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!!! :)