Feeling Right At Home: Goodnight, Irene

We made it past Hurricane Irene and I can safely say that the Homiller house fared much better than many others in our locality (or at least this Homiller house—Will’s parents are still without power and his brother had five huge trees fall in his yard). We miraculously still have power (apparently 75% of the metro Richmond area is out) and we had only one tree on our property line fall away from our house into the street.

No fewer than three houses in our small neighborhood had trees fall onto their homes (one home had two trees hit it). We are lucky to say the least:

One of the three house-victims. I felt a little bad taking pictures of this nice family's bad luck and I didn't have the heart to take a picture of the other two.

Otherwise, we just have a lot of cleanup from fallen branches and leaves scattered throughout the yard and street:

For more scary pictures of Irene’s damage (and a fantastic blog in general), visit Young House Love.

In the meantime, after a trip to the river and an (almost) week at the beach Frances, George and I are busy getting reacquainted with our normal schedule. Even though none of us are returning to school this fall, I still have a feeling of renewal come Labor Day weekend. In fact, one of my (“New Fall”? “New School Year”?) resolutions this year is to cook more. I don’t hate to cook (in fact, I actually like it), but I am perfectly content each evening to finish my day with a bowl of cereal rather than an actual meal. Considering Frances and George beg for dinner beginning around 5:15pm (long before Daddy gets home) that leaves Will out in the cold scrounging around in the refrigerator at 8:30pm for something edible (other than mac ‘n cheese and canned peas, that is). And as 1950s as it sounds, I do feel a sense of responsibility to make sure my family is well-fed—and so, the resolution begins…another day. Sadly, nearly all of the food stores in our area are closed due to power outages. How very Scarlett O’Hara of me (“I’ll think about that tomorrow”).

I’ll leave you with a picture of Frances wearing Back Street Boys stickers. There is nothing like a compulsorily housebound day due to a very slow moving hurricane to inspire some much overdue purging of pre-children memorabilia. Will gave me these stickers sometime before the children were born—I have no idea when. Maybe for a birthday? Christmas? Engagement present? Frances loved them and spent a good 30 minutes decorating herself and her little brother.