Hurricane Ike, Day 3

Our morning started with a wonderful breakfast prepared by Tony's mom. On what I thought was a wise move on my part, I brought some items from our fridge that would not have been good if I had left them. Now, I had no expectation of these things being used while we were there. My purpose was to pass them along to his mom for their use. We arrived just before dinner time on Saturday and one of the food items I brought along was a package of chicken legs. Before we could even discuss dinner, Tony's mom had begun the process of frying it and the next thing we knew, an amazing home-cooked dinner was ready for us to eat and it didn't stop there. The next morning we ate the bacon and sausage we had brought with us, along with eggs and toast. Both meals were almost like a "last" meal in a sense. Having those two hearty meals made the idea of living off of Pop Tarts and Peanut Butter Crackers an easier pill to swallow. Thanks Mama Jan!
"Do they know something we don't?" was the question we were asking ourselves as we turned East onto Highway 105. The line of cars went on for a few miles and I didn't seem natural to be going against the traffic. We were only able to get in a few hours of television updates before we loaded up our goodies from Sam's and headed home. We were still out of the loop in some respects. We knew getting gas and food were going to be a challenge. Bryan was the closest city to have food and power between there and our house. The weather in Bryan was cool and dry compared to the day before. Knowing a front was passing through this very night actually made me look forward to going home. We came to the conclusion that everyone waited until Sunday to leave.
It's hard to tell, but this is one of those metal billboard signs that blew over onto an apartment building. It was one thing to see wooden billboards snapped in half, but seeing this metal one blown over was rather impressive.
Power lines down on the ground right around the corner from your house is a sure sign power is not coming back on anytime soon. Once we pulled up in front of the house, all of the neighbors came out and began helping us with the job of cleaning up. The guys tackled the tree in the driveway and the ladies gathered up the limbs, pine cones and leaves. I think it took all of 2 hours and the front yard was done. After the cleaning was done, the cooking began. Just because you don't have power, doesn't mean you get a break from housework!! Dinner that night consisted of french fries and some other things I can't remember. I'll have to get back to you on this one...
Like I said in my last post. Our children were amazing the entire time! It's one thing when you know your children are capable of this kind of behavior, but don't always come through. It's another thing to witness it for days on end and wonder to yourself "who are these people and what have they done with my children?". Camp Fricks was located in the living room of our house. We moved out of the playroom and set up "camp" in the LR. We put the mattresses under the windows and opened the ones on the other side of the room. That allowed for a nice cross breeze that kept the room rather cool. We woke up the next morning wishing we had more blankets. Thank you God for supplying the free AC!!
The kids settled down every night from here on out by gathering on the mattresses and coloring. No fighting, no horse-play, no tattling, just coloring=one happy mom!