Oh Sandy...

Wow.  Wow.  Wow.

I can not believe the path of destruction you left in your wake.  This is terrible.  In so many ways...

We were incredibly lucky.  Our immediate neighborhood is fine.  Totally and completely fine.  Greg managed to fly out on Sunday afternoon before the ordeal began.  He packed a couple extra days of clothes knowing that he wasn't going to make it back home for a few days... And, before he had even taken off for Chicago, his return flight was cancelled.  Ha.  But... we're hoping he makes it back late tonight.  We'll see.

Back to the story... as all the news sites have reported, the city began shutting down in preparation on Sunday night.  Subways stopped running.  Buses stopped services.  Sand bags and taped up windows began popping up... The kids and I went across the street to get dinner, thinking that we might be eating power bars and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next few days.  (Thankfully, again - were lucky and didn't lose power!)  For the majority of Monday we just watched some increasing winds and a bit of rain here and there.  Even Monday night when the brunt of the storm was hitting here - our neighborhood was spared.  Kinda nuts, but we got really lucky.  My Dad reads a blog and apparently the author lives only a couple blocks from us, closer to the river.  Actually, she/he must live right next to the park where we take the kids... they posted pictures of the river covering FDR.  Insane.  Literally two blocks from us and yet we were fine.

By Tuesday midday we were starting to go a bit stir crazy indoors.  One of Atticus's friends Liam lives pretty close to us.  After Wren woke up from her nap, Liam and his mom came over for an impromptu play date.  That was helpful!  Atticus and Liam are a bit like tornados though -- the two of them were running around like crazy whirlwinds!

All throughout however, we've been watching the news.  The effects of this storm are devastating.  I can't believe how such large chunks of the area are without power, still underwater, etc.  It's going to be quite a while before life as we know it is back to "normal"...