Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy hit New England about 2 weeks ago. New York and New Jersey were particularly hit hard. Aaron was put on alert with DMAT a few days after the storm. He was so excited! Last Friday night (Nov 2) he got an e-mail saying his team was being activated and to be prepared to leave the following morning. He hurried and repacked his already packed DMAT bag. I was up giving him a hair cut at midnight...you know, doing my part to help him get ready. The orders came in at 3am Saturday with his flight leaving at 6am from Dayton. He left at 4:30am for the airport and flew into Newark, NJ.

Further plans were not ready yet, thus having the team sit in the airport for 10 hours waiting! He missed both the boys big Superbowls (more on that later) which really upset him. However, things worked out and a plan was put into place.

He is on Long Beach Island (aka: LBI) in a make shift field hospital, very similar to the old TV show Mash. The island was completely destroyed and the community hospital that serviced that area was evacuated and has so much damage that it is not functioning. DMAT came in and has set up big tents on a soccer field and they have a functioning ER! Aaron and the other workers are sleeping in insulated tents on the premises and working in shifts. He said they are seeing about 75 patients a day. What they can't take care of, FEMA uses their ambulances and takes them into the city, or in major cases they can land a helicopter on the field.

This is Heaven for my disaster loving man. He loves being able to use his skills to relieve the stress of these hurricane victims.

Halloween 2012

 It was a freezing, rainy, night. and this baby wouldn't put on her gloves!

(she does have 4 layers under her "zippies")

The baby

 The Grandpa

 The Robber

 We trick-o-treated with the neighbors. what started out as 2 families turned into 4 families. We had quite the crew. 4 parents and 11 kids walking around.

Halle doing the happy-I-got-candy skip.

I'm still not a fan of Halloween, but I do like the way they do it here. Trick-o-treating only from 6-8. most people sit on their driveways or porches and hand out candy. But, this year it was so cold and rainy that we usually had to go to the door.

What you don't see in these pictures is an invisible ninja named Isaac. He took off with a group of friends and was gone the entire 2 hours. We never saw him. They hit 3 neighborhood running. He came home with 12.3 pounds of candy!!! no joke!



Pumpkin Carving

 

This post is a little late, but at least I can document we had Halloween.

 They dove right in and started gutting those pumpkins.

 The final result was a monster, a vampire, a witch

 and a vomiting pumpkin. I should have taking it in the light or with a flash...all the guts are coming out of his mouth.