HURRICANE irene

Well this is the second natural disaster I can check off this week. We got close to 7inches of rain and wind gusts up to 50 or 60 mph. Not hurricane force but with a heavily saturated ground, trees will go over like toothpicks.  Unfortunately most everything happened during the night so we couldn't see much. Later on we hear on the news that southern DE got slammed by a tornado! Not to long afterwards we get a tornado warning.  Ya, we hung out in the basement for a bit because the winds were whippin.
As that passes, weather calms for a bit when it suddenly picked up again and at around 11:30 Sat night Dad, Sean, and me were inside watching Inception when we heard a big crack and a squeaking sound of something falling. I honestly never felt so scared. I thought one of our huge trees were falling on the house. Turns out, it was a massive branch that snapped off and fell on the power lines. But the power lines didn't snap, the power box on the side of the house just ripped off. We never lost power despite this whole incident. So we have live wires on our lake lawn. Awesome.
Sean and I stayed up till 4 am to keep monitoring the basement to make sure it didn't flood and to see if power would ever go out. After Inception we watched hangover. Every time I heard a huge gust of wind my heart would race because I was seriously afraid that a tree was gonna pancake our house.
Eventually we went to bed at 4, I woke up again at 6am because the wind was really picking up and I couldn't sleep. I got maybe 3 hrs of sleep last night.
Torrential rain turned into a light drizzle but the wind sure picked up. It was wiiiiindy today. But now the sun is out, the rain has stopped, and the winds have died down. Who would have guessed there was a hurricane here a few hours ago. I can't even imagine if this was a category 2 like it was first predicted.

 This is just the beginning.

 River on the side of the house

 Riley protecting the generator or more likely hiding behind it

 Mr. Fixit fixing the gutter

 "I'm not looking at you because you threw me outside in the rain"

 Tornado Warning

 Close call

 Even the utility guys were shocked we had power.

There's our power box thing in the bushes

Oh ya, and the best part! UD classes were supposed to start up Tuesday but are now pushed back to Thursdaaaay. See, it was move in weekend so Monday is cleanup while tues and wed they move in. So I'm gonna have 1 class this week. They should just push everything back till after labor day in my opinion. And what's this? Hurricane Jose formin in the Atlantic?? That would be crazy if we got his by another one.

EARTHQUAKE

DE and an earthquake? Whaaaat. Never thought the day would come. I was sitting at the desk in the nature center when all of the sudden the table started shaking, my drink was rippling like I was in an episode of Jurassic Park. Pictures are falling off the walls, shattering and the pipes are clinging...The BOILER! Its gonna explode! everyone get out! Get outside and realize everything's still shaking...Earthquake!!
Wow, what a crazy day...except that's my boss's story. I was outside deflating 20-some tubes with the other counselors. We were practically falling asleep, it was so tedious and took forever.

I can picture it now. We begin with the dramatic, exciting scene at the nature center of objects breaking, people running and screaming. And then you cut to the scene of me and my 2 co-workers sitting on pieces of deflating rubber with the subtle sound of released air. Oh Yeah. That's my luck. Felt nothin!!

 So good

Wilfred

This is probably my new favorite show. This idea is ingenious and absolutely hilarious. I suggest everyone catches up on hulu. That's what I did during my productive weekend. Can't wait for the next episode!

Prank Wars

Just got back from my last day of camp! Although we have to clean next week but at least no kids will be around nagging us. We had a lot of fun this week being the last week. Everyone got pranked one way or another.  We saran wrapped Joey's car. Joey and Corlan saran wrapped Cathy and Carrie's book bags. We all set up a scavenger hunt for Sam that took her all over the park to find her keys. And last but not least today I got hit. I was setting up our fishing activity while the counselors and kids crumbled up tons of paper and filled my car up.

There's 2 book bags in this. Took em forever to get undone

What comes around goes around.

 That's right child labor! They'll make excellent custodians when they're older. That's what they learned at camp this week

 Haha, George

It was so difficult to drive seems how I couldn't find the pedals or shift in gears. I got to admit it was a pretty good prank. They were sneaky to get my keys while my back was turned. I'm never bringing donuts again because that's how they distracted me. That's what I get for being nice.

Tubing (Terror) Tuesday

Today is tubing Tuesday at camp. I think tubing down the Brandywine River is my favorite activity this summer...well NOT ANYMORE. Not after today! We check the weather this morning and it said 50% t-storms at 2pm. We should be fine if we go tubing in the morning. Turns out those t-storms were moving ahead of schedule. and these weren't any t-storms these were SEVERE, end of the world like t-storms.
As we're floating down the river, 20 campers + 5 counselors, we manage to break off into 2 groups. Always happens because some like to go slow and others like to go fast. We start to feel some rain drops here and there and then whoosh! Complete down pour. No big deal. We were after all dressed to get wet. But then we hear some rumbles and that means everyone gets off the river. Rule is we got to wait 30 minutes from the last thunder boom till we can get back on the river. So our group waits around while the other group that was about a 1/4 mile behind us waits too. But the thunder isn't dying down its getting louder. Then we see lighting and the rule for lighting is that we got to wait an hour from the last lightning flash. Plus who wants to be near water when there's lighting. Yaa, time to go. Unfortunately we didn't have the camp cell phone, the other group did. We had a walkie talkie that ended up not being charged so we had nada communications for someone to pick us up.

I decided to go find the other group and tell them to use the phone. Keep in mind that its torrential down fall and now we're not just seeing flashed but we're seeing lightning bolts and the thunder was about to break my ear drums. Luckily there was a trail for me to use to go up river so I didn't have to be in the water.  It was a trail full of stinging nettle and poison ivy. Awesome. As I'm running, what felt like for my LIFE, I can't find the other group! Turns out they were on the other side of the river. But then I see the other counselor with the phone pop out of the bushes like some jack-in-the-box. He had called the nature center and the van was comin to the rescue and the road wasn't too far. So I sprint back to the kids and other counselor to tell them to get the hell out of here! At one point I saw a bolt of lighting shoot across the sky over my head. My heart is pounding because I'm gonna get struck by lightning. But I had to keep my cool because we got 8-10 year old campers goin out of their mind.
I'm not sure which was scarier: walking around outside vulnerable during a storm or driving around in that 15 passenger van. We could hardly see out the window because of the rain, the van would hydroplane from time to time, we would unexpectedly hit giant puddles, branches were falling from the trees and it was only a matter of time before a tree fell onto the road.

All in all, we made it back soaking wet, a little shaken, but ALIVE. Woo! While I was driving home I did notice lots of debris and several trees that had fallen, some across the road so I had to find detours home. All the traffic lights were out. That's always fun. The weather said we got about 2.5 inches of rain in about an hour. We really were lucky that no one got hurt.  As much as today sucked though, at least tomorrow will be fun. We'll be canoeing with much higher water!  Hopefully no boats will get stuck on any shallow bottoms.