Hurricane Ike (aka: Bill and Ed's excellent adventure)

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for your prayers, concern, phone calls and thoughts. That means so much to us and we really appreciate your concern.

Secondly, I have to say that Mayor Bill and Judge Ed did not steer me wrong by asking me to "hunker down". However, I say that as one who weathered this storm very fortunately.

And third, I must say that the city of Houston (and surrounding cities/towns) ROCKS! I'm sure there are those who have complaints (and again, I have electricity, little damage, etc...) but over all, I think this horrible disaster was handled wonderfully.

As far as our little family goes, it was all (THANKFULLY) pretty under-dramatic. (Can I make that a phrase?) The power went out at about 8 pm on Friday, September 12th. Shortly thereafter, we put Christian in his bed in his room with the windows facing north (the storm would be coming from the south). We let the other four camp out on the living room floor just outside our bedroom. It was hot already. We put a movie on the portable DVD player for the kids and Geoff and I went outside to stand and commune with the neighbors. It was eerie and a bit scary. When the wind got to where we couldn't hear each other and we were being knocked off balance by the gusts, we bid each other good luck and went to our respective homes. Geoff and I read for a bit by candle/flash light, then decided to try to get some sleep knowing that we would most likely be up throughout most of the night. We said some of the most fervent prayers we ever have!

At 9:30 pm the rain started and the wind picked up greatly. By 11:30 the windows were shaking and the rain was pounding straight into the house. Samantha came into our bed about this time. At around 2:30 am (Saturday the 13th), we got up to check the house. Christian was sleeping like a baby. The storm was all at the back of the house, so he probably heard nothing. Eric had made a cave out of pillows and blankets so despite probably being suffocatingly hot, he slept through most of it. Maren slept through it all, except she did do quite a bit of talking in her sleep. And Logan took every opportunity to play Gameboy DS. As I said before, Samy was in our bed and came in and out of sleep.

As we checked out the house, we found water coming in under and around the back door. The rain was just pounding it, so it would have had to be some special door in order to keep that rain out. We shoved towels at the bottom. At one point the door was shaking so much, I put my hands on it as if to hold it shut. It felt like a very strong man was trying to push against me and get it open. Weird and scary. There was also water coming in through the stove vent. It's totally our fault for that one. The kids long ago knocked the vent cover off playing ball and we never got around to replacing it. We will now...

Everything else seemed in tact and fine, so we slept as best as we could off and on for the next few hours. Geoff had gone out on the floor with the three kids and I was in my room with Samy. The windows in my room were getting pounded so hard and rattling and shaking so badly, that I finally picked her up and went to huddle with the rest of the family in the living room. Now, before you decide how horrible we are, I will say that we checked on Christian frequently and literally, the storm was at the back of the house, so he heard virtually nothing. Also, we are in a fairly new community so there are no mature trees that were in a position to fall down on the second story of the house. His bed was well away from any windows. Plus, it was just better for him and all of us, that he was in his own bed and sleeping as normally as possible.

When morning came, the wind and rain were still ferocious. It finally laid off at around 9:00 am.

At that point, we found that a part of our fence had blown down, and there were a lot of roof shingles in our yard, but none from our house that we could see. Geoff checked out our house and finding no damage, went to check on the church families that live in our area -- this was all pre-determined and assigned.




Geoff spent most of Saturday checking on/finding ward members and their houses to do a first assessment of damage. When he got back and told me what had happened to some of the homes, I realized how very fortunate we came out of this.

The kids and I spent the day drinking water and being as still as possible in order to keep cool. Christians naps were whenever and wherever he felt like it. I put a cool cloth on him when he was sleeping in the middle of the living room once. Check out his damp curls. He was one little sweat ball!



Every few hours, we'd get into the car in order to charge the cell phone (one of the best things we've ever bought is a power converter/adapter) - I could receive text messages at this point, but had no reception and could not send anything out - and listening to news on the radio (bad planning is that we didn't have proper batteries for a radio in the house) while we cooled off in the car air conditioning.

As I said, we were very fortunate. Our electricity came back on just 24 hours after it was initially cut off. By Saturday night, we were back on power and cooled off. At this point, the "disaster" was by in large over for our little family.

We surveyed our immediate area and took some photos. They are absolutely nothing compared to Galveston and the coastal communities, but it shows a bit of what happened directly near me.

Stay tuned for a post regarding the aftermath and our personal efforts to try to help in recovery...