We survived IKE!

For those who read our blog who live near us, you can probably skip this entry, it's similar to several of the entries you have posted already. But for our friends and family who don't live in Houston, here's our summary of what we experienced with Hurricane Ike.

The good thing about hurricanes is that you know they are coming, you can track them, and you can be prepared. The bad thing about hurricanes (other than the obvious) is that you wait and wait and get nervous and nervous. That's where I sat with Ike. Thursday at 1pm the tracking models showed the eye of the storm would pass directly over our home, go to my moms house, then continue to her place at Lake Conroe. Great! But tracking models change a lot and by later that evening the experts had it on the track it would stay on and actually take, going through East Houston, not West.

Paul had the day off on Friday as the entire city was essentially shut down for preparations. The coast began seeing huge waves pretty early and we sat and waited for the rain. We made sure all our preparations were in place, including packing a bag for each of us in the car just in case we had to leave at a moment's notice. We nervously sat around all day, all afternoon and all evening...nothing happened.

At 11pm the electricity flickered and we decided it was time to get down to business and bring the sleeping kids down to our room for the night, Aaron on a bed on the floor and Brian in bed with us. The power did finally go out at 11:30pm and we saw our first drops of rain about midnight. Brian tossed and turned all night, so between that and the storm Paul and I didn't sleep well. The wind and the rain was pretty intense, kinda scary at times, but wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.

In surveying the damage after the fact, we've lost a few dozen shingles, received 4 3/4 inches rain, were without power for 15.5 hours and didn't have running water for probably 12 hours. That's it! Our fence is fine, our windows are fine, we are fine, we really can't complain. Several others in our ward had tree or fence damage, some evacuated, but everyone we know of is fine. There are parts of town that have major damage, especially those nearer the water and those directly in the path of the storm, but we feel very blessed.

Here's some pics we took of our "damage" such as it was.