Irma

After having to deal with hurricanes Matthew and Hermine last year, I was hoping that we would get a reprieve this year.  But, that was not to be.  Hurricane Irma made landfall on the gulf coast of Florida in early September, and even though that is quite far away, it was so big that we felt the effects here in our hometown.  The worst part of the storm came through on Sunday night / Monday morning.  I sat out on the carport for a good part Monday watching the wind and rain.  I actually saw one of the pine trees across the road fall to the ground, and I was reminded of how happy I was that Brian had cut down the trees in our front yard last year.  We actually had numerous trees down in our neighborhood- 5 of them knocking out power lines.  There were wide-spread power outages in our county, so it took awhile to get everything back to normal.  Our house was without power from Sunday night until Wednesday afternoon.  I guess you never really appreciate a thing like electricity until it's gone.  We spent three days living in darkness, taking cold showers, and charging our phones at McDonalds.  My parents, grandparents, sisters, cousins, and aunts/uncles also lost power.  Some of them had generators, so we were able to move last year's corn to their freezers.  The rest of the items in our freezer ended up having to be tossed.

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The damage from the storm was so bad, that school was canceled for the entire week.  The kids got to stay home and get a feel for what life was like in the olden days (before electricity).  It was probably good for them to be reminded of all of the things they could do without electricity.  Of course, we did spend a bit of time cleaning our yard and helping some of the neighbors with their yards, but we also made time for things like playing basketball and soccer outside. We played a lot of board games and had more rounds of chess than I can ever remember playing at one time.  Once the electricity was restored, we cleaned up our house (which had begun to look like a campsite), and tried to get back into our normal routine.  We were quite sad to learn that the pier at Amelia-by-the-Sea had been knocked down again.  It was knocked down by Matthew last year, and they rebuilt it.  I doubt that they will do so again.  I don't know what this means for our beach vacation next summer.  I guess we will have to wait and see.

Getting Through the Dog Days

We are in the dog days of summer and are trying our hardest to squeeze the last amount of fun out of the hot weather.  The first thing on the list was to visit Splash Island Water Park one last time.  When we visited earlier in the summer, we weren't able to ride any of the slides because it was too crowded.  We decided to give it a try again over the Labor Day weekend.  We arrived right as the water park opened, and were surprised by how light the crowd was.  We were able to ride all of the slides multiple times.  The kids' favorite was the Wahee Cyclone (the toilet bowl ride).  We rode it four times in a row with no waiting.

In August, Olivia and I attended an outdoor screening of the movie "Moana" in City Park.  I love when our town sponsors movies in the park, and I hope that they do more of these in the fall.

The kids have been playing outdoors in the evenings (when it's not too hot).  They have re-discovered their love of sidewalk chalk.

I am working on extended day (no planning period) this semester, and have been super busy.  There came a point in August when I was in dire need of  a day at the beach.  I asked Brian and the kids if they wanted to go and NO ONE wanted to.  I couldn't believe it.  The beach?  No takers?  Seriously?  Fortunately, I have two friends who are always at the beach.  I called and sure enough, they were already planning to be there on the day that I wanted to go.  

Brian has also been making the most of the warm weather.  He and his friends held their annual "guys weekend".  They rented a boat, played golf, watched football, and all of the other things that they like to do.  

Even though these few weeks have been nice, I am definitely looking forward to the fall and cooler weather.