Down Came The Tree...

Last Sunday brought some particularly vicious storms for much of Southeastern Michigan. Oxford happened to be right in the middle of the worst cell; as I type this on Wednesday, some are still without electricity. Thankfully, we never lost power, but did witness an equally monumental result of the storms...

Our neighbor's huge tree fell in our yard. I know that sentence would sound better if I clarified the type of tree, but my husband is not home and he is the expert in that area. Its leaves do look mapley, perhaps? Anyways, it is/was a HUGE tree but wasn't any match for the 65 MPH and above winds that came ripping through.

At the time of taking these pictures, our neighbor has already begun to clean up the largest branches, but I want you to notice in the pictures above and below where it fell. How it fell.

Square in our yard. It missed our neighbor's house. Our neighbor's garage. Our garage.

Our house.

The corner of the house you see hidden in the above picture by our patio and our smoke tree is Madalyn's room. She had been sleeping in her crib just a half hour before the storm came through. I couldn't help but think "What if the tree had fallen just a little to the right and landed on her room? What if the storm had come through a half hour earlier?"

That didn't happen and I'm just so, so thankful. Often after a tragedy does occur, we are left reeling, thinking "What if the tree had landed in the yard instead of on the house? What if the storm had come through just a half hour later...when Maddy would have been up from her nap?" And when the opposite happens, we think "Whew! That was close!" and are on our way unaffected.

I don't want to be unaffected. We were protected and I am thankful.