Answer: Gone With the Wind

Question: What happened to your trampoline, fence and a quarter of your roof shingles?

About 4 AM Wednesday morning, we had a pretty crazy line of storms move through the area, with winds in excess of 60 MPH. The noise (and corresponding power surge) was enough to wake us up, scare us half to death, wake the girls up and head to our bedroom closet. It was all over and done with in less than ten minutes, at which point we went back to bed and tried (in vain) to go back to sleep before the alarm went off at 5 AM. A brief survey of the joint before the girls and I left for school showed me that our back patio furniture and basketball goal were all blown over. Since Wednesday is also our trash day, there were quite a few blown over garbage cans and a lot of litter blowing around, as well as a bunch of shingles in the front yard, but that seemed to be the extent of it.

I pulled into the driveway about 1:30 that afternoon. I had planned on staying at school that day to work on some things, but I'd been fighting off a cold/flu bug and just wanted to get home out of the cold and wind.

Our neighbor from across the street (actually they are catty-corner from) us came running over as I was getting out of the van as asked if I was missing something. Thinking some of our patio cushions might have made it over that way, I asked what she had found. Her reply?

Our trampoline.

This is the view from where the trampoline ended up, looking back at our house, where the trampoline had come from. It missed our house, our next-door neighbor's house and cars, the catty-corner neighbor's house, vehicles and shed.


But it totally took out two of their fences.




On the other hand, our fence was barely nicked.




See those plastic steps in the above picture? Those were the steps the girls used to get up and down the trampoline. Didn't move an inch. And see that window in the house? That's the window to the girls' bedroom. The trampoline was right outside of that window.

Yeah.

So after getting over the trampoline shock, calling James, then calling our insurance agent ( who is 1) asuper nice guy and 2) a preschool parent, so YAY for personal connections!) who said he would be over in 20 minutes, and then calling several friends who happen to be IN THE BUSINESS I started trying to get things cleaned up a bit. Which is when I noticed this:





Remember our really weird neighbors? That would be THEIR tree crushing our fence. (In my defense, I didn't notice this right away because it was hidden by our shed.) I added it to the list of things to show the insurance agent when he got there.

(Since then, James has gone over a few times to talk to the people about the tree removel, but so far they have refused to answer the door, even though their cars are their, lights are on and James can hear the TV! So we're just going to take care of the part on the fence and our side of the property and they can deal with the rest!)

To make a long story short (too late!) we need a completely new roof, since there was too much damage.





The insurance adjuster will be out on Tuesday to look at everything, but our agent says he should have checks in hand ready to give us to start all of the repair processes. Please keeps us in your prayers that the adjuster is able to do all of this!!

All in all, it could have been *MUCH WORSE* and we're grateful that it isn't. When you consider how far the trampoline went, and how much it missed, well, we are very , very lucky.