The windy city...?

Well, we finally made it to Ohio and we were greeted by Hurricane Ike's leftovers--that's right, in OHIO! I'll get to that in a minute, though. First, some highlights of our trip:

--The packers/movers came the 10th, 11th, and 12th. They were, as usual, amazing! Well, I thought they were amazing...until I found a large shard of a china teacup in the carport on Friday afternoon after they'd left. :) Oh well. We took all the really important and irreplaceable stuff with us (in a seriously packed loaner minivan!) so the rest of it is really just "stuff."

--We made a detour for a few days in SC to see my sweet parents and we even got to hang out with my usually too-cool-for-us brother, Jake, for a few hours. The highlight of the trip (besides all the free nanny-ing my parents did so I could relax) was was the USC/Georgia game on Saturday. Yes, you remember correctly--we lost. BUT, my sweet parents offered us their tickets in exchange for some grandbaby time and we took one for the team and accepted the deal. It was crazy hot and I got an odd racoon-eyed (due to sunglasses) sunburn on my face that included a white void on my cheek where my block C temporary tatoo had been. Nice. :) The game was a nailbiter and though we lost, I am really proud of how they held the #2 team to 14 points and held a Heisman candidate to 79 yards! GO GAMECOCKS! :)

--The hurricane leftover action spiced up our trip from SC to OH on the 14th. We hit a rest stop just into Ohio about 8.5 hours into our trip (which according to Mapquest should have totaled 9 hours...such is life with a baby!) and noticed as we spooned applesauce into Sarah Beth that it was oddly windy. We just thought it was nice to feel a strong cool breeze instead of the hot, sticky, thick air we're accustomed to. For the next 2 hours, we drove through the worst wind I have ever experienced. We were literally driving through cornfields and dried husks were flying into the windshield of the minivan. I was expecting to see the wicked witch on her bicycle floating in front of us any second. Needless to say, white-knuckling-it for the last 100 miles slowed us down significantly, but the whole trying not to flip the van thing took precedence over fatigue and attention to a restless baby (who, praise the Lord, screamed herself out after half and hour and slept through the worst hour of the storm, giving her haggard mama a chance to concentrate!). I was honestly terrified, and I'm sure I would have given up and pulled over under an overpass with all the 18-wheelers if we hadn't been on the road all day and thisclose to our destination. The wind died down significantly when we finally reached Dayton and got checked into the TLF unit, but the power had been out for hours. This did not surprise us, since we'd passed sections of power-line-poles tipped over and laying in the cornfields on the way into town. After we unloaded and got settled, Mark went out in search of food and flashlights (which took him almost 2 hours to find!) and I settled sweet oblivious Sarah Beth into bed. When he got back I was sitting in the dark listening to my book on my mp3 player. :) We ate and got ready for bed by flashlight, which was kind of fun in a little-kid kind of way. OK so it was fun for me to play with the flashlight and not fun for Mark who was actually trying to go to sleep. :) Since I usually have to have the noise and the light of the TV to fall asleep, I did a lot of staring out the window listening to the unfamiliar sounds. Finally I put my mp3 player back on and found a local talk radio station. Apparently, what we had driven through was the worst windstorm in this part of the state for as long as anyone can remember. There were 60-70 mph winds in Dayton (hurricanes start at 74 mph I think). At that point there were 180,000 people without power (this morning that number doubled) and people were freaking out! The power on base came back on at 2:30 AM (praise the Lord for AF civil engineering trucks and crews working all night!), but this morning the majority of southern Ohio was still without power. Schools are closed, the roads are crazy because the traffic lights aren't working (and nobody seems to know what to do at a "4 way stop"), there's not one bag of ice to be had in town, and there are crazy long lines at gas stations--the ones that still have gas. Sound familiar? I'll give you a hint...IT SOUNDS LIKE FLORIDA AFTER A HURRICANE! :) How hilarious is it that we brought the storm and all the post-storm panic up here to people who have apparently never experienced a "widespread disaster" like this!?! We did find a Wal-Mart open today so we could buy some mac and cheese and noodle-type-things (it was not a super Wal-Mart so our choices were limited :)) and we were surprised to find that they still had milk, until we realized that nobody but us is able to use their refrigerator so nobody is buying milk.

--Tomorrow we get keys to our new house and we get to start painting! Due to the storm, our stuff may not get delivered until late this week or maybe next week, but at least we can get out of temporary housing and start getting things organized. We drove by the house today and I was a little shocked. It's yellow. I mean it is yellow. From pictures on google earth I knew it had a yellow tint to it, but I was hoping it was more of a beige-y yellow. Nope. It's yellow. :) Oh well...it's free. :) I'm sure I'll get used to it. :) I'll post pictures when I get around to taking some. :) We spent an uncharacteristically long time at Home Depot picking out paint colors, but we came home with a gallon of a lovely light tealish for Sarah Beth's room and several gallons of khaki for the guest room and our bedroom. I am having second thoughts, of course, and I think that in my rush to get ACTUAL COLOR (not the blue-ish tinted white on the top of the paint chips) I may have picked out colors that will turn our home into a big brown cave...but oh well. :) We never settled on a color for the living room/dining room, because I turned into the stereotypical girl and shot down every suggestion with things like, "That's too green. That's too brown. That's not brown enough. That's too light. That's too dark. That's not green enough." Mark should have won a medal for being so patient with me. We admitted defeat when Sarah Beth almost gave herself a paper cut in the face from throwing a fit while holding the cardstock paint chips, so we'll get started on the bedrooms and maybe pick a color for the downstairs later this week. The grandmothers are coming in shifts throughout the next week or so to help with "painting"...and by "painting" I mean "playing with the baby while I paint." Hey, I'll take any help I can get with either chore. :) I'll post lots of pictures when I get some momentum. :)

In other news, I hate Eastern time. I hated central time when we moved to Florida, until I realized that all the good TV is over at 10:00 and you can get to bed earlier! I realize that I lived in Eastern time for the first 23 years of my life and I liked it just fine...but my eyes have been opened to the possibilities with central! I may never go back! Well, I guess I don't have a choice so I will have to go back...but I don't have to be happy about it. :)

Longest first post ever.