Our Hurricane Ike Adventure.

Well, it was certainly an adventure.

It all started on Thursday when we stayed home from work to get the house ready. It was looking like Ike was headed our way, and there was no denying it. Cary headed off to Lowe's and picked up a generator. We couldn't believe they still had them. Then we began our preparations. We boarded the house and got all of our camping supplies out. We knew we'd be without power for a few days at least. Wade was a trooper, he didn't complain the whole time. In fact, I am not sure he even knew anything was going on. Here are some pictures of how we prepared the house:

Once we had everything ready, we just waited. Of course the news was doom and gloom, we were under a mandatory evacuation order but felt confident we'd be safe if we stayed in our house. It was a very long day...little did we know the next two days would seem even longer. Wade played while we waited:



We put Wade to bed, just as we normally would have and went to bed to try to get some rest ourselves. The wind started blowing pretty hard about 8 or 9 pm, but the worst wasn't expected until 2:00 am or so. We slept for an hour or two before we were up again, listening to the howling winds. It was dark outside so we really couldn't see much. We had power until about 1:00 am. Once the power went out we moved upstairs so we could hear Wade if he woke up. It was really howling outside and Cary and I started to get scared, but knew we were safe.

Around 3:00 am it got eerily quiet, and we knew from our battery operated television and the trusty weather guy, David Paul (who had been on the air since about 5 pm...he was getting pretty worn out) that the eye of the storm was on top of us. We couldn't resist the urge to head outside and check out the damage. It was so calm, but it smelled horrible...like dirty seawater. We really didn't see much damage at all so we really breathed a sigh of relief.

At that point we though we were in the clear. We knew the rest of the storm still had to pass over, but we figured we were at least at the halfway point. I went to sleep and Cary stayed up watching the TV. Wade woke up at about 5:45, so we were all up then. Cary and I had gotten very little sleep, but Wade was well rested!!

Here is what we woke up to, turns out the back half of the storm was a lot worse than the first:

The pictures don't really can't describe the feeling of walking outside and becoming aware of your surroundings after such an event. It's so strange...

Our house has minimal damage compared to many.

We made breakfast on our (thank goodness) gas stove..and waited for the wind and rain to subside a bit. It was dark in the house with no power and boards on the Windows, and hot from cooking breakfast. We finally got the boards down and windows open about 8 or 9 am. Thank God! We fired up the generator and just kind of wondered what to do next.

Of course we had to go out sight seeing. Here are some pictures we took on our journey.

My favorite picture is this one:



The surge was so high it carried this sailboat up on the road.

Thankfully my parents had no real damage, just power out. My sister and her family still had power, but had many trees down in their yard.

After our drive, we came home and tried to figure out what to do next. It was HOT and we had no power. We did the best we could to keep Wade on his routine and that seemed to help a lot.

Later that night, our friends Erik and Serean who just moved to the area came over and we grilled a pork loin. It was delicious!

That evening we slept pretty comfortably thanks to our generator and a window unit AC Brenda and Les had brought us. Thank God for that window unit!!

When we woke the next morning it was raining again, but thankfully cooler.

We heard on the radio that pop tarts are the number one comfort/survival food for hurricanes...so of course we bought some. Wade loves pop tarts, it turns out!! He especially likes eating them in the garage while watching the rain!



Later that day it really cooled off since a cold front came through.

The area has been hit pretty hard, and from what we can tell the damage is very widespread. I am not sure when things will get back to normal in Houston/Galveston. But for now, it's a nice cool evening...things are cleaned up a little bit and everyone feels very luck to still have a roof over our heads...and food in our bellies.

Please pray for those that were hit the hardest, especially Galveston, Bolivar etc.