We Got Whipped by the Wind

Boy did I see something very scary on Sat 3/8/08. At 5pm, Mommy was laying on the couch sick as can be with a bad case of the flu. I was playing at our big window in the living room. Daddy just got home from the grocery store and was putting away all of the groceries. All of a sudden, the wind started blowing like crazy. Then, our big pine tree in the front yard came crashing down with a big BOOM! I turned around and looked at Mommy who sprang from the couch (even though she was so sick - that's adrenaline for ya). My eyes were HUGE. She scooped me up and yelled to Daddy "Bill, the tree is on the house!" We were all very lucky. It fell at an angle and grazed the roof. It hit a big branch of the gum tree and tore that off which we later found out went through the roof. It also took down the power, phone and cable lines. It was crazy! We ended up going 2 days with no power, which means no heat, so we stayed with Grammy. I ended up with a slight case of the flu too. Poor Daddy had to handle most of the grunt work of getting everything up and running again. What a long couple of days it has been.

Here are some shots of the tree taken the next day (Sun 3/9/08), you can see how lucky we were it didn't fall straight back!

Then here are some pictures from Tuesday 3/11/08 when we were finally back in our house:

Here is a view from the front door. The branch literally stops right in front of the door!

Hey, what's with the tree at the front door?:

Mommy even took a break from being horizontal from the flu so we wouldn't miss out on these shots since the tree was about to be removed:

See how the top of the tree is on the roof and the rest bent near the front of the house. Amazing!

Here's the branch in the roof underneath the top of the tree:

And the huge roots of the tree:

An Amish man and his son and another young guy worked from 1pm to 4pm on Tuesday 3/11 and got rid of the whole tree - roots and all. We took some photos from inside of their progress. They had the chain saws going and the big wood chipper.:

So, the tree is gone. Power is back, cable is back and the phone line was finally reattached yesterday. Now we are just praying that the roofer comes today as it's supposed to rain starting tonight and the next 4 days... GULP!