September 12, 2008~Hurricane Ike

Hello to all of my friends!

What a wild weekend we have had, and I don't think it will be over anytime soon. Due to the hurricane school has been cancelled for the entire week!! Our neighborhood faired pretty well, but the school district has quite a few schools that have damage. 

I guess I will start from the beginning...

Thursday we finished up preparations by getting the generator (see previous post) and going home to "hunker down." All of the men on the street were helping each other take trampolines down, tie down basketball goals, put patio furniture away, etc. 

We stayed out late to watch the sunset and let the kids run out of all their energy! (Isn't it amazing how they can tell something big is about to happen? They all go nuts!) When they finally crashed (at 11:00pm), we sat in the living room to get situated before the rain started. I don't even remember what time that was, but it was dark. I tried to get good shots of the rain and wind, but it was close to impossible. Rodney kept getting on me to shut the door or else! Sheesh! I needed to get good pictures for you guys!

The power went out at about 1:12am. Right after Joshua fell out of my bed and I snuggled up next to him to keep it from happening again. I had just started a movie and was really bummed when it turned it off!!

Instead of rolling over to go to sleep, I jumped out of bed because I knew we had to finally get the kids in the closet. (oops, I forgot those pictures!! I will do another post with just pictures.) We put everyone into our final "hunker down" mode and caught a little cat nap at about 3am until 5am when Rodney slapped me on my arm and told me to get in the closet!! There was a tornado that went through the park beside our house. (you could see the path it took)

That was the last thing I remember. 

I went into the closet and it was AMAZINGLY quiet in there!! I slept until around 8am when Rodney woke me up looking for Anna. I freaked out for a moment and then realized she was in the living room looking out the window at the storm. That was it... all the kids started waking up and a few hours later the worst of the storm had passed. 

I am a horrible writer, so I will stop there and just share my pictures.

A storm band rolling in. Here comes Ike!

Our AMAZING gift from God the evening before the storm.

Just look at the beauty our Lord creates!

Yep.. that's a storm band right over my house!

That is my house over there to the left. These are more clouds rolling in.

Yes, I was trying to get artsy when the lights went out. What else was I supposed to do?

This is from my front porch very early on in the storm. 

This is the park just when the rain began. Remember this view, because it looks very different after the storm.

This is our back yard and that is what you do with a trampoline in a hurricane. (there are stakes on all sides that it is tied down to.)

This is a hanger at a little airport just down the road.

I am getting very used to this now. There are so many gas stations controlling traffic with police patrol. People are getting very ugly!

This is my sweet friend Ashley's house. :( She was very sad to see her tree down, but I am happy to say that it is back up again!!) 

This is just one of the trees from the picture before. There are so many in the park that looked like this! They were only planted a couple of years ago. I really hope they make it!

Here is a building off the Beltway that had windows blown out.

After we got our power back, we decided to take our generator to some friends in Clear Lake. We saw dozens of busses and emergency vehicles taking people from the island to San Antonio or Austin.

A mangled stoplight.

This tree went down just down the street from our friends. (love you B and C!) The kids are there just so you could see how big it was. 

A car dealership on I-45.

The crazy line at Krogers for gasoline on the day after. (didn't everyone get the message to fill up before the storm??)

This is a HUGE tree down at the park in front of our neighborhood.

Same tree, different angle. This one shows the soccer fields that double as retention ponds for our neighborhood. The work very well!! No flooding here!

Isn't this cool?? This flag got hung up on the tree sometime during the storm. This is one of my favorite pictures. I haven't done final editing, but when I do I think I might print this one. 

We brought the camper over on Saturday night to get some cool air. We ended up having a few neighbors over for a slumber party in the cul de sac.

Here are the men working on the generator. 

Here is my baby girl working on clean up after the storm. 

Here are our menfolk working on getting a huge limb of the tree. The limb broke and got stuck on that huge branch right above their heads. 

 

Here are the men again. They finished the park by our house and then took their chainsaws around the neighborhood. When they finally got to this tree they figured out they had been beat. Rodney thought for a moment his hacksaw would do the job (not really), and then they all went home for some well deserved rest!

Well there it is!! I will post the other pictures tomorrow night. I am going to bed feeling very blessed tonight! There are still so many people without electricity and homes at all!!