Hurrican Ike, Day 4

Day 4 was Clean Up The Backyard Day. The above pictures were some taken the day before the storm. It was all nice and clean...

As you can see, the deck was covered and you can't even see the grass in the back. If you are looking at green, it's leaves or pine needles, not grass.
Remember the limb that fell when Tony went out during the storm? You can see it laying by the slide in the back of this photo. What you see laying on the sidewalk is how the entire yard looked.
We still can't get over the fact that this thing fell the way it did. The heavy end of the limb ended up stuck down in the ground about 6 inches.

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!

Hurricane Ike, Day 2...Continued...Again

I'm sorry about the break. I actually had this whole post done and ready to go and then the autosave decided to quit working on me. That's when I got mad and frustrated and took a break. Now that I'm no longer mad or frustrated (at least with my autosave) let's continue with the story, again...

This was the first picture I was able to get of the upside down tree top in our driveway. All I kept thinking was "what if this thing fell on our living room?" It still amazes me that out of everything that fell during the storm, nothing hit our house.
It was raining pretty good when I made the kids stand in front of the tree to get this photo. We got pretty soaked every time we would go in and out of the house. It was quite a feat to maneuver through all of the debris and not to mention, this monstrosity! I was so glad when we were able to cut it up and haul it to the curb.
We were able to see quite a bit of damage on our way to Bryan. This sign was one of many that did not make it through the storm.
Please excuse what I think is either my finger or elbow in this picture. Tony's car is not the best place to be taking pictures. Brenna, Cooper, Roxy and Avery made the best of their situation. Even though they were rather cozy in the back, there was not any bickering or complaining. This whole experience really brought out the best in our children.
I see the light! Being able to see this little glint of sunshine lifted my spirits quite a bit. It was like running in a race and seeing the finish line. It was a sign to me that this storm was on it's way out and that brighter days were ahead. I've been through days and days of rain before, and even weathered some pretty rough thunderstorms. But having gone through this storm was nothing like anything I've experienced before. I don't know if it's because we had been tracking it for several days, or the intensity of it once it arrived, but the feeling I had of relief knowing it was over, was overwhelming.

Hurrican Ike, Day 2...Continued

We did quite a bit on Saturday, so most of my pictures were taken then. Our cell phones were not working well at the house, so we went for a drive to survey the damage for the area and make a few phone calls to family and friends.
This tree fell across an intersection near our home. Even though the tree is across the street, at least it's not across someones home.
Sorry about the glare. This is Grogan's Mill, just past Sawmill, going east. You can tell by the path the tires have made that the entire street was covered in debris from the trees.
The owners of this company must have thought that iron fence was going to protect all of their potted plants and chairs from the wind. They are lucky one of those things didn't go through their glass.
This light pole, and many small trees, were down in the Petco/Pump-It-Up parking lot.
Trees and light poles were down and across the road at the entrance to the new Wal-Mart.

After our short trip out, we returned home to get ready for our over-night trip to Bryan for a good nights sleep.

Hurricane Ike, Day 2

Day 2 started with some looks around the house for damage. We knew we had a large limb fall in the back yard and that we had the top of a pine tree in the driveway. Here are some better pictures we were able to get with some daylight.

This is a view from the kitchen window. Half of the window is covered by the branch that fell and you can see our grass covered by limbs and leaves.

If you look to the right of the two large trees on the left, you can get a little better view of the upside down pine tree in the driveway. The main trunk of that tree top can be seen in between the two large trees on the left of the picture.

Here is a before and after view of the front yard.

Now, I know this picture does not fit in with the rest, but hurricanes not only knock out trees, they knock out teeth too. Avery and I were sitting on the couch after the worst part of the storm went through and out came her tooth. The tooth fairy was nice enough to pay her a visit in Bryan.

Hurricane Ike, Day One

I consider Friday, September 12th, day one. My last picture I took that day was around 2:00 pm. We set up "camp" in the playroom and were glued to the TV reports as the storm Here is Avery all snuggled up for the night.

By the looks of Brenna, you would never know a Category 2 hurricane was coming our way.

Tony and the kids went to sleep around 9:00 pm. I would say things got scary after 10:00 pm. I stayed in the living room to watch the progress of the storm. Since it was so big, we were expected to get Tropical Storm force winds around 11:00 pm, but landfall was not expected for another 3 hours. There were a couple of times that I left the living room, which is not protected by a second story, because the wind was gusting so hard. I never heard the whistling sound many people say you hear, I think due to the trees breaking the wind. No, the trees were not "breaking wind"! Sometimes I wonder about you people! Now back to the story.

After doing some thinking and realizing that I might not get much sleep over the next few days, I decided to go to bed. My bed consisted of Cooper and I on his twin mattress on the playroom floor. The gusting wind would wake me up on occasion, but strangely, I was actually able to get a few hours of sleep. Tony and I woke up around 3:30 am on Saturday during the worst part of the wind. For some reason, Tony had to go to the garage around this time. That's when he was able to witness a huge limb fall from our large oak tree in the back yard. I made him come inside immediately!

We continued to watch TV reports as the storm came ashore. At this time, the eye had made landfall and was pushing our way. The prediction was that the eye would track west of I-45 and follow the Interstate up through to Dallas. With this prediction, we expected to have winds from the north at first and then winds from the south. We now know that the storm tracked east of I-45, therefore, we only received winds from the south and were spared the "dirty" side of the storm. From what I could get from the reports after the storm, our area experienced wind gusts around 80 mph.

At 4:30 am, as we were watching the reports on the storm on the TV in the kitchen, the power went out. It was radio from then on. Tony has a radio that picks up the television stations and we were able to get local news reports throughout the morning. Once the sun came up and the winds settled down, we were able to get a few pictures of the damage.

I stuck my arm out of the back door to get this shot. You can see the top of a pine tree upside down in the driveway. There will be more pictures of that to come.
This is a picture of the front yard. It's hard to see most of the debris because it blends in with the grass. Most of the sidewalk is covered in small limbs and twigs.

The kids woke up around the time the power went out. They were curious about what was going on outside, but could not see. After they realized the worst was over, we were all able to go back to sleep for a few more hours.

Ike...5 Days Later

First of all, we are all doing fine and our home suffered no damage. I took this photo Saturday on the way to Bryan. This was the first daylight that we had seen since Friday morning. This morning, about 12:36 (according to Tony), we seem to have power back. We did get a little tease Tuesday morning when the power came back on for 5 hours, then went back off again. So today, I turned on my kitchen light for the first time in 5 days. It's all about seeing the light!!

Since God has blessed us with beautiful, cool, dry weather, we have been able to do all of our outside clean-up. Today I will begin focusing on laundry, vacuuming, and rearranging furniture. I don't think I've ever been so excited to clean my house!

I would like to go back and track what has happened day by day. After I put my house back in order, I'll sit down and post all of the pictures and some video of the last several days.

A special "Thank You" to those of you who have been praying for us and that have stayed in touch through this experience. Your prayers have been felt and answered. You are all a blessing to us!