Just another weekend update.

Last I left you, I was enjoying an extremely rainy Thursday at home. I came out of my warm and cozy cocoon around 2:40 to pick up the kids.  I normally leave the house around 2:50 but wanted to leave a little early because it was raining really hard and I noticed that the wind was really picking up.

I was not prepared for what I went through to get to school.  Many of the area school systems had closed on Thursday ahead of the hurricane.  We just went through this with Florence and got nothing but rain but the school systems always err on the side of caution.  Our school (and the public school system it normally follows for weather closings) did not close.  I thought nothing of it until I was actually driving through that weather to pick up the kids.

I always take the back roads to school.  It's a little longer but much more peaceful and no highways.  I was second guessing myself as I was driving by trees that had fallen on the side of the roads, driving over the occasional  power line across the road (in my defense the car in front of me drove over it as well and there's still one down right near my house that people are still driving over) and seeing so many flooded out streams and creeks.

I thought to myself that I should have taken the highway and could have avoided all of that but after speaking to someone who did take the highway home, I'm glad I didn't.  Her normal 30 minute drive from school took her AN HOUR AND A HALF! Traffic lights were out, portions of roads were closed due to flooding and in general it was a mess!

I however managed to make it home safely with the kids because thankful the wind had finally started to die down on our ride home and the rain was beginning to slack off as well.

Sarah's swim practice was cancelled.  Dan and Peter's camping trip was cancelled because one of the leaders owns a farm and his farm suffered a lot of damage and another leader was called in to work over the weekend thanks to all the issues the storm caused.

There are people in this area that are still without power.  Thankfully we never lost power and basically resumed life as normal on Friday.  My kids went to school on a two hour delay on Friday but all the rest of the area schools were out.  Many of the schools had no power and many of the area roads were flooded.

We had ten days of dire warning prior to Florence and got nothing more than some heavy rains.  We go two days of hearing that Michael was going to hit Florida and we got pounded here.  It was crazy!

We went out to dinner on Saturday night and noticed large tables of burly men and realized that they were power line workers that had been called in from other areas to help restore all of the power.

Since Dan and Peter didn't go camping, they stayed home on Saturday and did yard work.  Sarah and I helped the Girl Scouts at a work day at the church where her meetings are held.  After that we got Sarah's flu shot, grabbed some Chick-Fil-A and then ran errands.  We took Cheyanne with us and we had a nice day.  Peter and Dan were annoyed when they found out we had Chick-Fil-A and they had leftovers at home.  Did they really think we were going to be gone ALL day and not eat something?  They should know me better than that!

Sunday was a lovely day.  After church we had lunch at my parent's house and then Sarah and my mom went to paint at a local art studio.  My mom has been taking some classes there.  This is what they painted on Sunday.  I think they did a great job!

Dan, Peter, and my brother watched the Panthers game while I napped.  After the game, I did three loads of laundry and worked on my grocery list.  And then we watched the Red Sox and the Patriots until I fell asleep.  I should have forced myself to stay up for the football game because it had a very exciting finish.  But I'm an old lady that needs her sleep!