there was crime scene tape and police cars all over the place. Crazy!
While we escaped the hurricane with no damage, the refrigerator at the condo in Gainesville got fried by power surges so we had to replace it. Thankfully that is the only thing we had to fix!
