A very Literal start to the Fall season!

So a couple of weeks ago the big wind storm hit Ohio and was one of the craziest storms we've ever seen. Silly us, we were out driving checking out all the damage before the storm was even over. We were anxious to get home to our very wooded lot to see if anything had happened there. And these are those times when we know that Jesus really watches over us and hears are prayers. We had one tree fall and instead of hitting a shed that would've cost probably $1000 to replace or our new tree house that would be several hundred dollars, it landed on the side of our swing set which is the cheapest and easiest thing to replace in our yard!

Another amazingness blessing from the Lord... it perfectly missed my lilac bushes that just bloomed for the first time this spring, landing right between them. And it just barely missed my dogwood tree. How is that possible! This tree could not have landed more perfectly in our yard!
Cole and Lydia did not agree with where it landed but once they get their swing set fixed they won't even remember this. This is what's left of it after removing the branches. Thankfully, the side with the slide platform wasn't damaged at all.
We had several days of good family bonding as we all worked hard to drag braches to the front and stack wood. A few Chi Alpha guys came over the day after and with Steve and some chainsaws, they made great ground in getting it cleared up.
We were one of the first neighborhoods that the city got to in their pick up efforts. As we were walking Cole to school we passed them one street over so Steve rushed back to start bringing the rest of the debris to the front. We didn't want to do it too much ahead of time or we wouldn't have any place to park!

We thought we would be one of the last homes to have their power restored since our electric meter and pole got ripped off of the house (bringing with it a 2x4 from INSIDE the house). Dayton Power & Light weren't working on individual houses, but we hired an electrician, and DP&L reattached the main line so we got our electric restored the same time as the rest of our block. We were only without power for a week. We were very content and all of us had great attitudes through the whole week. Internet took a while longer. We just got it back a few days ago! That was actually more inconvenient since I do most of my work from home. Steve was fine since he had it on campus everyday and on his phone to check his fantasy football.

It isn't autumn unless you have pumpkins on the porch so the kids were all excited to get some. The only problem- squirrels!! So Cole had a plan. He collected a bunch of apples from a farm we were at and placed them around our yard as decoys. Then we made Scare-squirrels (instead of scarecrows) to scare them away from our pumpkins. They were very excited about making them and we just hope that they don't scare our friends away too!