Storm update with my love and gratitude

Beloved friends,
We all alive and uninjured. All night long I was sustained by the feel of Delighted Husband's hand in mine and by the loving emails and text messages I received from all of you last night. Service was a bit wobbly, but I had internet on my phone most of the night. I lay there in the pitch darkness reading little bits of love in the gmails on my phone. Bless you all. I was surprized and grateful at the requests I received from some of you asking how you could donate to help us out. I tinkered around on PayPal for a few minutes and I think I found a button that will work. Please let me know if it works or not. Buttons and code are not my special talent. :)

There was times that Delighted Husband and I were sure a tree limb or flying 2x4 would plunge through the plywood and window into our bed. The wind was so loud I could not hear the beep of the phone keypad when I pressed the keys...with the phone just inches from my nose. It was loud! In those scary moments, I would pray hard, and I felt the peace inside, as though God spoke into my thoughts "it'll be okay, go back to sleep." and I'd catnap for another few minutes. Sum total we maybe slept 2 hours out of 18 and I'm grateful for every minute. The only "safe room" that was interior room with no windows was the master bathroom downstairs, so we wanted our son to be there. Where to put him? I smile at remembering that the solution that presented itself was to clear all shampoo bottles, bubble bath, etc. out of the shelves surrounding the garden tub/shower and put the Liberator Zepplin pillow in the garden tub. We tucked a queen size fitted sheet around the Zepplin and he used the Liberator throe as a blanket and his normal pillow from his bed upstairs. He loved it! He was very cushioned and cozy and he asked me to close the shower curtain and he was in his own little world. This way Delighted Husband and I could still use the potty and sink while Dear Child slept.

We were up and down all night. Around midnight we lost electricity. Around 2am, we went throughout the house doing window checks to see if towels were needed. We heard drips in the upstairs hallway and found water leaking out of the attic door. Delighted Husband went up the attic ladder and brought a strong flashlight. I stood at the bottom of the attic ladder to see the soaking wet plywood panels of our roof moving in and out buckling and bending. This of course scared the crap out of me and I urged him to get the hell out of there and quick. He looked around one last time and saw there was water all over the attic plywood floor. All the bankers boxes of stuff stored up there acted as sponges soaking up the water. This is the reason we still have a ceiling in the dining room and kitchen. The water leaked out through ceiling fans on the second floor and dripped onto the floors and beds upstairs. We put out pots and pans and bowls everywehre we could find to catch the drips.

We called Delighted Husband's parents who live in the central part of town about 30 miles from our house out in the burbs. Their house was unharmed and they told us they had a generator going and invited us to come bring our food from our fridge and deep freeze to avoid losing several hundred dollars worth of groceries. Around 10am after cleaning up breakfast of pasta I had boiled on our gas stovetop, we moved the groceries from the freezer and fridge into the 4 wheel drive shagmobile and took off for MIL's house. This was a Godsend because I take an injectible medication that has to be refrigerated and we knew the cooler we had packed it in the night before was

Amazed and grateful,
SW