Return to Normal

Life is starting to return to normal around here. Tyler went back to school today. I think he was ready to go back - he was up on time and in a good mood when he left. The tree has been removed from our backyard, but now we are left with the rootball sticking out of the ground. It will be a while before we are able to remove that. The fence should be fixed this week and then I can start looking for a new tree to plant by the fence and get all of the bushes trimmed and cleaned up.

The trees leaning on houses have been replaced by blue tarps. There are still quite a few trees near the streets that need to be cleaned up and all of the neighborhoods have yards filled with debris waiting to be picked up. I'm sure this will all be taken care of soon. It's amazing how much has been accomplished in just this past week!

The local TV stations are still showing "After Ike" coverage all day. All areas of Houston have been affected, but everyone is making progress. People will begin returning to Galveston this week to cleanup and rebuild.

Home Sweet Home

We are back in The Woodlands. It doesn't look much different around here today than it did on Sunday. People are starting to get their trees removed and we are waiting our turn - hopefully within the next few days. They are working on the tree across the street right now. The yard is already full of debris and they only have 1/4 of the tree down so far. The whole neighborhood is going to be piled with chopped up pine trees by the end of the week.

We found out quickly after we got back that our neighborhood is one of the lucky few that have power. Less than 10% of the power has been restored and it is spotty. A restaurant on one end of Market Street has power, but the HEB at the other is still running on generators. Grocery shopping was an odd experience. The usually bright and open store was dimly lit and structured to keep shoppers moving in the same direction. I was impressed though, the shelves were surprisingly well stocked, they had a ton of people working, and they were doing a great job getting people in and out.

Gas is still tough to come by. Without power, the gas pumps do not work. The few stations that are open have cars lined up for blocks waiting for gas. One of our cars has a full tank and the other is a little over half full so I'm hoping that we can hold off for a couple days and maybe the lines won't be so bad.

The local channels are still covering Ike all day. Some of the pictures coming out of Galveston are unbelievable... completely wiped out in areas. You can only watch the media coverage for so long though before it starts to drive you nuts. The press conferences are the worst. The reporters are trying to find some dirt for a juicy story to put blame and anger on someone. There are the usual critiques of the government and FEMA, but they'll attack whoever happens to be speaking at the press conference.

So, for now we are home... with power. We had random power outages after Rita, so I wouldn't be surprised if that happens again, but so far so good!

Let There Be Light!

Just got a text message from a neighbor saying that we have power! Now, we need to decide when to go back. We just returned from Bryan and the boys rented video games while we were there. They want to stay so they can play their games, but I have to be in The Woodlands tomorrow for an appointment anyway. Guess we'll get it figured out tonight.

Ike Hit The Woodlands... Hard

We got up early this morning and drove to The Woodlands to check on our house. We haven't been able to get in touch with anyone so we weren't sure what to expect. Driving into town we saw a bunch of uprooted trees and down power lines. The first sign of property damage we saw was a SUV in our neighborhood that had been crunched by a fallen pine tree. Everything appeared fine at our house until we opened the front door and saw the view out our dining room door. The near 100 foot pine tree had uprooted and fallen toward our neighbor's house. We are so lucky that the wind was not blowing the other way, but unfortunately our neighbors did suffer damage from it. As the tree fell, it split another tree in our yard in half, plowed through our fence, and pierced the neighbor's roof before finally snapping in half and creating a bridge from our yard to their pool.

After talking with various neighbors, we quickly learned that this was some of the more minor damage in our neighborhood. Two of the houses across the street had trees fall on the back of their house, a house down the street was sliced by a tree in their yard, another tall tree fell and took out my friend's fence before landing in her pool... the list goes on. I would guess that about 1 out of every 3 houses in the neighborhood suffered some sort of significant damage. The people with roof damage were hurt even further by the HUGE thunderstorms that passed through last night. Two of our neighbors have water damaged walls and another had multiple rooms that flooded due to the large hole in their roof.

Since The Woodlands area is still completely out of power, we have decided to stay at the ranch for a few more days. Woody brought his commercial-size generator with us incase we needed it and ended up leaving it with the neighbors to use. They were extremely grateful to have a power source. Besides the food from my freezer, we also brought another child back to the ranch with us. Tyler's friend from the neighborhood jumped on the invitation - he is grateful to have video games.

We feel very lucky that we didn't have any damage to our house and feel for those who do. It is not going to be a quick recovery. The latest reports we are hearing is up to three weeks before power is completely restored. As of now, schools in our area are closed Monday and Tuesday. I'm sure the return on Wednesday will be dependent on if power has been restored or not.

I'm still a bit in shock from what I saw today. Nobody got hurt and the damage done is fixable, but being in the middle of the situation is a feeling I am not able to describe. Right now I feel like I should be back at home with the rest of the neighbors, but I also know there really isn't much I can do there until power is restored. So, for now I sit here at my in-law's beautiful, comfy ranch home feeling a bit displaced.

view from my dining room / tree in our backyard
 
tree split by falling tree / assessing the damage with the neighbors
 
our tree through the neighbor's roof / neighbor's pool
 
house across the street / tree sliced through roof few houses from us
 

Click here to view these photos and a few more on my shutterfly page

Ike - The Woodlands

I've been surfing the internet trying to find info on damage in The Woodlands. Looks like there are quite a few trees down - some of which landed on houses. Click here to read the initial report from the fire department. I've also found quite a few bloggers reporting trees down on or around their houses. Wish I could get ahold of one of our neighbors, but nearly 100% of the power in The Woodlands is out which renders cordless home phones useless. I need to put "get neighbor's cell phone numbers" on my to do list.

Uneventful Afternoon with Ike

It seems that most of the storm has passed the ranch. It's still raining and a bit windy, but nothing more than a heavy rain storm. We are all amazed that we still have power and I now have hope that we will be watching movies in the theatre tonight! We will leave here tomorrow morning and head back to The Woodlands to see how our house stood up to the storm. The reports I'm hearing so far say that pretty much the entire Houston area is without power and it may be up to two weeks before it is fully restored. Bleh. Houston without air conditioning is not a comfortable situation. If there are major power problems and school is cancelled, we may come back to the ranch for a few days. Right now though, everything is still pretty much up in the air.

Waiting out Ike

We're out at the ranch watching the news. The wind is blowing and it's raining fairly hard here, but we know it will get worse before it gets better. Right now we're on the edge of it. The eye won't pass through here but the winds should pick up and we're expecting to lose power. We all got showers in this morning and Mimi washed clothes last night since we don't know when we will see power again after it goes out. I taught Grandma Hodges how to play train dominoes last night so that we have a candlelight activity for later today. We played a few rounds last night and she's kicking everyone's butt!!!

From watching weather reports, it looks like the eye of the storm went over pretty close to our house. I really wonder what things look like there and what I will be going home to tomorrow. 

Hello Ike!

It looks like we will be impacted by the next hurricane in the gulf. We are on the north side of Houston and far enough away from the coast, but it is still predicted that we will feel hurricane force winds. All of the schools in the area have closed for tomorrow, so we will be heading out to the ranch this evening. I'm not expecting much damage in our area, but I am fairly certain we will lose power - and no air conditioning in Houston is NOT a fun time.

This afternoon will be spent packing up snacks and drinks for the road since I'm sure the trip will take us longer than usual due to evacuation traffic. We also need to haul everything from the backyard to the garage to keep it from blowing through the neighborhood. Stephen and Tyler will re-arrange furniture when Tyler gets home from school - moving my beloved breakfast table to the center of the house and away from windows and rain. Other than that, we just need to grab MaGoo, update the ipod with lots of Prairie Home Companion, and hit the road.

I'll keep y'all updated on Ike's visit!

Backyard Pineapple

A couple summers ago, I planted the top from a store-bought pineapple. This summer it produced a baby pineapple and I noticed yesterday that it had finally turned yellow. Stephen said "it's probably not any good." Won't he be surprised tonight! I cut it open and it is really nummy!