Where I've been, a derecho what now??

Um...hi. I didn't realize it had been this long since I popped in here. I am so full of excuses lately, and I can only blame pregnancy on so much. I do have another good reason to have been gone though....

A MASSIVE storm blew through my area Friday night. I mean MASSIVE. It barreled over 600 miles of land so I'm sure many of you were hit too! They're calling it a "derecho," a "land hurricane" or a tornado + hurricane. It was really one of those things you've got to see to believe. (If you're interested, you can read an article {here})

Trees downed EVERYWHERE. I live in a very rural area (read: the middle of freaking nowhere) so there is a lot of untouched forest around. Roads were closed for miles! Gas stations literally are just opening, almost a week later. Millions of people are still without power, and many, many grocery stores are still running off of generators and aren't even carrying refrigerated/frozen food. I'll tell you my little story.

It's Friday night, I'm out with some friends doing a "girls night." (Which I never do, btw). Dinner and a movie. After dinner I see a text from my mom, "Bad storms tonight be careful." I text back "Ok I will!" not thinking much of it. We see our movie and get out (I'll give you a hint, there is a reason we didn't bring our husbands to this one!) around and start trekking back to the car. It's obvious a storm is brewing, but really there was nothing going on that would make you think something that bad was coming. We start driving home, and before you could even blink it was there.

Thunder.

Lightning.

Rain.

WIND! Oh my gosh, the wind. 80mph wind? During a thunderstorm?? We literally hadn't even driven a mile when branches and shopping carts started barreling right by us. We couldn't even see the rain was so thick, and it came out of NOWHERE. In case you were wondering, I don't have a wish to be impaled by a branch through a car window. We pulled into the grocery store across the street, abandoned the car by the curb and ran inside to take cover. So lucky we did, the store soon lost power, and no one was even allowed to leave. And really, how convenient is it that we were stuck in a store filled with food, batteries, flashlights, and water?? (Answer: very.) We stuck around for only about 45 minutes till the storm had passed, super quick really! Luckily there was no major damage to the car. Then...the drive home. My friend described it as "someone put some trees through a wood chipper and scattered it everywhere." Trees were down, power lines were torn out of the ground, no power, my gosh! Devastation.

Our friends let us stay the night. Miraculously they had gotten power back. And even more miraculously, we came home to power the next day too! Our yard didn't fare so well...we lost three full trees and half of another one.

This actually is a picture from the backyard. That's what was left over after we'd already filled up two truck beds, from just ONE tree. Haha, I said "we." Don't let me fool you, I didn't do squat. Pregnancy card on this one! This disaster took three full days to clean up, and since then we've been helping friends and neighbors clean up their yards, their torn down barns, and whatnot. We've been housing family and offering up our showers and cooking food for hoards of people. We've been very busy, so thanks for your forgiveness. :)

Did anyone else get hit? How are things in your area?