Surviving the Storm

Yesterday was an eventful one.  We were awoke a little after 3:00 am. to the sound of a storm approaching.  I quickly came down stairs to turn on the television to listen for storm alerts.  As soon as I got the TV turned on,  the power went out.  I quickly grabbed a flashlight, and at that time my husband was telling my son to get out of bed and head down stairs.  He was in such a deep sleep he couldn't get up.  I started yelling at them to get down here.  I was at the basement stairway with flashlights waiting for them.

By the time they finally got to the main floor, things had settled down outside.  We spent the next half hour trying to see the damage through the lightening.  The electricity remained out for several hours so we had to wait until it became light outside before we could venture out.  From the lightening we could see several limbs down around the house.  We only have one pine tree, so all of the limbs were from neighboring trees.

After going back to sleep for a few hours we awoke to start cleaning up.  Our neighbors privacy fence was blown down in two spots.  Their dog kennel was turned on it's side.  I let the chickens out and they seemed to be shaken as well.  I'm sure it was a surprise to see branches laying all over the yard.  I thought we would immediately start hauling the branches out of the yard, but my husband insisted it could wait until he got home later in the day.  He was already late in leaving for work because of the storm.  We cleaned up some shingles, pots and plants, and located our trash bins, and left the rest for later.

I intended on getting pictures of the damage, however, before I knew it, all of the branches in our yard were gone.  Our neighbor had fixed his fence, turned his dog kennel back over, taken all of the branches from his yard, as well as ours, and hauled them away.  If it weren't for the scattered potted plants and leaves in the yard you would hardly know the storm had been here.

That's how you know you are living in Iowa.  No one sits around in the aftermath of a storm.  They all get to work to pick up the pieces and get back to life.