yIKEs!

I survived my first hurricane! We've had quite the experience the past week or so, but we're so blessed to have stayed safe during the storm and not to have any damage to our house. When Rita came we evacuated to Marshall, and a normally 4 hour trip took 18 hours so this time we thought we'd stay to weather out the storm. The difference was Rita didn't actually hit our area too hard, and Ike came straight down I-45 and right through Spring. Thursday, I went to Wal-mart and stood in really long lines for water and dry foods and we started getting our house ready. We cleaned out the closet under our staircase to stay in during the storm, and I made us a pallet to sleep in for our "slumber party." Friday, we watched the news all day and watched the water start to flood Galveston. I grew up around tornadoes in Oklahoma, but a big difference between the two is that with tornados they come quickly and then leave. With hurricanes, you watch them coming for days and the anticipation is crazy. It was so heartbreaking to watch all of the people staying in Galveston and knowing they would be in grave danger in just hours.

Friday evening we blew up our air mattress and set it up in the dining room downstairs and put together Jake's pack and play. We had decided to start the evening sleeping downstairs (all of our bedrooms are upstairs) and then when the wind started, we would move to the closet. Here's a picture I took of the sky about 8:30 Friday evening. It was a very pretty pink color before the winds started.

Around 2:00 a.m., the winds really started blowing and branches started hitting the window so we moved into the closet. Luckily, Jake stayed asleep for much of the time. Our electricity went out between 2:00 and 3:00 so we switched to my little battery powered radio. It was the radio I used when getting ready in high school! My dad brought me a box of my stuff from home about a year ago, and I found the radio in the box. It definitely came in handy. The local news channel broadcast over the radio so we listened as the storm hit Galveston and moved through downtown Houston. At that point we hadn't seen the worst of the storm just the beginning winds. Ty and I tried to sleep, but the howling of the winds and crackling of limbs kept us awake. We stayed in the closet until around 8:00 or 9:00 the next morning when the winds finally began to die down. The picture below is Jake in the closet before the storm...he thought it was a fun hiding place!After the storm it still rained all day, but Ty went out to assess our damage. We were so blessed! All four of our fences held, and we didn't have any big trees come down or do damage to our roof. Our house is surrounded by tall pine trees so we didn't know what to expect. All of the neighbors around us had damage so Ty helped some of them move trees off roofs and clean trees off the street. In our backyard we just lost the banana trees and some other small trees. You can see the debris everywhere. Here is a house down the street from us who lost a fairly large tree. This is on FM 2920, the main road by our house.
This is the house next door. We cleaned all day Saturday and had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner.I let Jake run around in his diaper since it was so hot. He had so much fun in our dark house! Saturday night we went to sleep as soon as the sun went down and slept with the windows up. We had a slow, stead rain all night long and I slept so well! I think this fall we'll have our windows up much more often. The fresh air is refreshing! Sunday morning we woke up and packed and drove to Ty's dad's house in Marshall, TX. We knew we wouldn't have power for awhile and were already tired of peanut butter and jelly! Here's the line of cars getting gas in Lufkin on the way there. Ironically, Marshall had lost power too, but Larry had a generator and cooked out on his gas grill. It was so nice Sunday nice to have his famous brisket for dinner! Monday we drove over to Louisiana to see Ty's cousin Kip who was on leave from Iraq as well as his aunt and uncle and grandparents. We also got to see Ty's two brothers and their families, a little family reunion of sorts. Tuesday Ty looked online and the Centerpoint website said our neighboorhood had power so we thought about heading home. Ty talked to some co-workers who said there was still limited gas and food in Houston so we decided to come over Oklahoma for a few days and then head home. On the way here Ty talked to our neighbor who said although most of our neighborhood had power, our street did not. That was last Tuesday. Almost a week later, we still don't have power and we're still in Oklahoma. Ty's been able to work from here on his laptop which is a big blessing.

Right now the electric company is saying we will not get power until after Thursday. Our plan is to head home Wednesday regardless so Ty can get back to the office. I think Jake and I will stay at Ty's mom's house in Conroe because their power is back, and Ty will stay with our friends Robert and Lauren downtown so he can commute to work easily.

Whew...so that's our hurricane Ike story. It was actually fairly uneventful minus the week and two days now we've been electricity free. We are a blessed family though and we're thankful for all of our family who has housed us this past week. All of the grandparents love Ike, it just meant they could see Jake more :)

I have more pictures from our road trip I will post tomorrow. We are safe and sound and doing well!