This is what 70 mile per hour winds do...

This is what we came home to:

As you can see the tree takes up pretty much all of our backyard.  We were really lucky that it didn't end up hitting the house and only damaged the fence.  Our neighbor across the street didn't fare so well...his tree came down on his house and his brand new hot tub.  Ouch!

The tree in our yard is our neighbors, so he said he was going to take care of it.  We're leaving it where it is until he decides whether he wants to cut it up himself or make a claim on his homeowners to fix the fence.

Obviously, I wasn't home with the storm came through.  Ashley and I were sitting at Panera having lunch when all of the sudden the sky opened up and the wind started kicking.  The power went out at Panera.  The wind was so strong it was blowing over the metal tables and umbrellas outside of the restaurant.  The rain was so heavy we couldn't see more than a couple feet out the windows.  It was pretty intense and wicked storm. 

Ryan and I took a drive through the neighborhood and there are a LOT of trees down.  I hope no one had any serious damage, but I think it's almost unavoidable with the size of some of the trees and limbs that came down.

I know Illinois caught this storm too...so I hope all of my friends and family made it through the storm unscathed.