Hurricane Irma

Last month Hurricane Irma made its way here, downgrading to a tropical storm as it reached our home. This weekend Hurricane Nate is taking a different trajectory but is currently in the process of making its way here as a tropical depression. It has been raining non-stop since late last night, so it feels to right sip some hot tea and write a blog post about our impromptu cousins weekend last month that was brought on by Hurricane Irma...

Almost exactly a year after Hurricane Hermine hit Tallahassee and prompted an unplanned cousins weekend for our kids, my sister Angela and her family once again found themselves in the path of the potentially deadly Hurricane Irma.

While Hermine hit Tallahassee as a Category 1 storm, Irma was projected to hit north Florida as a Cat 3. The magnitude of this hurricane and projected path through the entire state caused the largest ever evacuation of the state the week before Irma made landfall.

Angela, a part-time nurse, was not on her hospital's disaster team this year, so she packed her kids up and they made their way to Tennessee, leaving her husband Robert behind (he also works at a hospital and was unable to leave).

It was a strange weekend, waiting for the hurricane to make its way through the state of Florida. Angela was anxious all weekend and constantly on the watch for new updates about the storm.

Like everyone in her situation, she was generally distracted by what might happen to her city, home and husband she had left behind. Throughout the weekend, the radar ominously showed a storm that was bigger than the entire state of Florida.

Thankfully the kids didn't really know what was going on, they were just excited about their unexpected cousin weekends. And we did our best to take everyone's mind off the impending storm! Our brother, Mark, even came over from Nashville to hang out with all of us.

As we know now, the storm lessened and much of Florida was spared the devastation that had threatened. Unfortunately, the following week, Hurricane Maria pummeled an already impacted Caribbean. Many of the islands, including the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, are still suffering a month later.

The storm ended up hitting Tallahassee as a Cat 1 (instead of the predicted Cat 3). Many trees were blown down and power outages were rampant throughout the state. As it turned north toward Tennessee, it was downgraded to a tropical storm.

When it reached east Tennessee, our town actual ended up experiencing wind damage and power outages due to the storm – we even had our boys sleep in our room in case a tree fell on the roof during the night.

Ironically my sister had tried to escape the storm but it still found her in Tennessee!

While Angela and her kids were here, our kids played as much as they could. We took them on a hike to Rainbow Lake, visited the Creative Discovery Museum, got hot chocolate at the Hot Chocolatier in downtown Chattanooga, roasted s'mores, and watched old movies with popcorn as we sat by a roaring fire in our wood stove.

Not a bad way to spend an unexpected long weekend together.

Thankfully my sister's home was spared – a tree did fall in their yard and knocked a section of gutter off their roof, but that was pretty minor compared to damage that others experienced.

We look forward to more cousin's weekends but hopefully no more that are because of the weather!