The dramatic hurricane scare

So there we were, enjoying a lovely week in Utah with some of the people we love the most, when we started hearing about Hurricane Irene. (Actually, I can't remember if we heard about that first or the earthquake that happened near Richmond. Really? We missed The Great Virginia Earthquake?) But anyway, the news of Irene kept coming, little by little. We were curious about it's path. Would it hit Norfolk? At first we thought it would come before our trip back. Our thoughts were, "Well, looks like we picked a great week to be gone! We missed the earthquake, and the hurricane too!"

By Thursday we were starting to get nervous. It was now predicted to hit our home on Saturday, the day of our return flight. The navy ships were escaping way out into the ocean--the storm was definitely coming. We live on the beach. In a first floor apartment. And we've seen this city flood with much less rain than was predicted to fall. We got a hold of our airline and rescheduled our flight for Friday. The plan: fly in, get home, make a few preparations in our apartment, and evacuate to my parents' house in NC. Our neighborhood had a mandatory evacuation after all!

Well of course, Friday morning our flight was cancelled. Several phone calls later, a family in our ward had gone to get an apartment key from our landlord, pick up some things from our apartment, and move our car to higher ground. And our flight was rescheduled for Sunday. We were riding this one out from 2000 miles away! (The McMurdies helped us so much! I think we were worried about our car most of all!)

We spent much of Saturday anxiously watching The Weather Channel. Let me tell you those people can scare you into anything! They showed images of Virginia Beach houses with serious damage and talked about the surge they were predicting to happen at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay as the storm kept moving north--isn't that right where our house is? Not to mention the YouTube video we saw of the storm going on from our beach!

I didn't sleep too well last night. We barely got on the packed plane to Norfolk today, but we did. The city is strewn with tree branches and leaves. Our street definitely flooded, and some below-ground-level garages were majorly flooded. But our car and apartment survived just fine. We even had power, which I was definitely not expecting!

Nor was I expecting this today! Look at the beautiful day, the beautiful beach, and the people out enjoying it!

(And my shadow...)

Thanks for all the prayers our way. I know a lot people did not get off so lucky. There certainly has been a lot of destruction in other places. We're just counting our blessings today.