We were having family over for an Easter egg hunt and meal. So I got up early and did the chores and cleaning.  I did some decorating and then put out eggs.

The grandkids came over and immediately started the hunt.  I did it inside as it was quite windy outside, and I was concerned about falling branches.  Piper really seemed to enjoy it.

William took a different approach. He would grab as many eggs as he could and then put them in the basket.

Then Piper took apart each egg, collecting their contents.  William just looked for the eggs that contained the money.

I love this look from Piper.

I had made some Cool Whip dyed eggs that you can see in the front of the above photo.  Here is a photo from when I made the eggs.

Then there was a second hunt with the eggs their parents had brought.  This was on the back porch.

Then it was time to check out the new eggs’ contents.

We had our ham cooking in the oven, and I put a lasagne in as well.  The guys then went to look at motorcycles out back, and the gals went to the barn to check out the animals.  We had just finished looking at the critters and went back into the barn when there was a huge gust of wind and the barn shook.  There was a small tornado of hay inside the barn, and the large front gate ripped open.  It felt like the roof was going to blow off.  It was very scary.

Then we went to the house and noticed this.  There were electrical wires down on the cars in the driveway.

Tom called 911, and I called Puget Sound Energy.

There were also wires across our road out front.  We had to direct traffic away from the live wires.  Our neighbor Alan took care of it on the other side of the wires.

The fire department arrived quickly and closed the road.

It was a large birch tree that had fallen down which took out the wires to our home.

It also displaced our produce stand.  Fortunately the eggs and brining hams inside were fine.

Shortly thereafter the utility truck arrived.

He said we were really lucky because the wires had separated at a junctions in the wire.  A cable with the wire has stayed intake and had pulled down the wires from our house.

I went to check the orchard and noticed this fir branch that had come off the tree in the distance when the birch fell.  Look at how far this rather large branch travelled!

We warmed up the smoker to finish cooking our meal.  The guys cleared the birch wood away from the produce stand so we could secure the front so the dogs couldn’t go out onto the road.

Below is the box where the wires pulled out.  The electrical worker said that if the wires hadn’t become disconnected it would have arced badly here and caught our house on fire.  The intensity of the arcing would prevent anyone from being able to control the fire before the house burned down.

This is the second time in a matter of 3 months that we have had the fire department out and our house could have burnt down.

So a very scary day.  We did manage to sit down and enjoy our Easter meal.  There was our home smoked ham (which was really good), lasagne (thanks to Maealie and Daphne!), garlic bread, fruit salad and broccoli salad (brought by Jay and Russ).  It was all very good.  The smoker did a great job at getting everything warm.

I gave some of my grandmother’s jewelry to Piper for playing with.  She likes to dress up so I thought she would enjoy this.

Then our attention turned to the likely prolonged power outage we are going to have.  The electrical worker said that we needed to hire an electrician to fix the house connection before they can hook us back up to power again.  Our cable for our wifi and television was also taken out by this tree as well.  But more critically we have no heat and no running water until this is fixed.  But we have a generator but, of course, it wouldn’t start.  So Tom and my dad proceeded to work on that.

They were finally able to get that fixed.  So now we are running on generator power for our refrigerators, freezers, aquariums, heating pads for seedlings, and our egg incubator.  We have one light going as well.  So far it seems like the generator lasts about 2.5 hours on a tank of gas.  It is going to be a long night.  But one thing is for sure, we will all remember this Easter!