Goodale's: 1, Hurricane Irene: 0

On Friday morning, Reagan and I met some friends for a long run on base, knowing we'd be shut inside for the majority of the weekend.  After our jog, we filled up the gas tank, got some more water, and grabbed some last minute supplies from Walmart.  At around 5:45, the rain started.  I had picked up a pizza for dinner, so we chowed down on that and then Reagan fell asleep post-bath at 7:25 on the futon!  I did a few things around the house to include wiping down the two rocking chairs and table we keep on the front porch.  They were in desperate need of it:

Much better...they are actually white again!

And right before bed, I filled the whirlpool bathtub in our bathroom in preparation for a possible lack of water.

I turned on the news and hopped into bed with my latest book.  Unfortunately, the news was totally distracting and somewhat terrifying...they kept mentioning tornado warnings for Onslow County!  So I went into Reagan's room and plucked her from her crib where she was sleeping soundly.  I wasn't about to risk leaving her in the other room should anything severe happen.  So we settled into bed together for a very restless night's sleep.  At 6:30, we walked downstairs for breakfast and discovered water all over the kitchen floor...and NOT from Irene...it was from the bathtub!

I got Reagan settled in her highchair with some breakfast and milk and turned to cleaning up the mess.  It's not too bad and once I wash the area with a bleach solution and my FIL comes down for a closer look, I'm sure it will be good as new.  It was probably the fact that I wasn't prepared for interior damage that made it worse!  As soon as I noticed it, I called MIL and FIL and while we were chatting, the power went out.  That was around 7am.  

The rain continued and the wind howled almost all day long.  We watched through the windows and tried to get a few pictures.

Poor Redbud tree spent most of the storm at this angle!

This hardly captures the brutality of the winds

Reagan and I napped together around 11, had leftover pizza for lunch, and played with EVERYTHING.  We even spent about 25 minutes playing with Tommy's food bowl - Reagan would carry it around, dump it out, laugh hysterically, and then taste a piece.  Hey, I was prepared to do anything to keep her happy!  After the storm died down quite a bit, Reagan and I took a "hurricane walk" and she got to test out her new rain jacket!  This was also Tommy's first time out of the house in over 18 hours!  He was a champ throughout the storm and didn't even hide in the closet as he's prone to do whenever the weather turns bad.

Such a serious girl!

She took another nap around 4 and I packed an overnight bag for us.  We decided to head to Maureen and Brian Donlon's house since they still had power and I was going crazy being inside.  After she woke up, we gathered our things and headed into the garage only to discover that the garage door doesn't work when you don't have power!  Luckily my brother-in-law, Sean, came to our rescue.  He talked me through opening it manually and it was quite easy.  In fact, if I hadn't been so bummed about it not working and distraught at the thought of staying in the house without power for another 7 hours, I might have remembered the cord that hangs down on every garage door!  

We arrived safely at the Donlon's house and the babies had a great time together. Maureen made us a delicious dinner and after the kids went to bed, we attempted watching a movie, but all started dozing about 45 minutes into it...guess that's what hurricane parties turn into when you have 1-year olds:)  We woke up to homemade French toast and then Moe and I took the kids to the beach to see if anything interesting washed up.  The beach was calm and the waves were perfect.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly disappointed that we didn't see mayhem.  

Overall the damage incurred wasn't as bad as it would have been if Irene had stayed a Cat 3 hurricane.  We lost the double gate on our fence (and the gardenia bush that the gate landed on).  Our neighbor's tree fell down and several other trees in the neighborhood fared the same.  The backyard was littered with branches, but nothing that couldn't be cleaned up with 45 minutes of work.  

Gate 1 met its demise early on in the storm...the gardenia bush is directly underneath

Neighbor's tree - would have crushed their car if it had fallen the other way

Backyard full of branches and twigs, but nothing terrible

I'm glad we decided to stay.  And while I know it could have been much worse, I'm grateful that it wasn't.  We know how lucky we were.  I must say, we definitely missed Jason even more during this storm...he would have handled everything so well.  And, I could have enjoyed a few hurricane beers with someone else to help:)