Feeling lucky.

Have you had one of those moments in your life where your heart literally stops and you think about all of the things that COULD have happened in that moment but didn't?  Maybe your little one was just about to tumble down a flight of stairs and you caught him just in time?  Or maybe the car in front of you slammed on the brakes, causing you to do the same and you just missed hitting them? 

We had one of these moments last night when this happened:

Yep, that's a tree.  And it's a pretty big one, even though it may not look that way in the picture. It's hard to see because of the glare, but if you look closely in the last picture you can see that it was more than the top half of a tree that just toppled over out of nowhere (it wasn't windy, or storming, or anything last night...in fact, it was a beautiful night!) 

We said someone must have been watching over us....the trunk of the tree landed within just inches of our house.  Within about 2 inches of our air conditioner and is literally next to our gas meter.  The only minor damage we have is a dent in our gutter from a larger branch landing on it.  There was no one out there.

It could have been a whole lot worse.

The roof that it would have landed on was our playroom.  The area just to the side of the tree around the corner is an outside toy box and our sand table.  I shudder to think of what would have happened if the kids had been out there playing and the tree had fallen slightly differently.  Or if the kids had been out there going around the side of the house to head over to play with the neighbor, and the tree had come down.

Again, it could have been a whole lot worse.

So right now, we are dealing with the headache of insurance companies (2 companies in fact, the tree is on our neighbors' property, so that makes it even more complicated) and we are having our annual luau party next weekend and the side of the house is trashed, it took out some of our landscaping, etc....BUT, I am trying to focus on the fact that we are not dealing with the headache of a damaged roof, broken windows, or injured people.

It's one of those moments where, once your heart rate returns to normal, you breathe a huge sigh of relief.