Damage from Sandy

On October 29th, Superstorm Sandy (downgraded from a hurricane) howled outside as Dan and I put the kids to bed, watched some TV and waited for our power to go out as we listened to the trees in our woods breaking.  The power did eventually go out, but only for a few hours in the middle of the night.  However, when Dan went out the next morning to see the damage, this is what our driveway looked like:

 There was no way we could even get a vehicle down (or up) our driveway because three of the neighbor's pine trees had fallen across our driveway.  After sending out a plea for help on Facebook, a lady in our church saw it and began organizing a group to come over.  Within a couple of hours, we had a group of about 12 men here - with four chainsaws - to help cut up the trees that were blocking our driveway.  

 What would have taken probably three days for Dan to take care of (if he'd had a chainsaw) took only about 4 hours.  The neighbor (whose trees had fallen) split the cost of renting a chipper/shredder with Dan and all logs that were smaller than 13" are now piles of wood chips in our woods.  

 Three other trees had fallen on our power lines, but were not blocking the driveway at all.  NYSEG arrived later in the afternoon and told us that they weren't safe (which we had already figured out, since they had pulled away from our house and were dangling about three feet above our lawn), so they cut the power at 4:30.  We didn't have power for the next two days, but we made do with our generator and bottled water.

Even now that our power and cable lines are fixed, a part of one of the trees, which had grown around the line, remains hanging.  

 After the crew of men who had helped clear our driveway left, Dan worked to rake the rest of the smaller branches and needles away.

 Although it was an ordeal for us to have three trees down (and at least a dozen more down in the woods that will get taken care of... sometime), we were so thankful that God protected us and our house in the storm, and that our church was willing to come and help clear us out so quickly.