The McMillins

Last weekend, Gretchen's parents' came down to visit us. They drove down on Friday and arrived around noon. Around 4 p.m., we left to go out to dinner as a storm was coming into town. When we got back from dinner that evening, Gretchen noticed that our security system was off, along with our house phone. Corey checked the breakers and found one switched off. When he switched it back on, Gretchen heard a noise in the kitchen. She unplugged something from the outlet of where the noise was. When she did, smoke started coming out from the outlet. That's when we knew that lightening had struck our house.
We ended up finding SEVERAL things "fried" in our house, even through the rest of the weekend. Here is a list of everything that was affected in our house by the lightening strike:

1.) The A/C unit transformer had to be replaced (which Corey and Dad fixed)
2.) The thermostat had to be replaced (Corey bought one that weekend)
3.) The GFCI had to be replaced in the kitchen (Corey bought one that weekend)
4.) The Security System doesn't work (That will be replaced in a few days)
5.) The Garage Door opener doesn't work (we're still looking into that one)
6.) The surround sound system doesn't work (we MIGHT get one if we can sell our hardwood flooring)
7.) The xbox 360 doesn't work (we ordered a power supply brick on ebay, hoping that is our problem and not the console)
8.) The Internet modem had to be replaced (Fortunately, the cable company took care of that)
9.) Zach's TV doesn't work (still undecided if we're going to replace that)
10.) The loft TV doesn't work (we might just give that to someone and see if they want to fix it... won't be replaced at least in the next year)
11.) The Nintendo Wii doesn't work (we ordered a power supply brick for this too on ebay, hoping that is the problem as well)
12.) The HD/DVR box in our bedroom didn't work (The cable company just replaced that today)
13.) The DVD player in our room doesn't work (we have the DVD player from the loft TV, so we shouldn't need to get another one of these)

God really was looking out for us when this happened. My parents were down and the only A/C unit that didn't work was the downstairs one, NOT the upstairs one where all the bedrooms are. Fortunately, we have 2 seperate units so that was a blessing. The TV's that got "fried" were the older TV's and not our newer, more expensive ones. The computer ended up being fine (since it's only a year old). Not to mention, we are VERY thankful that our house didn't burn down b/c of this AND that we weren't here when it happened. It certainly made for an interesting weekend. :)