Hurricane Ike...
We evacuated on Thursday to Mom and Dad's house thinking we would be out of harms way, little did we know that we would still be in his path!
Just hanging out on a beautiful, hot day!
This is Friday and Ike was moving closer to the coast of Texas. We tried to keep the kids outside as much as we could, because we knew we would be inside for days.
Here are Dad and the kids going for a walk before dinner. The wind was really gusting at this point.
I'm going to be two, tomorrow!
The storm hit Conroe around 4:00 in the morning. It was very loud outside. The street lights started to flicker and the noise makers were going off and on, so I jumped out of bed to turn on TV. I wanted to see where the eye of the storm was...just south of where we were. Then the lights went out. It was a little scary not to be able to see outside. The storm continued most of the day, but the worst was over. Here are a few videos I took the next day, but they don't really capture how bad it was at night. These were taken about 8:30 the next day.
This is a huge tree outside our window.
Here is Matt keeping the boys busy the next day during the rain...
We had to celebrate Quinn's birthday in the dark...I love the way mom improvised with a stack of chocolate chip cookies!
Just a lantern for light...the boys didn't seem to mind.
A super nice neighbor of Mom and Dad's had three generators and let us borrow one. We hooked up the refrigerator, two lamps, TV, and fan. That was wonderful! We had little gas, so we had to turn everything off at night. At least we could keep the food from spoiling!
Matt and I take a picture of what we are doing every anniversary...well, two years ago, I was in labor, and this year we are in a hurricane. We did have salmon by candlelight, but it wasn't exactly what we were expecting!
We didn't take many pictures of the devastation. We had to watch too much on TV, but this was amazing. This is a tree where Mom and Dad live. Remember, his is about 100 miles off the coast line and it still got this much damage!
We heard from our neighbor that we had power, so we headed back to our house as soon as we could. We came home to a few fallen trees and a few lost shingles, but that is about it! We were so fortunate.
We cleaned up our yard a bit and then headed over to some friends to help them clean up the debris in their yard. They live in an older neighborhood with established trees and huge trees were down there!
My friend, Jenny is expecting here second baby any day and she and her family didn't have power so they stayed with us a few days. We ate like kings, because her husband, Kelsey, brought over a ton of seafood that was spoiling and fried it up for us that evening. Thank goodness their power came on and they are getting back to normal before the baby comes!
Our friends in Clear Lake, Friendswood and Kemah are all fine. They had a some damage, but everyone is safe! We are so thankful for that, because they are just north of Galveston!
Mom and Dad are still without power and will be for 2-4 weeks! They had "catastrophic" damage to their power plant! They are sticking it out at home until we all leave for Amanda and Patrick's wedding. That is something fun to look forward to after all of this!!
Patrick helping Quinn and Reid before the wedding. Look how handsome these three look! Of course, the boys have their wedding gifts...Mater and Lightning McQueen.
We are going to Amanda's wedding and we are going to ring the bells and get a surprise!
