I was so excited to have absolutely nothing planned last weekend.  I thought I finally would make progress on some of my projects that I have in process.  On Saturday, rain was expected in the afternoon, but it was a nice morning so I decided to go yard sale shopping while it was still nice.  I know that yard sale season is almost wrapping up around here, so I wanted to take advantage of a free Saturday morning to shop at my leisure.  I knew of a neighborhood sale, so I headed that way and found some other sales along the way.  I was doing pretty well and found some small items.  I even purchased a box of K’nex for my nephews, because after playing with them at the Science Factory they wanted to have some of their own, so I was told to be on the lookout at yardsales.  I found them a box of 325 pieces for $5.  I have yet to deliver it to them, but its in my car waiting for them the next time I seem them.  After I was done at the yardsales, I also stopped at one of my favorite consignment shops…the 75% off sign was out front, so I knew I could get some good deals on some new to me clothes.  After that, I went home and still no rain, so I managed to quickly get the yard mowed too.  When I was done, Bob was done his morning errands too, and we decided we could retreat to the basement and maybe squeeze in an afternoon nap.  We managed to doze off and were awakened by some terrible noises…sounded like our roof was getting ripped off!!

Bob ventured upstairs and I waited until he said it was clear to follow him.  By then the wind was dying down.  But, sadly the damage was done.  We knew it had to be bad, because our neighbor across the street was calling us.  The front of our house looked like this:

Unfortunately, we also  had damage at the back of the house too.  Our patio set was stacked up like a deck of cards.  Our glass table didn’t fare so well.  Our crape myrtle was lost as well.  The pretty tree that looked like this in the morning:

Now looked like this:

We spent the remainder of Saturday afternoon cleaning up glass and debris.  Our plans for a relaxing evening of grilling and sitting on the patio quickly changed to escaping the house for a dinner out.  Sunday, we spent several more hours cleaning up.  We removed the tree, as it was split completely into the ground and would not survive.  We also continued to pick up glass pieces from our patio table.  And, since we were in clean-up mode, we got a head start on some of our Fall shrubbery clean up. 

The storm was nasty, but I know it could have been much worse.  We were fortunate no one was hurt and it was only material things that were damaged.  But, it is still sad.  We really enjoy our patio and landscaping and its just not the same now.  We are working to get it back to a new normal….just waiting on the insurance adjuster to let us know how to proceed.  There were several homes in our neighborhood with similar damage, some worse, some not hit at all.  It was a crazy storm.   Anyone else experience storm damage recently?

I’m hoping that I will soon have a “normal” weekend so that I can get some projects done.  It is difficult to find enough time to even justify starting to work on them, when I know I won’t have time to finish.  But, it will soon be time to decorate for Fall, so I need to get moving.