what the wind blew in...and...Thanksgiving in Canada!

We had a monstrous windstorm sweep through SLC Wednesday night and Thursday morning. It mostly hit the Davis County area, but somehow our two block radius in SLC also got hit pretty heavily...I'll start from the beginning. Robert was pulling an all nighter trying to finish a paper so he was in the den at the back of the house and Minnie and I were asleep in the bedroom. The wind had been blowing really hard all night and kept waking me up. A little before 7 AM something big hit the house, shaking it and waking me up. I heard it come from the back part of the house so I immediately ran back to the den to see if Robert was ok. He was shaken
up. I asked him what it was and he said he didn't know. I could see a good part of a pine tree out the back window of the den. We wondered if it was a branch or something, but it was WAY to big to be just a branch. We ran downstairs to see if we could figure it out and when I walked into the kitchen and saw the garage I almost fell over. 

The garage was smashed and had hit the house. When I looked out the back door all I could see was green. Our neighbor's HUGE pine tree had fallen over from the wind, smashing the garage and pushing it right into the deck and the house. WHY did this have to happen when we're watching the house??! It was still a little dark so we couldn't get a good look, but the power had been shut off so we knew it had hit our power line as well. Oh goody. I called my parents in Guam to apologize and to figure out what to do next. My dad was asleep, since it was midnight there, but my mom was awake and was very calm about it which was helpful. The neighbors woke up a little after 7 AM and when I went outside to get a better look at everything I saw Steve coming into the driveway. He was in shock. He was so apologetic and nice. Of course it wasn't their
fault, this was just a big freak accident. We went around to the other side of the house to see if it had done anything to the neighbors to the west of our house. The top of the tree was nearly touching the fence on the west side of our yard. The tree is HUGE.  

This is a view looking at the back of the house. The wind was so strong that it knocked over a good part of the fence as well. Generally from this view you'd be able to see the entire back of the house, however here you only see a pine tree. The dormer peeking out of the top is where Robert was sitting when this all happened.

A few hours after the tree fell the fire department came to make sure the wire that was taken down wasn't live. We called Rocky Mountain Power to see if they could come help us get it fixed, but it turned out nearly all of Davis County didn't have power because of the storm so it was going to be quite awhile until ours was restored. Nearly 33,000 of Rocky Mountain Power's customers didn't have power. Thankfully my brother and his wife were nice enough to let us come stay with them for a few days because we didn't end up getting our power back for 4 days. We had to have the power company come pull back the live wire before a tree removal service could come take out the tree. Once the tree was out we had to have an electrician come and fix the masthead on the roof that had been taken down. The power company was still working to get power restored to a lot of their customers so it still took another while until they could get to us. I have never been more grateful for electricity, especially HEAT! The house got down to 45 degrees. Anyway, we are back home and although it feels like there's a lot left to do, especially since we can't get into the garage until it's dismantled and our yard's a mess, it feels like life is kind of back to normal. I really enjoyed staying with Nick and Megan though. I just like having a lot of people in the house to hang out with. I hope Robert wasn't offended, but I was a little sad to go back home. I just enjoyed being with everyone all weekend long.

In any case, below are a few more pictures of the damage.

These are shots from the neighbor's side. Check out how big those roots are!

 

 

 

The back of the garage...in shambles.

Look! My dad's wood pile survived! I'm not looking forward to dismantling that pile.

Ok, so are you ready for the longest blog post of your life? If you've made it this far, you might as well continue, right? Don't worry, the rest of the post is much less depressing.

THANKSGIVING IN CANADA!

Nick and Megan took a road trip up to Calgary, Canada this Thanksgiving to stay with my sister, Charlotte, and her family. In spite of reaching the border at 1 AM and finding out it closed at 11 PM (and all wanting to shoot ourselves) it was such a fun trip and we couldn't have had better hosts. Here are a few (a lot of) pictures in no particular order:

How Minnie spent the majority of the trip. She was such a trooper!

On our way up to Banff. So beautiful!

 

Nick and Megan in the gondola in Banff. A fear of heights and claustrophobia are a lethal combination in these things, aren't they Megan?

 

At the top...it was SO snowy!

 

This picture better depicts how stormy it was.

 Robert and Minnie at the lodge at the top.

Walking back to the car from lunch in Banff. Such a cute town!

 

And we saw this guy on the way down...

 

Christmas lights at the zoo!

The boys all warm in their stroller at the zoo.

Char and the boys.

Why I love this man.

Bob helping Lincoln down the slide at the zoo.

Char and Ben Ben.

Robert about to bust his knee.

Ice sculpture at the zoo.

 

Lincoln "helping me" make a pie (aka eating Hot Tamales and dumping water everywhere).

Thanksgiving!

Skyping with Mom and Dad in Guam. If they couldn't be there in person, thank goodness for Skype!

At cute Heritage Park

 

 The cousins!

Robert wrestling with the kids...one of the reasons they love him so much.

Being in Canada with Charlotte made me want to move there. It is such a beautiful place, but more than that, I just wish Char and I could hang out with our kids together every day. I miss her a lot and hope that ONE DAY we live in the same city.