Ike - the unwanted visitor

Well, Ike has come and gone and here's an update on us...

Harris and Montgomery counties didn't call for a voluntary or mandatory evacuation except for some specific zip codes, so Samandra and I decided to ride out the storm at home and leave the roads open for those that had to get out.

Saturday morning at about 3:30 AM the storm woke us and took out the electricity. We listened to the winds for a little while from our bedroom and once they picked up pretty good, we decided to take shelter away from windows. We moved the couches near the utility room and half bath so we could have a quick exit to a safe room if needed. We napped on and off throughout the morning; waking when big gusts came and the trees bent over.

At one point I heard a big gust kicking up and looked out the window to see a tree in the lot behind us snap about 2-3 feet up the trunk and fall harmlessly into the lot. A tree about 200 feet away snapped and fell across the utility lines, bringing them down completely. Since there's more than just a transformer or circuit to be repaired in our neighborhood - lines are down in several places - it may take some time to get power back to us.

The storm was a little nerve-racking during the night, but once the sun came up and we could see the trees moving in the wind, it made it easier on the nerves. We had the (false?) sense of security since we could 'see' what may be coming at us. The rain and wind continued well into the afternoon. I think the winds died down around 2PM or so. The rain continued to fall a little beyond that and then stopped.

Our house didn't have any visible damage nor did most of our immediate neighbors. Every lot around us lost at least one tree and several of them lost 2 or more trees, but none fell on their homes. That wasn't the case of other homes in the neighborhood. We were pretty blessed that we only lost branches from our trees and all of those missed the house when they came down.

We still have water and gas so we were able to cook and clean and shower at the house on Saturday. We then realized that, even though we have water, our septic will not pump without electricity; so more showers (indoor, at least) were not an option.

Sunday morning we were awakened at 4 AM by the loudest thunder I've ever heard... that and Samandra screaming and jumping on me - I can't wait to have a 2 year old along with a 25 year old that's afraid of thunderstorms! The thunder was very loud and must have struck within a few hundred feet of us. After getting back to sleep, we woke up after sun up and began cleaning the yard a little bit in the light rain. There are a ton of pine cones, pine needles and small pine branches everywhere!! ( I hate pine trees!!!!) After getting the front yard raked into piles and a little drenched by the rain, we figured we should head out to some place that had electricity so we could shower.

We loaded up and went to College Station to stay with our friends, Chris and Kelly. We're going to stay here for a couple of days until we hear that we have electricity at our house or until our offices re-open. As of now, they are without electricity as well and closed.

We'll update the blog occassionally and let y'all know when we're back in the house. We took some video of the neighborhood and will try to load that once we get back to our computer. Thanks for all the calls, texts and prayers. We made it through golden and just have a little cleaning up to do.