Apparently, the Rock House is a fortress.
On Sunday night, I was laying in the bed reading a book. The girls were finishing up a DVD in the living room before bed and Josh had just hopped in the shower after playing tennis. The dog was snoring next to our bed and everything was pretty quiet. All of a sudden I heard a loud sound and when I hopped out of bed and rounded the corner, the girls were freaking out. By the time I could get to the back of the house, Josh was coming out of the bathroom with shampoo in his hair. Did I mention he was blaring Motley Crue on his iPod? Sophie screamed, “Is it a fire?! Is it a TORNADO?!” followed closely by Ella’s declaration that somebody was shooting a gun. Y’all, it was mass chaos and if we hadn’t been so freaked out, it probably would have been funny.
We soon realized that a tree-sized branch fell off one of the huge oak trees in our back yard. With nothing but a flashlight (there was no moon or stars that night and the streetlights are all on the other side of our house) it was hard to tell what exactly happened and the extent of damage sustained. The best we can tell, it hit the top of the roof line, over our kitchen, and rolled down towards the bathroom. That tiny window that you see is inside the shower where Josh was standing. All I can say, is thank God that our walls are solid concrete beneath that rock, because who knows what we would be dealing with otherwise.
There is no interior damage at all, that we can tell. It would appear the attic will be okay, too, but we haven’t been up there just yet. The biggest problem seems to be the lack of internet service for a guy who works from home and a downed corbel on the back wall.
I went out first thing yesterday morning to see how things looked and it was still a little hazy. I could finally get a real idea of how big the thing was, though!
It rained pretty heavily for awhile on Friday and again on Sunday morning, but the weather was eerily calm when it happened. There wasn’t any wind and it was dry at the time. All we can figure is that the limb was heavy and the wet summer we’ve had just made it worse. This was the only limb over the house, so at least we can rest assured it won’t happen again!
The good news is the roof looks like it sustained very little damage and it should be relatively easy to fix. The biggest problem will be cleaning up the yard and trying to salvage the landscaping on the back corner of the house. At least most of my Crepe Myrtles are still standing!
We pretty much laid in bed for hours talking about how insane it was. The sound was so loud and Josh said the bathroom shook when the tree hit. His first thought was that a wall collapsed, but he had no idea how close the impact was to him. To make a long story short, the phrase “I almost just died” is one the girls in my Bible study group throw around frequently after a friend choked on an M&M on the way to the beach last summer (and after I almost ran over Ashley’s foot with Josh’s truck). It’s probably slightly insensitive, but it always gets a good laugh. Josh may or may not have uttered that phrase a few dozen times after we finally calmed down last night. He’s pretty confident if we didn’t live in a fortress, that we would have suffered some major damage.
