Our First Hurricane

These last few months we have been through a lot of firsts. Wade's first birthday, his first day of school, our first family vacation, and our first hurricane. I am writing this from my parents house due to Mr. Hurricane Ike. I am pretty sure we have power there now, but from what I hear, it is not too fun to be there right now. So we will stay put for now. Let me give you a little summary of what we went through during our first hurricane....

The whole week everyone was watching Ike to see exactly where he was going to go. First Corpus, then Victoria, then Galveston. We were just in Galveston the weekend before. I feel so privileged that I got to see that city before it was wiped out. So Wednesday, we knew it was coming for us, so we started the hurricane preprations. We made a list of everything we needed and Wade and I headed to the grocery store on Thursday morning (after our storytime playgroup at the library of coarse). As I suspected, the place was nuts. People everywhere with this worried look on their faces. I calmly walked up and down the isles and got what we needed. I did feel the panic for a minute at the Pop-Tart isle and felt the need to buy some just because everyone else was. haha. So as Clay fixed up everything outside (mowing the lawn and putting away potential projectiles), I fixed up the house (fill the tubs with water, fill tons of containers with water, set up the Pack n Play in the closet, oh and do the laundry). Friday morning, we are ready for this storm to get here (aside from the windows, I talked Clay out of trying to board them up and he stressed about that all day). We had lunch at Willies Ice house, with tons of other people partying it up before the storm. So Friday night came, we gave Wade a bath and put him to bed and watched the radar. The wind started blowing around 10:30 or 11:00. About 11:30 I started getting scared so I went to get Wade and put him in the Pack n Play set up in our closet. This was supposed to be an easy transfer, but of coarse it did not turn out like that. He woke up and wanted to play. I didn't mind too much because it kind of took my mind off of the loud wind outside our house. So finially about 12:30 or so I put Wade in the Pack n Play and got back in the bed so he would fall asleep. The boy will not go to sleep if he sees you in the room. I sorta fell asleep until 3:00 a.m. when we offically lost power. Then I could really hear that wind howling and blowing stuff all over the place. I said, I can't do this and ran to the closet. Wade and I stayed in that closet all night. I had a little battery powered tv in there with me so I could check on the radar periodically and see where we were in relation to the storm. The wind was so loud, the house would creak and it felt like it even moved a little. I was so scared, I tried my best to just close my eyes and try to sleep. Clay was sound asleep in the bed, dang men, they can sleep through anything. Then around 7:00 a.m. people stared calling to see if we were ok. I sat up and said, "I think so". Then I ventured out of the closet to check on things. The wind was still going crazy outside, but now I could see it since the sun was up. There were leaves and little tree branches all over our yard. I ran to wake Clay up. It felt like Christmas morning when I used to run to go wake Stephanie up, "come on lets go see what Santa brought us". Only this time it wasn't Santa, it was Ike.
Our house really didn't get any damage. We were very lucky. It is hard to believe because there was so much damage around us. We fired up the generator and plugged in our refrigerator and a couple of fans. It really wasn't too bad in the house with those fans on us. Around 3:00 p.m. though we decided that this blows and we should just pack up and head to my parents house. As we were packing the car, one of the neighbors came over and started making small talk and then said, "So I hear you have a generator.....I don't know what we are going to do with our freezer, we have so much meat in there". I didn't want to offer it up without Clay's consent so I just kind of said, I know. Then Clay came outside and offered it up to them. I was glad to let them borrow it. They have 5 kids, one of which was just born August 15th.
As we were leaving town, we got to see some of the damage on Barker Cypress. WOW! Power lines down in people's back yard. Some of the poles that were down poked holes in people's roofs. Traffic lights dangleing in the middle of the street where you had to drive around them. It was eerie to think, we just went through a hurricane. A hurricane with winds up to 100 mph. That just freaks me out. And that Galveston is pretty much gone. We were just there. I am still in shock a little bit. I am sure it will be in shock again once I go home.

I know this post is forever long (sorry), but it is the whole story and one day I will look back on this post, read it and still be in shock that we were in hurricane Ike.

Thanks be to God for taking care of our family and our friends. Please be with all the others who lost everything.