Hurricane!

As you know, last weekend Hurricane Irene roared up the East Coast. Fortunately for us in DC, the anticipation generally turned out to be way worse than the actual storm. For me, the worst part was that it cancelled the beach trip to Chincoteague we had planned for Ami's birthday. Irene was forecast to go straight over the island, and in the end she did, though at a lower strength than anticipated. I did all the good prep stuff, bought extra water and checked and made sure I already had extra batteries (apparently C and D batteries were like gold - super hard to find).

I had a party to attend at Ami and Zeek's in the early afternoon, but decided to tackle some crafty projects in the morning. Notice I did not tackle bathroom scrubbing - if you have to be stuck inside waiting to be swept away in a hurricane you might as well do something fun. I couldn't sit still long enough to sew, so I did some freezer paper stenciling. And when I say some, I mean I made around 6 things. Some were my own designs and some were things I found on the internet or books. Most are intended as gifts. I discovered I have an insane amount of 3-6 month onesies, and since Jack is way beyond those, I guess I will be on the lookout for friends with little babies.
This one is intended for Jack. I found the dinosaur online, and I wrote "baby." It's fun to see my own handwriting on these. I made one for Shannon that is almost completely my handwriting and design and it's really neat to see.
The three-legged giraffe. I think that's supposed to be 2 legs at the back, but it looks a little funny to me. This is little, on a 3-6 month onesie. Possibly intended for Micah, or maybe Evan, new baby of one of my attorneys, Mara. I tried to mix red and yellow together to make orange, and it's sort of orange, more red-orange. I think I'm ready to invest in a few more colors of fabric paint.The rain begins around 10am. Clouds looking ominous! I took this right after talking to Marti. I think she deemed me adequately prepared, and told me she would be following me on Facebook. I might not have posted so many updates if I didn't know I had family tracking Irene and me.Headed back home after the Hurricane/Ami's Birthday party. That rain jacket used to be yours. It was good that I had it, because an umbrella wouldn't have helped much.Around 6pm, as the rain begins to pick up. Super windy, about 10pm. I tried taking pictures from my window, but it was too dark at this point. The worst of the storm hit us between about midnight and 3am, and though I was still keyed up in anticipation I made myself go to bed around 11pm. I had been watching storm coverage in the background for most of the day, but had to turn it off around 8pm. The storm was LOUD. I thought there was thunder at one point, and the news had said we wouldn't get thunder and lightning with this kind of storm. It was just really loud wind. I would brace myself when I heard the loud shrieks, but the building stood strong and didn't spring any leaks!I saw this as I was walking home from church Sunday morning. This tree branch is just perched on the windshield. I'm not sure if there was any damage to the car. There were trees and branches down around the Hill, not not too much damage. I told Mom that it looked like a very green war zone, because of all the green debris. Apparently there was some damage at my church. I heard the pastor say that something (a cross?) fell and left a hole in the roof of the church, and there was some damage involving a chimney in the rectory. They still had power, though, and I didn't notice the problems.And this is what Sunday looked like - beautiful! Especially if you have power and no flooding or damage, which was my fortunate situation. I quilted with my windows open that afternoon! Capitol Hill was very lucky - generally we avoided the flooding and power outages more common in the more coastal areas.