On our trip back from Idaho, we got the last flight into Orlando as everything was shutting down for Hurricane Irma. We actually had our original flight, that was direct and got in one hour later than the one we ended up on, cancelled. We had to rebook with a lay over and earlier start time just to get in at basically the same time. It was a little frustrating, but they waved our checked bags fee so that was nice. On the way there, our carry ons consisted of 3 suitcases, three large bags, one heavy carseat, my purse, and a toddler. Because goodness knows she wasn't walking herself down the terminal haha. It was a lot, and took some massive coordination to carry around, especially when trying to get down the narrow aisle. There is absolutely no way we could have hauled all that stuff around for a layover, it was hard enough to get settled on one flight with it!
Anyways, we flew into Florida and drove straight home where my parents had bought all the necessary provisions. We had maybe an hour before family- my parents, aunt, grandma, and brother started arriving to stay at our home which is newer and built to better hurricane standards than a lot of the other homes in the area. Other than the chaos of being in Idaho for three weeks to come home to a full house and raging storm, I really enjoyed spending time with all of my family. It's the absolute best way to weather a hurricane. Our streets flooded almost up to our garage, and catfish were swimming around in them! Kyle and Charly actually caught one in a hamper we had. When I went to get a picture of the fish the rain was so thick and heavy that it immediately broke my phone! The top half of the touch screen didn't work, and the double tap to get the screen down didn't drop it far enough to access a lot of my apps. Anyways, they put the catfish in a kiddie pool in our backyard and the next morning, when they went to check on it, it was gone!
The hurricane didn't hit us too badly, but there were still several weekends and weeknights spent helping people with debri cleanup, and crews going out to Fort Meyers to camp and help out where they were hurt worse. It was so hot, I'm not sure how people managed to do that. Charly stayed back and helped in our area, and we're pretty sure he got hit with heat exhaustion.
We lost power Sunday night, and got it back Wednesday afternoon. It wasn't long...but it was long enough! We borrowed a generator from my parents and ran our fridge and tv, and we would just lay there with frozen water bottles laid over us trying to cool down. One day we went surfing during the hottest part of the day, and another we spent some time at my grandmother's, who never lost power, doing laundry and cooling off. We could have stayed with her the entire time after, and I know it might sound crazy, but after spending a month traveling and living with other people, we really just wanted to be in our own house instead of someone else's that had many other people there as well. Our own, muggy, 100 billion degree house, where Charly slept on the floor one night because he swore it was cooler, was still home.
Some other notes: while I would rather lose water than power, like many other areas did, I'm still glad we didn't lose our water! Filling up the tubs with water and the motto that "if it's brown flush it down, if it's yellow let it mellow" maybe a real part of your life is never promising.
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