Not how I wanted to spend my Thursday night...

We got some strong storms last night, even though they only lasted for a few minutes.  I was on my way home from work and stopped at the grocery store to get out of the weather and pick up something we could eat without cooking, since we had already lost power at home.

Well, I arrived home after the storm cleared to find a tree (well part of a tree) down in our front yard! :(

So, quickly our plans for the night went from not much at all, to yard clean up and tree removal.  My dad came over with his chainsaw and we cut away branches slowly in order to get things out of the yard.  The back half of the tree was still hanging on, so we didn't want to leave a hazard in our yard. After a while, we had a huge pile of branches on our driveway and a log hanging from the tree. My husband and dad managed to get it out and cut it into logs. We were pretty impressed with what we were able to accomplish before dark! 

Now, we have to decide what to do with the remaining part of the tree. There is still a decent amount of tree growing, but it may not survive the split. If not, we'll have to get the whole thing removed... so we'll see what happens! Keep your fingers crossed that it can pull through and leaf back out to fill in the hole.  

So, now we have a huge pile of debris that we need to get removed, but luckily our town is doing special pickups of storm damage. So I think they'll come get it this weekend... whew! But, we are so thankful that even though part of the tree came down and it left an ugly hole, at least it didn't fall on the house or hurt anyone!!

Hope you have a great weekend!