Well... I was on a roll with the blog but now I have fallen behind again! I blame Hurricane Ian!
The Category 4+ eyewall of Hurricane Ian hit our city, North Port, for many, many hours. The massive wind destruction was only part of the problem here though. We also had horrible flooding throughout our city. You couldn't navigate the roads for several weeks. Bridges were washed out, etc. The school I teach at (5 minutes from our house) had water damage in almost every classroom. My students' and coworkers' homes flooded. Most of the flooding occurred in places that are NOT flood zones so most people didn't have flood insurance. Things are starting to look a little more normal every day but it has been a LONG road. The city has collected over 2 million cubic yards of yard waste! Driving around our city you can definitely still see the effects of the hurricane even though it was almost 3 months ago.
Having said all that, we were VERY lucky. Our home held up to the storm quite well - we lost a few roof shingles and our property did NOT flood, even though most streets around us were under water. We lost a LOT of big, beautiful trees. And our fence was demolished which is not making our dog a happy camper at the moment. (Looking forward to the rebuild in February!) But in general we did ok and we were very thankful for our new house with the latest hurricane codes and shutters.
We were without power for a while and without internet for longer. Luckily all this happened during a slow time for our business so we didn't have to cancel too many sessions. But the cleanup around our yard and home has taken up a lot of our free time and I have fallen behind on the blog once again and also missed my usual holiday card post... oops!
Here is a drone video showing the damage at our house - my next several posts should be me catching up on the blog!
