Life Currently 4

This is our once a month series on what’s happening in our lives currently. Life Currently 4: Back to school, Sonic date, solar eclipse, and all about Hurricane Irma prep, the storm (with video), and days without power. 

As I sit and type this up we are going on day 5 without power…

Yep- I come to you via a generator for my computer and hotspot on my phone for internet. Fun, fun, huh? And as I currently type this it is 87 degrees in my house at 10:32am.

Why you may ask? Enter → Hurricane Irma.

But before we go all into the hurricane including prep, riding out the storm, and the aftermath (including pictures and a video), let’s chat what happened before the storm- a quick Sonic date, back to school, and some snapchats with the kiddos and hubby!

Back to School

Our kiddos started a little early this year and went back to school on August 14th. So back to long car lines in the AM and PM and back to doing homework. Sigh… so. much. homework with three kiddos! ;)

Before school started there was also 3 orientations this lady had to attend. First up, Nanette’s VPK orientation.

After Nanette’s was Jaxson’s 2nd grade orientation and then in the evening was Molli’s middle school orientation. Mom, here, forgot to take pics at Jax’s and Molli’s orientations. Whoopsies.

Jax did let me get a picture of him in his classroom on the first day of school. Molli, however, did not. Middle school is too cool. ;)

Sonic Date

Beau and I never EVER, and I mean NEVER get to have date nights. So, one night we decided to hop in the car and go to Sonic for their 1/2 price shakes. Momma got a root beer float and it was so delish! Daddy got a strawberry milkshake. We also decided to snap ourselves so we had proof we went on a 20 minute date. ;) Thanks Kristi for watching the kiddos! #thosesnapchatfilterstho

More Snapchat

We don’t really use Snapchat that much anymore like we did two life currently’s ago when I was trying to learn to master it, but we do take some snaps when there are cool things to do- like Pokemon!

Solar Eclipse

Did you see the solar eclipse? We sure did. We kept the kids home from school (school excused all absences and stated they would like the kids to enjoy this with their parents), so we did! We made our own solar eclipse viewers out of cereal boxes (forgot to snap a pic) and turned it into a lesson for all of the kiddos that were over here. Catie came and brought her son Grayson and Kristi came and her son Taylor was already here (I picked him up from school early). Everyone had a blast. Luckily, Kristi works next to an eye doctor and he had some solar eclipse sunglasses they gave to her so we were actually able to view it!

Luckily, I was able to put the solar eclipse glasses over my phone lens and snapped this photo of the eclipse. Pretty groovy, huh?

And now we move on to the big story…

Hurricane Irma

Hurricane Irma Prep

Prepping for a hurricane is never fun. Ever. Luckily, we figured out a week before the storm that we should start preparing and good thing we did because our county ran out of water, gas, and food.

We had only grabbed one case of water but our neighbor, Melissa, grabbed us 4 more while she was out and about and saw stores slowly getting more water in. And good thing- because we are on day 5 with no power. We do have a reverse osmosis water system in our kitchen (and not under a boil water notice) so we are still able to use that.

After you prep in the stores, it’s time to prep at home. Luckily we still had the plywood from hurricane Matthew last year, so we didn’t have to go wait in long lines at 6am for new shipments of plywood. ??

Every time there is a hurricane we return to my mom’s house (she is deceased but my step-dad still lives there) to hang the shutters. It is a 55 and older community so we hung my dad’s shutters and his neighbors because her husband passed away a year ago. To get to his house you have to take Indrio rd which connects to I-95. Well, we couldn’t even get out of his neighborhood because there were so many people exiting I-95 because it was bumper to bumper with people evacuating, so we took a long back road but it was beautiful!

A friend from high school, Jess Harper, took these awesome photos on the beach 2 days before Irma hit. Pretty awesome, huh?

During Irma

I am a storm hunter. I live for hurricanes. I actually love them. Maybe because I was born and raised in Florida? Maybe it’s because I’m crazy? ;). Maybe it’s because I’m just cool like that, but whatever it may be, hurricanes make me wish I would have majored in meteorology so I could be all up in the hurricanes like Jim Cantore. Maybe one day I’ll be the next #JENcantore- no not marrying Jim- just want to be in the storm. ;)

Before the storm arrived we received some super small feeder bands without much wind, and no thunder/lightening, so we allowed the kids to play in the rain in their rain boots like they always do (thanks Aunt Mary for their brand new rain boots!). Of course once the winds started picking up it was adults only outside. ;) The storm, of course, changed paths from what was expected and eventually headed more towards the west coast of Florida, but the storm was so large it covered the entire peninsula of Florida. Beau’s mom (grandma Gigi) lives on the west coast so she came and stayed with us for the storm.

Aftermath of Irma

We have over 20 trees in our yard so clean up was NOT a breeze. We lost our only banana tree that makes bananas and lost tons of branches off of trees. I’m 5’7 and the piles of branches and leaves are taller than me- and there’s 5 of them.

Power. As I mentioned at the beginning, we are going on day 5 without power. Luckily, my sister got power back on day one so we were able to get her generator and we have a window a/c unit we hooked up in the bedroom, so it’s all kids and parents in the master bedroom until power is restored! We have a grill and filled the propane tank so we haven’t had all cold food. Dinner is always warm. Lunch is not. ;)

Our yard was a bit of a mess and the photos don’t do the mess or piles of brush justice.

And I’d like to give a big shout out to my sister Mary and brother-in-law Travis for letting us use their generator…again. We used it during Hurricane Matthew last year. They seem to get power back the next day. We, aren’t so lucky, but we are lucky enough to get their generator until our power comes back on.

While I’m all over here doing shout-outs lemme just shout out to Catie, Kristi, and Val. Catie and Val for offering us their homes to shower and to do laundry, and to Kristi for using her home to eat some hot food and take hot showers. Holla!

The kids had a fun time without electronics and getting creative outside since we are currently (as I type this) on day 5 without power. Not even a flicker of power, believe me, I keep watching the stove clock. Never realized how much I used that darn thing until the power went out. Ha! But, I know those linemen are out there risking their lives, working around the clock, to get power restored. It wasn’t just our area that was hit- it was the entire state, so there are many without power.

It literally took Beau and I two days to clean up the yard, trim/chainsaw trees, and mow it. Yep- yours truly mowed the yard. Beau and I carefully placed all tree trimmings by the road. The kids- not so much. They had a different idea. They decided to use tree trimmings to make a “garden”- you know right where we spent two days cleaning up. Ha! Such is life. :) They even got a cement brick and wrote ‘ Jaxson’s and Nanette’s Garden” on it!

The Calm After The Storm

Well, not yet calm because no power, but we took this time to trim and chainsaw all the trees on the property and cleaned them up a bit! So, yay!

That’s it for life currently 4, y’all. Below is a short video of the rain and wind that a feeder band brought us. The storm became much worse overnight. The video was taken two hours before we lost power.

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