Windstorm

 Last Tuesday, northern Utah had a severe windstorm. Very high winds knocked over huge trees that took decades to grow.  It knocked out our power for one day (others on the next street for 5 days!) and our internet for several days.

Our beautiful tree-lined neighborhood lost so much.

It also canceled the already-delayed start of the Salt Lake City School District by another week, because it is remote-only and no one could log on.

We are so grateful our next door neighbor's huge pine tree, which shades our driveway, did not fall the other way and hit her house -- or our house.

See below how the top half of the pine is gone? Oh, and look at all the branches we swept up from our front tree (which now looks pretty thin)

Here is the huge tree at our friend Ann's house one street over.  We are also glad it fell the other way and not on her house. Many years we rake her leaves that are all over her lawn. No more, I guess. 

This is our neighbor two doors down. We water for her and mow their lawn and play in their playhouse.

Four doors down from us, the front drive strip tree toppled over

Across the street my friend Sherida lost all four aspens in the front yard. All that shade is gone. 

Our back fence blew over, but it came back up pretty well. JB is on the other side in the picture below.

We spent days cleaning up. JB and the big boys were constantly sawing, hauling, raking, mowing, and picking up tree limbs for neighbors. It was great to see everyone working together, and we are glad no one was injured. But we sure miss those trees. 

Funny side story, we had internet come back briefly Wednesday night, then disappear again for days. JB saw a generator by a pole and wondered if he should fill it up or not. I mentioned it to our  neighbor, who filled it up Sunday morning and magically the Internet/TV came back on. Then they finally fixed it for good by that evening. 

We read books and went to bed early in the dark when the power was out (each kid had a flashlight). When the power came back on but the internet/TV did not, we watched DVDs and I liked how each kid was not on a separate device. But I did miss watching some shows!