Happy 4th

 

We have had an interesting last few days...on Sunday Alec, Matt and I headed to the Cubs game.  Alec and I had given Matt tickets for Father's Day.  About 5 minutes after we left we noticed huge, crazy storm clouds behind us that were headed straight for Wheaton.  The storm caught up with us in the car about 15 minutes later as we were stuck on the highway for almost 2 hours in what seemed like 75 mile per hour winds, Matt actually thought the driver's side window was going to blow out of the car, which thankfully, it didn't.  Anyway, during all this I was getting crazy calls and texts from friends in Wheaton about the storm that was apparently insane and then the babysitter called to tell me that she and her mom and Charlie and the dog had taken cover in the basement.  Needless to say, an insane storm hit Wheaton.  It didn't last too long and after being reassured that everything was okay with Charlie and then house, Alec, Matt and I headed to the game, which was great.   The storm turned left so it never made it to Wrigley, and Alec really loved the whole baseball experience.  It was a super fun day for the 3 of us and cool to see how at almost 5 Alec was able to really get into and understand the game.  We did not have ANY idea what we would be headed home to.  My neighbor had mentioned that the town looked like a war zone, but I didn't think it would really be that bad, and it was.  The storm completely devastated our neighborhood and about a 3 mile radius around us.  Giant trees were uprooted everywhere, power lines were down on every block, cars were smashed, it was nuts.  Below are a few pics of our street and the blocks around us, but even they don't do justice to how bad it looked.  Long and short of it, we lost power for 2 1/2 days (during which the state was under an extreme heat warning as the temp and humidity were over 100), and we are SUPER lucky b/c the majority of our neighborhood is still without power, the town had to declare a state of disaster and all 4th of July festivities, including the parade down our street and the fireworks, were cancelled and the entire place looks like it has been hit by a hurricane.  Pretty crazy few days!  We were headed to a hotel last night when the power came back on, and were able to stay in the house, although it took all night for the indoor temps to drop to tolerable.  We had plans to have a big 4th of July party for the parade, so the morning hasn't gone quite as we had planned, instead we have been cleaning out the refrigerator and throwing out all the food that spoiled (that's what I get for shopping for the party on Sunday before the game,) but we are THRILLED to at least be in the house and have power again.  Not the 4th of July was had planned on, but an interesting one nonetheless. 

 

 What we came home to, it of course took us about 45 minutes to get into the driveway b/c our streetand all those surrounding it were all shut down.

On our corner

 This is still how the entire neighborhood looks, every yard is lined with destroyed trees

 This is our street, just an example of what happened to the power lines and how entire trees were uprooted