Sara and Mike: Week 80 and Week 193

William is 80 weeks old, Emily is 193 weeks old and what a week it was! Definitely a week to remember...or forget. We had lots of togetherness this week as Mike didn't work all week and we awaited, experienced, and dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy!! I have to start with being super thankful that we did not have any damage other than losing our power and we are all fine!!! We had 2 trees fall into our neighbors yard, but that's the worst of it. They are still there and will probably be there for awhile considering all of the destruction around. We lost power around 8:00 Monday night as we were putting William to bed. Emily got to stay up a little while and "camp out" in the living room. We "roasted marshmallows" over the lantern and had a little fun before sending her to bed. We then sat up and listened to the crazy wind and things blowing around while playing games. The worst of the storm was overnight and we woke up to quite a surprise in the morning! At first there didn't appear to be any damage, but after looking out our bedroom window we saw the 2 trees that had fallen. And a bunch of huge branches that fell into our neighbors driveway. We had a bunch of trees removed and trimmed this summer and I am so glad we did that!!! Otherwise we may have had some more tree damage. The power was out, but we had a pretty good Tuesday and decided to venture out later in the afternoon. It took a few detours to get out of town, but rumor had it the Rockaway mall was open so we decided to head in that direction. Nothing else around had power, but the mall area did. The kids fell asleep so I did some shopping in Target, then we woke them up to get some dinner, and headed to Toys r Us for something to do other than sit at home in the dark. We met up with some friends and had some fun wandering and playing in the store. We went with them to the only restaurant open and had a drink. It was packed of course, but warm!!! We got home, put the kids to bed, bundled up and had some more game fun! By the next morning it was getting much colder and we knew we had to do something although kept hoping if we waited a little longer our power would come back! It wasn't looking good so we headed to the Kopcho's, one of the lucky houses to have power! Thank you so much for taking us in! We had fun and hopefully weren't too noisy and messy!! Our adventure took us to the Beattie's house for the next couple of nights and we finally had hope when we saw the number of outages drop dramatically in our town! Of course no one was left so we had no confirmation that we had power. Mike headed up Saturday morning and we did indeed have power!!!! Yay!!!! As much as we love our family and had fun with our sleepovers, it was so nice to be able to come home! And we are still super lucky, because looking out in all directions all we see is darkness. It is so strange. There are still tons of outages, schools are still closed, stores are closed, and since getting gas is so difficult we are just hanging close to home. Hopefully the area will continue to gain power and get cleaned up. It's amazing the amount of damage that was done and it doesn't even compare to what happened to the shore areas. Just seeing the pictures of the devastation there is unbelievable. And again makes me realize how lucky we are.

Here are some pics of our crazy week...