Hurricane Ike

What can I say about this storm that hasn't already been said before? Not much, but I guess I must add my thoughts and reflections also.

We lost power before the storm even hit. It was about 9:50 pm on Friday evening. Andy was watching TV. I was half asleep on the couch. It didn't blink or anything it was just gone! We moved all of the sleeping children into the gameroom and Andy and I went to bed. I must admit - I didn't really sleep. The wind was very strong and I was nervous being on the second floor of our house. I could hear every noise and wondering what was that. It didn't matter much that I wasn't sleeping because by 2 am my children were not sleeping either. Finally, daybreak happened and we surveyed the damage.

We were very lucky. Not a single tree hit our house. If you have been to our neighborhood, you know we have lots of trees. We did have a neighbor's tree hit our fence and the power line. We had tons of debris. But the important parts were: we were fine - the house was fine. Let the fun begin!

We spent Saturday in between rain showers cleaning the front of our house. It was very strange with all of the neighbors outside. Everyone had a story. Everyone had a damage report. It was nice just talking to all of the people we are normally too busy to give but a passing wave. That night it was a little warm but not too bad with the windows opened. Of course, then it started raining about 2 am so Andy and I had to run around the house closing the windows. This, of course, woke up the baby.

We were all up early so I had a brilliant idea. Let's go to 7:30 am Mass so that way when it stops raining we will be ready to tackle the back yard. Well, I guess my sleep deprivation caught up with me because I just was not paying attention and I slammed my fingers into the garage door as I was manually closing it. Can we say, PAIN?!? Two of the fingers still hurt a week later. After my screaming fit, we were on our way. We turned on Cypresswood and were surprised to find out that it was flooded. Oops - back to Louetta we go. By the time, we got to Mass, they were on the Prayers of the Faithful. It was one of those moments where the Lord must look at our intention and not necessarily at what happened.

Andy decided to check on Amanda's house after church. She was away on vacation in Germany. Much to our surprise, we found out she had power. We quickly went through the refrigerator and freezer and grabbed what was still frozen and brought it over to her house. I must say it was a sad day for this "grocery game gal". I had to throw out a lot of frozen meals and ice cream that I had recently purchased on sale at Kroger. Boohoo! We spent the rest of the day cleaning our backyard.

The rest of the week was spent hanging out with neighbors, sharing meals and information. It is amazing how people can look out for one another. Everyone was sharing what store had gas, lights, etc. Meals were cooked out together. The kids played sun up to sun down with their friends. That is the part of the aftermath of the hurricane that I liked.

The part that I do not like is that it is over a week since the storm and there is no power at my house yet. The part that is hard is that I have yet to see anyone actually working in my neighborhood to restore it. The cold front that God blessed us with after the storm has left and it is getting pretty hot. After much consideration, I decided to spend the next few days in Chilton with Andy's parents. I finally realized that the kids would have a great time and I didn't have anything to prove by staying in my hot house. I am praying that the power will be back on by Tuesday when we return. The kids have to be at school on Wednesday.

So, here's to Hurricane Ike. God bless all of those that were in his path and still dealing with his fury but may the lessons of friendship and neighborly kindness last awhile longer. Here our some of our pictures.

Here is the tree that knocked out the fence and the power line.

Here is the gate that is no longer.

Here are all of the bags of debris that we had in our yard. We were so nice and bagged everything like we were told only to to get a notice that no bags will be picked up - NICE!!Here are the rest of limbs that we didn't bag. I guess we should have done this with all of the debris.

Here is a crazy game of Sorry compliments of a camping lantern.

One of our many meals with the neighbors and friends during this. This was our clean out your freezer party.

I can tell you one thing - I will never look at a storm in the gulf the same again!