Home again, home again, jiggity-jog.

I've seen some beautiful sights in my life, but this--THIS--is a thing of beauty:

We're home--minus one tree--but we have POWER! Actually, we moved back home Tuesday, but we've been crazy-busy since. Now that we're back, though, I can post a few pictures of that crazy-windy day.

Here's the tree that caused all the problems. One massive limb is resting on the powerlines leading to our house:

Gusts of wind eventually made the line spark, which brought our friendly neighborhood fire department to the scene. The fire truck stayed at the foot of our driveway for at least an hour.

At first, we kept vigil, too, since the FD had called TXU and someone was supposed to be on the way. Packed and ready to go in the van, the kids played video games to pass the time.

The kitties couldn't figure out what their crazy family was doing, but bringing them into the van did NOT make them happy:

Once we realized it could be hours before TXU made it to our emergency, we gave up waiting and went to dinner and then to Brett's parents' house. His folks made our three nights away from home feel like a vacation!

On Monday, the tree company removed most of the tree, our neighbor replaced a part of the wire housing, and TXU eventually got us back in business late in the day. WHEW!

Here's the side of our house on Saturday (notice the brown, dusty sky):

And here's the side yard now:

Throughout this whole experience, we were reminded of how very blessed we are. Our family, neighbors and friends all provided support we needed. Being away from home gave us a renewed appreciation for the old homestead, too. And electricity? It's pretty cool.