My husband is in the process of painting our house. I'm sure you know how long such a project can take. The hardest part is aligning his days off with warm, sunny days in fall. The lady who had this house built (we are the second owners) must have loved ducks and the color purple. She had purple shutters placed on most of the windows, and a small, white duck centered on each shutter. We are finally removing the shutters as each side of the house gets finished. When giving people directions to our home, I will miss telling them that, "our house is on the corner, grey with purple shutters with ducks on them" ... well, maybe I won't miss that so much.

Anyway, several shutters have become part of the fort my kids made under the big tree in our yard, out by the street. Chad put one of the shutters high up in the tree. They've had a great time out there.

Sunday night, at 2:30 am, I heard the wind rising. I knew a big storm was coming. No joke!! It was SO loud out there - it kept me awake most of the night. I kept hearing things bouncing along the street. The wind whips right up our street, from the bay, and when there's a storm, it's really strong. Of course, our recycling bin had been put out for Monday pick up, so I imagined it was strewn all over our cul-de-sac. Or maybe blown over the hill into town. My son had done his best to secure it, though. I wasn't about to get up at 4:00 am to check on it. And then, right at 5:00 am, there was a huge gust of wind. The lights went out. The noise outside was awful - wind, debris, who knows what, flying through the air. I think we recorded that one at 46 mph. I got up to call the power company and report the outage and as I looked out the window toward the bay, I could see darkness all over our hill. The status report said power would be restored by 8:30 am. I went back to bed and finally slept.

We all woke up around 7:30 and I went into the kitchen. As usual, I looked out the window over the sink, toward our neighbor's yard up the street. There was something odd in their front yard. As my eyes focused, I realized I was seeing a tiny duck! Oh, my gosh! It's a shutter! In our neighbor's front yard. Everyone came running to the kitchen and son, Alec, got the binoculars. We couldn't believe it! That shutter had to be blown out of the tree, tossed over our fence, then across the street, and then across the vacant lot directly across from our home. Our neighbor's yard next to that has a fence as well. The shutter made it to the other side of their yard. If it had gone over the other side of their fence, it would hit their car! I told my husband, "There might be a blog in this." We all laughed nervously, as it would have been awful if the shutter had done damage to life or property. As the wind was still howling, I sent my oldest son (Chad) out to retrieve the shutter and secure anything else in our yard. I told him to watch his back. It never ceases to amaze me, the power of wind.

When my husband first looked out the window of our bedroom that morning, he saw that the recycling bin was intact. Minutes later, when Chad went out to get the shutter, he said that the bin was blown down the street and had, in fact, spilled over. Brave Chad picked everything up, bless his heart. And before he got to the rest of the shutters, my son, Alec, and I were watching out another bedroom window and saw another shutter caught in a gust and flipping, end over end, across the yard. It was quite an unusual morning for us!

The power was restored before we got up, thankfully. I prepared breakfast for everyone, so thankful for electricity (never take it for granted!) I made my hot chocolate last and as I was putting in the microwave, the power flickered. Oh, please Lord, just another minute! God is good. A few minutes later, the power went off again. We prayed for the power to be restored soon in the area, as we knew it was widespread. I think it came back on about 9:45 am, for us anyway. 47,000 people in the Northwest lost their power and there may be some that still don't have electricity, last I heard.

A most interesting way to start the week. No wonder I'm tired!