Sorry for the pause in posting about our vacation with Noah.  We had an interesting couple of stormy nights last week – one much more powerful than the other.  It was the hardest storm we’ve had hit our home since we moved here.  We had quarter to golf ball-sized hail pound our house for about 30-40 minutes at 2:30am Tuesday morning.

It started out like many other hail storms we’ve had, but it quickly progressed into a constant pounding that grew ever-louder.  We grabbed Noah out of his crib and hid out under the staircase for the duration of the storm.  After it finally passed, we found that the window above Noah’s crib was shattered.  Luckily, it was a double-paned window, and only the outer pane shattered.

The other upstairs bedroom also had a grapefruit-sized hole through the window.  Again, luckily, it only penetrated the outer pane.

What amazed me was that the hail actually hit our security flood lights so hard that the glass lenses fell out of them!  And, the gutters on the east side of the house “caught” the hail, resulting in lots of dings from the inside of the gutters.

We even lost our street sign, due to the hail storm.  And, within an hour of taking this picture, someone had taken the street sign.  D’oh!  And, our poor cedar tree out back received a whipping.  This same tree survived the fire here in 2004 (just barely).  But, the winds were too much for it this year.  The top 10-12 feet of the tree were literally ripped off and thrown to the ground.  All around our property, the trees shed leaves and small branches.

Amazingly enough, we still had hail stones on the ground after the sun came up.  There were piles of them outside the gutters.

Still waiting for the insurance adjuster to arrive and tell us what the total damage was.  Hoping our roof survived without damage….