what a weekend

This weekend has been a rather eventful one and one I'll always remember.
9:30 pm
A group of my friends and I decided to head and go salsa dancing. I opened the front door of the house and said..."dang. It's hot." Looked at the weather and it was 95 degrees!

10:00pm
Driving on the freeway and we can't see hardly anything in front of us because of the winds.  Everyone was driving under 25 mph.  Cones from all the construction were rolling through the 4 lanes of traffic. 

Even a sign managed to fly right in the middle of our lane. 

10:20pm

Luckily with Carrie's good driving skills we were able to maneuver around this sign. After sheets and sheets of rain, thunder and lighting literally every minute.. we followed all the other smart cars ebhind us and pulled over. 

Cars were honking at us from behind because technically we were stopped in
the far left lane of the freeway but we weren't about to drive any further in this.

10:50pm 

After much discussion we think it's better to head back home in fear that all the roads with be bocked off.  And within driving 5 minutes off the freeway we run into this...

a huge and I mean huge tree in the middle of the road. 

Seconds later there was a car completely smashed in on the hood from the tree. 

Lots of debris in the road.

10:50-11:50pm

We drove over power lines (real smart I know), take random detours because cops had shut down some roads and continue to maneuver around more and more trees. In the beginning we would say, "oh wow, look at that! Looks at that tree in the road! It's huge! and by the end of our journey it was nothing. Carrie's maneuvering skills were pretty impressive. 

Random signs had fallen over and took this beauty. Looks like the daylight right?!
Only because I took the photo right when the lightning was struck.

12:00am
We get home and there's no power. While we had been in for an adventure I was a little bummed we couldn't go salsa dancing.

I had gotten all dressed up for nothing.

12:30am

Due to my scared roommate we had a slumber party.

Due to pure darkness and lack of light the flash made our eyes looks a little funny. 

 10:00am the next day...

 Didn't want to even attempt at staying in our house without the AC so off to union station we went. 

Made a few phone calls, charged my phone and escaped the heat
while sitting on the dirty metro station floors. So worth it.

12:00pm 

Headed over to the Capitol to get a tour. One our way over we saw millions of trees like this

\

4:30pm 

We pray we have the power back on and head back to our house. Walked in and...nothing! We then prayed that at least one place would be open. All i wanted was the AC and something cold to drink. Thanks to McDonalds and their working AC and real fruit smoothies I became a happier woman and the 100 degrree weather didn't seem to be effecting me as much. 

5:00pm 

Head over to Walmart to get food for our ward party and saw this. 

A majority of the shelves were empty or covered in tarps!

11:00pm 

After the ward party and going to a friends to watch a movie and escape the heat in our house we stop y a gas station and they were all out of regular gas! Can you just imagine how many people were trying to get gas on Saturday? Never seen that before.

12:00pm

Drivin up to our house. The street lights near our house are working. 7-11 across the street has their lights on. Praying we do too and low and behold we pull up to our house and see our kitchen light on. Opened the door and our cold AC was now working. I think i might have screamed and jumped a little.  So while that was only 24 hours...that was the longest 24 hours of my life. I can safely say I have taken things for granted, power being one of them. I don't know how the Amish people do it.