As written on actual paper + some extra on here

We weathered the storm at a Fairfield Inn in Chester, Va.

The first night (Friday) was very uneventful. It rained that night. We hit up Walmart for a few provisions including a cheap $40 playard for Jason.

The second day (Saturday) we met some other military wives, spent a few hours at an indoor playground/bounce house, and then all went in on some pizza for dinner. That night, it rained like Hell and upset Dinah. She spent the night laying on my feet & crying. 

On the last day there (Sunday), it took forever to get the van loaded up. Eventually, I just left both kids in the hotel room (instead of taking Jason with me) while I loaded up.

The drive home made me nervous. Saw close to 12 trees/branches that had knocked down power lines. Drove over around 7 down lines; saw one broken line, live, and laying in a pool of muddy water. There was more organic debris everywhere than I'd ever seen and we even passed by three houses that had been crushed by trees. By the time we'd made it home, at least 2 out of every 3 stop light was dead.

The house was fine but power had been out all weekend. It came on not around the time we walked in the door and was off again 2hrs later for the night. It was so humid and hot from the storm that I started sweating within minutes once the power went out again. It was definitely not working for me! I opened a few Windows and that seemed to make it worse!

So, we spent the night at a Days Inn in Chesapeake. Since I hadn't booked ahead, the a/c wasn't on in the room and the kids kept playing with it so it took forever to cool down. There were 2 double beds so Allie couldn't kick me in the face anymore. It took the kids forever to go to sleep and I kept waking up paranoid in the dark so I ended up turning the desk lamp on and sleeping much better after that. Not sure what that was about.

On our way to the hotel, Allie encountered a cicada while getting into the van. She thought it was dead and went to stomp on it when it started buzzing. That scared the absolute Hell out of her and she jumped back. Of course, her noise made the bug start buzzing MORE as it attempted to right itself (it was on its back on the ground).

I'm pretty certain that was the largest bug she'd ever encountered in the wild and she hadn't realised that bugs got that large. It was hilarious watching her scream about it! >.<

When we got back this morning, power was back, but the fridge goods were bad. I found an awesome list here that tells you what's safe to keep if it's been above 40° for more than 2hrs. Since our frozens were still frozen, I didn't have to worry about those, but almost everything in the fridge had to go.

So, we went to Walmart and stocked up on a few things. Since I'd bought tetra packs of milk in the case of a power outage, I didn't have to get any of that for now.

Damn, it's dark outside for only 4pm! There's still about 3.5hrs of sunlight left but, adding insult to injury, it's supposed to rain again soon. -.-

Also, here's a picture of Irene taken from space on Friday evening. Just so you can see how much of a bitch she was.