Okay everyone! I don't know if everybody was waiting for my post, but I sure know that I couldn't wait to post it!! Warning--this is going to be a long one! :)
We survived Ike! I never even paid attention to hurricane before we moved here, and now I find myself checking the National Hurricane Center website almost daily, watching for upcoming storms! Who would have thought hurricane could be so exciting.
To begin with, we evacuated to San Antonio and spent the long weekend with Mike's parents. Thank you so much for letting us stay! We left Wednesday night, after Mike got home from work, and we beat the traffic. In fact, when we left the hurricane was not headed directly towards Houston, like it ended up going. We thought that it would miss us completely, or fizzle out and be lame like Edouard. And yet, Mike's work was letting everyone off for Thursday and Friday and so we decided it would be a great vacation!
Good -Bye Beautiful House! Hope you a make it through the Hurricane. Here's our house pre-hurricane!
On the road, we passed tons and tons of these buses--school buses, tour buses, commuter buses. They were all headed into Houston to help people evacuate. It was so neat to see all these people pulling together!
And a great vacation it was...we enjoyed a great lunch at Texas Land and Cattle, we spent Friday afternoon going house hunting with Mom and Dad, and we all watched and cheered the BYU football game! (Did you catch that game! Sweet!!) It was really nice to be able to watch the weather channel and stay up to date with all the Hurricane Ike footage, and it was great to enjoy the air conditioning (which we would soon come to appreciate more!).
Suffering through the Hurricane...
Sonic Stop with Grandma--it's becoming a tradition! Key Lime Slushie...yum!
A GREAT steak restaurant! Come and visit and we'll take you there!
Game day! Go Cougs! And Twinkies..a must have emergency preparedness food!
We headed back to our home Sunday morning, early. We arrived in time for Church on Sunday--and it was one of the neatest Sacrament Meetings I have ever been to. There was no power and so there were no lights and no AC. The meeting was only about 1 hour long; we partook of the sacrament and then had a great talk by one of our Young Men. And then the remainder of the meeting was spent talking about the damages that members experienced and who had what supplies and what expertise. We then all split up and Mike and I went home to see our home for the first time.
Compared to most people, we did awesome! In fact, compared to people that didn't even go through the hurricane, we did awesome. We lost about 20 shingles on the corner of our house, our poor trees looks sad and wilted, and we lost part of our side and back fence. No water damage, no broken windows, no damaged cars. We even were able to save most of our food by bringing back some dry ice from San Antonio.
Our shingle damage. We were so blessed that the damage was so minimal and right on the corner. Other families had roof damage in the middle of their home, and that transferred to wet insulation and Sheetrock and a caved in ceiling.
Fence damage--Katelyn wanted to help! :) And...our poor sunflowers didn't make it...
Our house, post hurricane. Look at our silly, sad trees! And can you see the stop sign, on the right side. It was leaning before, but now it leans a completely different way and way more! :)
After breathing a sigh of relief about our house (Elena and Andrew Baugh, our game buddies who live close to us and stayed home during the hurricane had previously told us that everything was safe and sound--but it was a good relief to see our house with our own eyes!) Mike headed off to help with work crews and Elena and I headed to the Relief Society Presidents house to enjoy for AC and electricity! Thanks Shawna and Barry--your hospitality was amazing!
It was so touching to see how the ward came to together to help each other right after the storm--and even still today! For example, some families in our ward got power back with 24 hours of the hurricane. Those who did housed those of us who didn't so that we could have the AC. Summertime in Texas is not the time to be without air conditioning! :) The Cox family took us in for a few days. It was great! We displaced James and John and added extra mouths to feed...but it was such a blessing! Thanks Cox family!
The Cox kids...Gabbie (in the middle) is one of my great Young Women. It was fun to stay at her house! Thanks for the beds boys!
Monday was spent running around checking on damaged homes and kitty's and people, while some of the men had to go back to work--and others went back to work on the hurricane damage.
Tuesday, a cold front came in and so we moved back home. Katelyn was such a trooper being moved from place to place to place...and she was so glad to be home~! We were glad for the cooler temperatures and it was great to be home. We spent the day fixing the fence and salvaging the rest of our food, and practicing eating food cooked on the barbecue grill. I got to be quite good!
Home at last! Eating our emergency preparedness food! Yum! Pudding!
Just call me the BBQ Babe!
Wednesday Mike had to go back to work, and Katelyn and I spent the day chilling at home--cleaning, sleeping, reading...not too much you can do when you don't have power!
It gets dark early when there's no power! We're just hanging out!
Doing our 'Go Power...We Want Power' dance!
Popcorn Popping on the... Barbecue?
Thursday I went to Elena's to do our laundry and and we had a lovely day doing projects. Elena got power Tuesday evening, and it was nice to be in AC again. We got power about 2:00 on Thursday--yeah! We spent the rest of the afternoon at Elena's finishing laundry and then it was dinner time and I was off to my first ward council. Exciting!
And that brings us up to date. It's great to have power again, and we're even indulging ourselves and have turned down the air a bit more then normal. I'm back to exercising, and now it's time to back for our trip to visit Grandma! More to follow--more pictures and some neat experiences...but gotta go make dinner. Love you all!
We survived Ike! I never even paid attention to hurricane before we moved here, and now I find myself checking the National Hurricane Center website almost daily, watching for upcoming storms! Who would have thought hurricane could be so exciting.
To begin with, we evacuated to San Antonio and spent the long weekend with Mike's parents. Thank you so much for letting us stay! We left Wednesday night, after Mike got home from work, and we beat the traffic. In fact, when we left the hurricane was not headed directly towards Houston, like it ended up going. We thought that it would miss us completely, or fizzle out and be lame like Edouard. And yet, Mike's work was letting everyone off for Thursday and Friday and so we decided it would be a great vacation!
Good -Bye Beautiful House! Hope you a make it through the Hurricane. Here's our house pre-hurricane!
On the road, we passed tons and tons of these buses--school buses, tour buses, commuter buses. They were all headed into Houston to help people evacuate. It was so neat to see all these people pulling together!
And a great vacation it was...we enjoyed a great lunch at Texas Land and Cattle, we spent Friday afternoon going house hunting with Mom and Dad, and we all watched and cheered the BYU football game! (Did you catch that game! Sweet!!) It was really nice to be able to watch the weather channel and stay up to date with all the Hurricane Ike footage, and it was great to enjoy the air conditioning (which we would soon come to appreciate more!).
Suffering through the Hurricane...
Sonic Stop with Grandma--it's becoming a tradition! Key Lime Slushie...yum!
A GREAT steak restaurant! Come and visit and we'll take you there!
Game day! Go Cougs! And Twinkies..a must have emergency preparedness food!We headed back to our home Sunday morning, early. We arrived in time for Church on Sunday--and it was one of the neatest Sacrament Meetings I have ever been to. There was no power and so there were no lights and no AC. The meeting was only about 1 hour long; we partook of the sacrament and then had a great talk by one of our Young Men. And then the remainder of the meeting was spent talking about the damages that members experienced and who had what supplies and what expertise. We then all split up and Mike and I went home to see our home for the first time.
Compared to most people, we did awesome! In fact, compared to people that didn't even go through the hurricane, we did awesome. We lost about 20 shingles on the corner of our house, our poor trees looks sad and wilted, and we lost part of our side and back fence. No water damage, no broken windows, no damaged cars. We even were able to save most of our food by bringing back some dry ice from San Antonio.
Our shingle damage. We were so blessed that the damage was so minimal and right on the corner. Other families had roof damage in the middle of their home, and that transferred to wet insulation and Sheetrock and a caved in ceiling.
Fence damage--Katelyn wanted to help! :) And...our poor sunflowers didn't make it...Our house, post hurricane. Look at our silly, sad trees! And can you see the stop sign, on the right side. It was leaning before, but now it leans a completely different way and way more! :)
After breathing a sigh of relief about our house (Elena and Andrew Baugh, our game buddies who live close to us and stayed home during the hurricane had previously told us that everything was safe and sound--but it was a good relief to see our house with our own eyes!) Mike headed off to help with work crews and Elena and I headed to the Relief Society Presidents house to enjoy for AC and electricity! Thanks Shawna and Barry--your hospitality was amazing!
It was so touching to see how the ward came to together to help each other right after the storm--and even still today! For example, some families in our ward got power back with 24 hours of the hurricane. Those who did housed those of us who didn't so that we could have the AC. Summertime in Texas is not the time to be without air conditioning! :) The Cox family took us in for a few days. It was great! We displaced James and John and added extra mouths to feed...but it was such a blessing! Thanks Cox family!
The Cox kids...Gabbie (in the middle) is one of my great Young Women. It was fun to stay at her house! Thanks for the beds boys!Monday was spent running around checking on damaged homes and kitty's and people, while some of the men had to go back to work--and others went back to work on the hurricane damage.
Tuesday, a cold front came in and so we moved back home. Katelyn was such a trooper being moved from place to place to place...and she was so glad to be home~! We were glad for the cooler temperatures and it was great to be home. We spent the day fixing the fence and salvaging the rest of our food, and practicing eating food cooked on the barbecue grill. I got to be quite good!
Home at last! Eating our emergency preparedness food! Yum! Pudding!
Just call me the BBQ Babe!Wednesday Mike had to go back to work, and Katelyn and I spent the day chilling at home--cleaning, sleeping, reading...not too much you can do when you don't have power!
It gets dark early when there's no power! We're just hanging out!
Doing our 'Go Power...We Want Power' dance!
Popcorn Popping on the... Barbecue?Thursday I went to Elena's to do our laundry and and we had a lovely day doing projects. Elena got power Tuesday evening, and it was nice to be in AC again. We got power about 2:00 on Thursday--yeah! We spent the rest of the afternoon at Elena's finishing laundry and then it was dinner time and I was off to my first ward council. Exciting!
And that brings us up to date. It's great to have power again, and we're even indulging ourselves and have turned down the air a bit more then normal. I'm back to exercising, and now it's time to back for our trip to visit Grandma! More to follow--more pictures and some neat experiences...but gotta go make dinner. Love you all!
