Ike took a hike...

The sky...after Ike

Well, Ike has come and gone and chaos has taken his place!

We were very surprised to get our cable/internet/phone back last night. It was unexpected and exciting!

We are completely fine and the only damage to our house was a broken fence, but Ryan already fixed it...so no problems here. We were so fortunate throughout the storm. We had power the night of the storm until 2:00 am. So we were able to watch the news and see the latest on the location of the storm and what was going on in other areas. Once we lost power, we listened on the radio.

It was pretty crazy being in the house during the storm. At some times, I seriously thought the wind would pick the house up off the slab and take us to another town or something (I kept having visions of the Wizard of Oz twister scene!) The kids had no idea...they slept through the whole thing. We "hunkered down" in the hallway though! But they never batted an eye at why they were sleeping in the hall. I've posted a few pictures of what we saw the next morning when we went outside. I felt like we were going to open the door and see a bunch of munchkins, and maybe Dorothy and Toto! :)

We were without power that next day and night. It was SUPER HOT and HUMID and STILL that day. We all showered in the backyard with the hose that evening. It was great that God gave us a full moon for this time of no lights. It really made a bright sky. The first night was awful...I hardly slept at all. We all slept in our room...since we had windows open, I didn't feel completely safe. It was so quiet and all you could hear were sirens across town and tons of bugs. Asher was drenched in sweat, so I felt bad for him. Then about 3 a.m. a breeze blew through and it started raining so hard that we had to close some of the windows! We left our bedroom window open for the breeze and just put a towel on the window sill to soak it up.

We woke up to cool bliss. God sent His "air conditioner" in the form of an amazing cool front. We were so thankful for that. Then a few hours later...Ryan walked out into the garage and the light was on!!! So we officially had power...WOO!!! We were only like 3% out of MILLIONS who had power from Conroe to Orange! Even our neighbors didn't have it. 4 of us in our neighborhood did. I was so thankful, but I felt bad for those still without it. Even now...there are so many (including the rest of our neighborhood) still without electricity.

Now that stores and gas stations are finally opening up...the lines are INSANELY LONG! Like miles!!! People are running out of gas, just waiting to get gas! FEMA has had PODS (points of distribution) where the Texas National Guard is there to help give away 24 packs of bottled waters, 2 bags of ice and a box with 12 MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) to each family. They have spread out in different cities and people wait in their running cars in line for hours and almost run out of gas...then they go get in line for gas! Like I said before...chaos!!!

Anyways, just wanted to update everyone. Thank you so much for your prayers. We are so thankful for God's protection. The night of the storm, I found peace in Psalm 91. Take a look at it...great testament to finding refuge in God, our Fortress and Protector!!!

Here are some pics of what Hurricane Ike did to our area:

Our neigbor's tree. If it had fallen the other way...it would have been on our car!

Our street flooded (not during the hurricane, but during the torrential rain the next night!) It wasn't flooded at our end of the street, but you had to have an SUV to get out at the front of the neighborhood!

This is a video of us getting out of our neighborhood!

More street flooding



This is Ryan, Lynzi and Coy at the feed Store. They are standing behind the feed store, where the hay barn used to be. It was pretty much obliterated. The store itself is still there....some roof damage and water damage inside...lots of work to do!

This is the night sky, a few nights later!

P.S. Lynzi finally got to eat her "hurricane snacks"...YUM!!! :)

Hurricane Ike skies...

Here is a picture of the sky out our front door. This was taken when Ike was about 95 miles from Galveston. The wind is starting to pick up and it's starting to sprinkle. We still have power, so we'll update as we can. The city turned off the water at 2:30, so we'll have water until the water towers run out! We've got buckets, containers, tanks, tubs, sinks, pots, pitchers, etc filled with water...so we should have plenty. Thanks for your prayers.

Hurricane Ike...boarded up!

Well, we've boarded up and we're hunkered in! Where we live is high enough elevation that it won't be in the storm surge and our winds are supposed to be a max of 80 mph. So our part of the city is not evacuating...just "sheltering in place", so we should be fine! We were planning on leaving for the Dallas area (until yesterday afternoon) so we didn't go out and buy plywood and the clips to attach to the brick, so Ryan got really creative with boarding up our windows (as you'll see in the pics below)!!! Pray for this storm and for our safety. We'll updae after the storm (if and when we have electricity!)

boarding up the windows in the backyard!

Yep, that's a table screwed into our wall!!! Then just some random wood on the bottom. Notice the sign above the window..."Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord!" That sign has always been above that window and I didn't even notice it until after I took the picture...what a great reminder of Who is in charge :)!!!

These boards used to be a book shelf that Ryan's dad made out of fence panel...it was really cute and I was planning on using it Lynzi's room in our next house. Oh well, I guess Ryan will have to make me a new one!


And then there's the giant rug. We were in my parents garage yesterday and she had this stored away. So we screwed it to the wall in our bedroom to cover the window! Like I said, we got super creative...whatever works :)!!!

This is how we parked our vehicles....trying to protect them as best we can.


P.S. My dad asked me what Lynzi thinks about all this boarding up and I told him she's just excited because she knows that we get to get out our "hurricane snack box"!!! Last night when I put her in bed, she said, "Mommy, what are we going to do when we wake up?" I told her we're just going to wait on the hurricane and she said, "...and eat snacks!!!" ;)