Hurrican Ike sweeps through Ohio ! WHAT????

A HURRICANE in Ohio?!?!

Yes, if any of you are following the news, Hurricane Ike reeked havoc across 1600 miles of the US stretching from the devastated Texas area clear through to New York.
We, unfortunately, were in "his" path. Did we know it at the time??? NO!
Well at least I didn't. I knew it was mighty windy but when we lost power at around 4 pm Sunday and didn't get it back until Wednesday afternoon I understood the full force of "his" power. I am not going to complain because I have seen the footage of Texas, and all the rain in Indiana, and am THANKFUL that we only had the wind. I was really so oblivious to the extent of the wind that I took Meredith to Target to get a birthday present and then dropped her off at a party, all right in the middle of this. Yes my van blew a little on the road, yes there were some traffic lights out on the way to the party, yes I saw some trees down, NO it didn't register. I took her to the party dropped her off and came home and when I was pulling in the drive way I noticed my freshly planted mums laying across the driveway, still no light bulb. I did however start looking around the neighborhood at the trees blowing and decided to take some pictures but then I went in without another thought until our power went out which made me mad because I had clothes in the washer and dryer! Kirk then found out that none of the banks he works for had power in Cincy and he was going to have to drive all the deposits etc. 1 1/2 hour to one that did have power so that they could be posted. So while he drove off into the wind, Owen and I went to get Mere from her party. Turns out they lost power 15 min. after I dropped her off and a tree fell in their back yard and a window blew out on their porch. They even sent the kids to the basement because they didn't know if it was a tornado. On the way to pick her up Owen and I noticed a LOT of trees down and so after we got her we decided to drive around and look. It was amazing how much damage there was. There was even damage at our backyard neighbors, which I never even knew happened. When we got home we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and see how bad it was, our neighborhood was not as bad as some and several of our neighbors still had power - energy hogs! After our walk we decided we needed to get something to eat and not wanting to open the fridge we decided to just go get something - mistake! It seems everyone else was thinking the same thing and over 1/2 the restaurants didn't have power either. It took us an HOUR after ordering to get our food at McDonald's!!!!! When we got home we headed to our neighbors to charge our phones, since she still had power, and while we there we got the call about school being canceled. We spent a lot of time and ate at Elizabeth's the next day.
We are fortunate to have a gas water heater so we could shower at home :) :) Doesn't seem like much but, when you have nothing else at least being able to shower at home is a BIG deal. We did pretty much nothing Monday except leaf pickup. At 6 that night with still no power we decided we needed to take care of the freezers - mistake... we should have done it sooner, we lost a lot of stuff that quickly. We gave a lot to our old neighbor who had power and we cooked up on the grill 3 different meats and thank heaven for Elizabeth we were able to cook up 2 kinds of chicken, a couple appetizers, a box of garlic bread, and a dessert bread. We ate like kings. On Tues. - still no school and we opened our warm candle lit shower up to my cousin and his family since they had no hot water.
Some places were starting to get power on Tues. and Mere had her acro class and Owen had football. Wed. the kids had school and they were not happy about that and that afternoon we got POWER!!!!! This also made the kids mad. They liked showering together by candle lite, playing outside, and being disconnected from the world. Tonight is the first time they have watched TV since Sun. You really don't realize how much you are plugged in until you become unplugged. I missed my ice! and email (some) oh, and definitely my blow dryer and straightener - the 80's called while the power was out and asked me for their hair back!!!! It was quit a little Swiss family Robinson experience. I can feel for the people who still don't have their power. It is OK for a day maybe two but then it started to be draining and it gets old quick getting your food from coolers, relying on your neighbor for things (thank goodness for GREAT neighbors) and not knowing if you were going to be able to get gas. (lots of stations ran out of gas because there were so many stations w/o power. We actually had to use the mower gas to get me by one day. FYI - don't let your tank get that low when a hurricane is approaching) So anyway we survived and are back into our plugged life. And here are some pictures of our little ordeal
BTW almost 700,000 Duke Energy customers were without power which means well over a million people and the greater Cincy area is a bit over a million, which virtually means practically everyone in Cincy was w/o power.