The hurricane that wasn't actually a hurricane

Our great friends, the Sherman's, came to visit last weekend.  We had so many fun things planned (food, places to visit, etc...) but the plan was changed when the "hurricane" hit.

I had been on a business trip that week and got home about 8:30pm on Friday night.  The Shermans had already arrived so the 4 of us sat at the table visiting, laughing and drinking wine (of course!).

At about 10pm the lights started flickering.  We all thought that was weird but didn't think much of it.  Then about 15 min later, there was a noise outside that sounded like a train running through the backyard.  We went to the back doors and turned the light on.  There are 22 trees in our backyard that are about twice as tall as our 2-story house and they were whipping around like tall grass.  It was unbelievable!

Then the power went out.  We kind of laughed and lit a candle and kept chatting thinking it would just be a short time until the power came on.

We were up until about 11:30 pm and still no power.  We distributed flash lights, said good night and went to bed figuring the power HAD to come back on soon.

Well, we were WRONG.  The power was out for almost 30 hours!  We looked on our phones the next morning and saw that millions of people were without power and the winds had been over 90 mph!  Thats hurricane strength, folks!

The week had been near record temperatures and was forecasted to be over 100 degrees on Saturday.  Yuck!  It was stressful, and not fun.  Worst of all, our poor friends who came to visit had to live through it!

We made the best of it and found places to go that were air conditioned (Panera Bread, grocery store, a friends house, etc...).  Finally, late in the afternoon we got our generator going.  Thanks to Hurricane Ike in 2008, we have a generator and small room-sized AC!

We all hunkered down in the basement where it was cool.  The generator powered an AC, refrigerator, cell phones and a lamp.  We stayed up late playing cards and, of course, drinking wine!  Good times!

The power came back on early the next morning.  Unfortunately, just in time for our friends to leave.  :(  Hopefully they come visit again, we'll try to have power next time!  Ha!

 The "meat" lunch.  We ended up grilling a bunch of random meat for lunch since it was going to go bad anyway.

 Eating and drinking in the basement.  Cooled by the generator/AC.

 Being silly with the camera!

The delicious tart that we *had* to eat in it's entirety before it went bad.  :)

Poor Isaac sleeping in the basement storage room.  One of the only cool places in the house.

Basement guest bedroom and room size AC (powered by generator).  This room was nice and cool so the 4 of us roomed together for the night.  Luckily, power was restored early the next morning.