Birthdays and Hurricane

 We celebrated Sophia's first birthday between the earthquake and the hurricane.  


We didn't get out of the house until 11 am because we had to do some hurricane preparedness things.  The biggies were consolidating the freezer and piling lots of ice around our food.  Filling a tub with water so we could flush our toilets if the power went out. And, securing the out door furniture and potted plants. 


Here's some of the earthquake damage in Mineral, the closest town to the epicenter. We drove right through Mineral to get to Jen & Brian's house. 

This manor house is known as Cuckoo (I have no idea why -- I never can read the historical markers fast enough as we drive by...)  It was shown quite a bit on local news.  There were cracks on some of the inside walls also.  We saw a lot of crumbled chimneys on our drive up. 



When we got to Jen's house we pitched in to help them get ready for the birthday girl's party on Saturday.  I decorated another batch of cupcakes. Aimee brought up her cupcake tree so they looked nice. (Although I think I need remedial frosting instructions...) We helped get their house hurricane ready -- they were likely to have more problems than we were.  And, we chopped and diced and etc to get the food ready for the party. 


The birthday girl took a good morning nap and was ready to party! Sophia, Jenny and Brian are getting ready for Sophia to have her first cupcake -- with frosting! 




She didn't go wild for the frosting -- although she did eat some of it and the cupcake. 


Folks needed to get home before the hurricane was scheduled to hit Maryland so everyone was gone by 3 pm. 

    

Here's Aunt Aimee crying with Sophia over the Ravens jersey Uncle Kevin got her. She liked the toys much better. Her nana bought her the cutest little Vera Bradley purse.  Keep an eye on your Mommy Sophia, she might want to use it too. 

She really wanted to check out the baby in this photo frame that Grammie and Grandpa got her and fixed up.  

We left a bit before 3 ourselves.  The drive home was mostly uneventful until we got about an hour from our house.  Two or three times small branches slammed into the windshield but didn't break it.  Scared the dickens out of us though.  Then one decided to drop on the roof.  I thought for sure it would leave a dent in the car but Pat couldn't find one.  The wind picked up and the rain wasn't all that heavy so we really didn't have that hard of a time.  Of course, we went country roads rather than face I 95.  It's always a mess. 

As we turned into our street we were stopped by a tree on the road but luckily we could get by on the left side.

And the final "kick in the pants?"  We had no power.  Evidently it went out around noon on Saturday.  And, darn it, it didn't come back until about 11 am on Sunday which was a lot sooner than we were told to expect it.  Thank goodness we had made the preparations before we left.  I have two book lights and lots of rechargeable batteries so we read our books and went to bed early.  Next morning we banged on our neighbor's door early so Pat could plug his coffee pot in --- they have a generator.  Hum, we may want to look into getting one of those.  Although 24 hours without electricity isn't too bad.  

I spent part of this afternoon getting the binding on a quilt so that I can hand stitch it tonight.  I've got another one ready to pin the binding on and get it sewn tomorrow.  I'm working hard to get more quilty things finished so I have used as much fabric as I bought this month.  Remember this lovely field trip? I'm within 2 yards of using as much as I bought.  I'll have to see if I can finish a few more things before Sept. 1. 

Happy Quilting All!