We’ve had a busy few weeks here, starting with my birthday, my little dude’s birthday and a trip to the beach. I had the best intensions of getting some more blog entries done, but as soon as we got back from my birthday trip I had no time, faced with a crazy work schedule and Hurricane Matthew swirling straight toward Orlando. 
After learning on Wednesday that the storm track was heading closer to Orlando and the hurricane was now a Category 4, I stopped before 8 am to get gas and found stations were out of gas, and I had to drive around to find a place where I could fill up.
At lunch that day I found a store that still had plenty of water and stocked up on food and other supplies. On the way home I saw that gas was out almost everywhere I looked. That night I learned that our offices were closing by noon on Thursday and Max’s daycare also closed early. Knowing I would have to work from home the next day, after putting Max to bed I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning reviewing a contract that needed to be completed as soon as possible. The next day I had terrible mommy guilt putting Max in his playpen with the TV on for several hours so that I could try to finish my must do items for work. Not proud of that, but sometimes that’s the best you can do as a working mom. I also changed a poopy diaper while on an important work call – you’d be surprised how a working mommy can multitask on a conference call!
By Thursday night, heavy rainbands started coming through and the winds began to grow stronger, along with my increasing anxiety about the storm. The forecasters were predicting winds in excess of 80 mph where we live, about 70 miles inland. Luckily we had closed up the shutters, brought all patio furniture inside, and charged up every computer, battery charger and cell phone to the max. To help keep my mind busy I decided to bake and decorate the cupcakes for Max’s birthday party on Saturday. We didn’t know if it was still happening, but dang it, my boy would have his Cookie Monster cupcakes!
We set up the pack n play in our room that night so our boy could sleep with us. Before bed, I saw on the news that the track veered slightly to the east and our predicted winds went down to sustained winds of 40 mph, a huge relief…
In the middle of the night we heard the bands of wind and rain pass through, along with the sound of about 10 shingles getting ripped from our roof. At 3:30 we woke up and found we had no power, made the report of the outage to the power company, and went back to bed. The next morning we woke to find no other damage than the handful of shingles and a warm house with no AC, which is still very necessary here in Florida in October.
We were without power for about 12 hours, so I tried my best to stay off my phone to conserve the battery. I let Max in just his diaper all day and opened the window to let some breeze in. When the power came back on late that afternoon we were able to get back online to see the massive flooding in St. Augustine, where we had only just been less than a week before. We consider ourselves super lucky to have dodged a bullet this time.