We’ve been wishing and hoping for rain for weeks – and the storms have been all around us and never made it to our little corner of the county. Last week we watched the storms pass all around us (watching on the radar) and never make it to our house.  We could see the storms, literally, on the other side of the highway and yet we never got a drop of rain.

My theory is that the mountain messes with the air flow and it has to be a pretty strong storm to have the energy to go over the mountain and reach us. I’m not a meteorologist by any means, but after living close to the mountain for almost 20 years and watching the storms do this little dance around the mountain, that’s the theory I’ve come up with.

 See the ridge of the mountain there above my neighbor’s house?

Last night, we got “the big one.”

It was a heck of a storm… or series of storms, I guess. It started around six in the evening and when I finally went to sleep around 3:30 it was still raining, although the energy of the storm had diminished and it was just raining instead of the light and wind and sound show we’d had for most of the night.

We had hail, (lots of it) wind, LOTS of rain, thunder and lightning.  The dogs were scared to death, the kitties were hiding under things and the kiddies were not much better.  Our power went out around 7ish and didn’t come back on until around 3:30.  (which is why I kept waking up off/on until then – I was on “alert” in case it did come back on and worried SuperMan would oversleep and miss work, too)

We pulled out the kerosene lanterns and ate dinner by candlelight.  Cleaning the kitchen afterward was a bit of a challenge – how can you tell if the dishes are clean when it’s 80% dark in the house? – but we managed.  I can’t tell you how happy I was that I’d already cooked dinner in the crock pot and so when the power went out it was no big deal. All we had to do was plate up the food and eat. See? Planning ahead is a good thing.

Then, because we couldn’t do much else, we headed upstairs to get ready for bed.

The girls were a mess – Big Girl was traumatized by the no power thing. She railed against Mother Nature messing up her nighttime routine and how would she ever sleep without her fan and the “night light” of the neighborhood street light?  Little Bit was hot, tired, cranky and had leg cramps.  Poor SuperMan and I were just so tired we were ready to collapse with or without the kids joining us in sleep.  Finally, around 11, I put them both in bed with me and while SuperMan took a cool shower the girls fell asleep.  He escaped to another bedroom to sleep and I “slept” with the two whirling dervishes all night.  It wasn’t too bad, heat-wise, because we had the bedroom porch door open and a nice cool breeze was blowing in. It was humid, of course, but not intolerable.

When the power came on at 3:30 it woke me up when all of the electronics in the house came on in a simultaneous “whump” and surge of power.  I got up and turned off all the lights we’d left on and re-set the clocks and thermostats in the house.  Then I snuggled back down and tried to go back to sleep.

This morning, our yard looks like, well, like a storm went through (duh) – lots of limbs, leaves, etc. are down. But my flowers are happy little campers. They loved the rain.

The hydrangeas are a little bruised from the hail, but pretty still

The lilies are happy, too. Lots of new blooms today

So, for now, we’ll just say thanks for the rain, the cooler temperatures, and the adventure of “camping” in our house last night.  I’m just glad no trees fell in our yard and no one had any serious issues.

rain,family stories,parenting,storms