The aftermath of the storm . . .

Well, as you may have heard, Hurricane Ike hit our area hard earlier this week. The storm came through overnight Friday. The power went off about 11:30 pm. The kids camped out on the floor of our room, so we would all be together in case something happened. The wind was so loud it sounded as if the windows would blow right into the house. At one point we heard a loud noise that sounded like fireworks going off, then a loud crash. The house was intact, though, and with no lights there was no way to tell what the crash was. We dozed off and on through the night, never really getting to sleep with the sound of banshees howling in the backyard. Things started to quiet down about 4am, and most of us drifted off to sleep. When the sun came up the next morning, Abby was the first one to venture into the living room and she immediately shouted "Oh my gosh!" We ran into the living room with our fingers crossed . . .

Thankfully, the damage was in the backyard. We looked out the window and a large tree from the boardwalk behind our house had crashed into part of our pool (the fireworks we'd heard in the night).

It was still raining and windy, so Bill and I grabbed our rain ponchos and ventured out to see how bad the damage was. Fortunately, it cracked high enough on the trunk that it missed our fence. It fell right on our waterfall, though, and we are pretty sure it killed the little palm tree behind the waterfall and probably the palm thing that matched the one you can still see that was on the other side. There was a lot of debris in the pool including a few shingles, but we don't think they came from our house, so we are thankful for that as well.

With the power still out, we packed the contents of the refrigerator into a pair of coolers, emptied a couple of bags of ice we'd bought on Friday and waited for the rain to stop. By lunchtime, it was still raining pretty hard, so Bill decided to cook burgers on our camping grill on the front porch.

Once the rain stopped, of course it started to get warm and humid in the house. We went for a walk around the neighborhood to get a bit of a breeze and see what the damage had been from the night before. We think a small tornado must have gone through our area because most areas were like ours, tree branches and trees down, a few areas had no damage at all, and a few had pretty major damage. We saw some huge trees down, fences torn up, and bushes blown over. Some houses had siding ripped completely off and some had huge sections of roof torn away. The dance studio where the girls dance had part of the roof ripped off and the floor completely flooded (which is really sad - they don't know when or if they will be able to resume classes). It reaffirmed what we felt when we woke up that morning - that we were thankful to have our lives and our house, and it could have been much, much worse.

My parents and Jill and Sierra had all lost power, too. We turned on our tiny portable TV (which won't work after February 2009) and heard reports that it could be a week or two before power would be restored. We couldn't find out anything about school closings, though, because the crawl on the bottom of the TV was too tiny and our eyes are too old. We saw a few images of Surfside beach virtually washed away, and Galveston beach almost completely destroyed. The beach house my sister rented this summer was on Crystal Beach and was completely wiped out. It was really sad.

When we got back, we started the clean up.



After a couple of hours, when it was clear the power would not be on anytime soon, we decided to entertain ourselves.

We played Monopoly as the lights dimmed:



The kids built a church out of dominoes:



And we sweated and wondered when the power would come back on. Finally, on Saturday night the power came on for 3 minutes, and we rejoiced, but alas, it went back out.

Saturday night the kids slept in our room again because it was cooler than the upstairs and they could share flashlights to find the bathroom in the night (fortunately, we never lost water!). We didn't sleep much Saturday night because it was just too warm to get comfortable.

Sunday morning rolled around and now our phones weren't working. Apparently the generator for the phones had failed. Cell phone service was poor, so we paced around the house wondering how to pass the time and stay cool. Another meal of burgers on the camp stove and baked Lays potato chips. By midday it was 82 degrees with about 90% humidity in the house, so we decided to walk the neighborhood to see if the streets had cleared enough to drive. They looked better, so we decided to take a chance and see if we could get wireless Internet anywhere. Our goal was to find out if we had to report to school the next day. We drove to Highway 6 and saw lots of cars and no traffic signals. We drove a few blocks but no Internet access.

We drove home and waited. And waited. Finally, I called a friend of mine who works at another high school in Fort Bend. He let us know that we wouldn't have school until Wednesday! We decided enough was enough, and we piled the kids, a few clothes, our cooler, and Cookie the bunny into the Suburban (which, thankfully, was full of gas) and headed for Bill's parents vacation house in New Braunfels to join Bill's parents who had evacuated Thursday (smart people). My parents, still without power, decided to stick it out (although they did find a Chinese food restaurant nearby with power, so they were able to get a hot meal).

The kids were so happy to be re-acquainted with electricity!



Bill and I were happy to be re-acquainted with air conditioning. It was the first good night sleep we'd had since the storm hit.

Well, short story long, we hung out at the Bandit (the neighborhood the vacation house is in) for a few days. On Tuesday night, we heard from our wonderful friends and neighbors that power had been restored (finally!). Wednesday we packed up and headed home, where we now have electricity, air conditioning, and Internet access!! My mom and dad also have power restored, and Jill and Sierra are staying with them waiting for their power to come back on.

In the meantime, we did some Christmas shopping in San Marcus and the girls learned how to latch hook, so they are both working on new little rugs for their rooms. I got some cross stitch done, and a bit of work on a baby blanket I'm working on. The kids are currently watching Spongebob on Nickelodeon, trying to catch up on all the TV they missed over the weekend.

Tomorrow we try to cut up the tree in the backyard and see if we can get the pool cleaned up. We stocked up on groceries in New Braunfels so we have enough food in the house to last us through the weekend, and we don't have to brave the enormous lines in the grocery stores that are open (the power is back on, but a lot of the workers left town or don't have power at home or gas in their cars).

We are so thankful to all of you for your thoughts and prayers! We are thankful that we escaped with minor damage, and very aware that it could have been worse. Our prayers go out to all those who lost everything in Galveston and other coastal areas. I'm sure there will be many efforts in our community to assist those people, and we will do whatever we can to help.

Be safe wherever you are! We are safe and blessed here in Houston.