We survived Ike's Fury

Hello Friends and Family,
I feel so blessed to let you know that we survived the great and dreadful day that Ike and Houston collided. It seems like it was a one-sided fight, but judging from the way that our ward and neighbors have pulled together and helped one another, I would have to say that from our vantage point that it was a little more even. We started making preparations earlier in the week and were so thankful that we did. We got some more water, batteries, milk, and fuel to cook with. Since the storm wasn't supposed to make landfall at Galveston until the early hours of Saturday morning we spent Thursday and Friday making preparations to greet Ike. We cleaned out the garage and parked inside cleaned up the yard, filled tubs, checked and rechecked 72 hour kits.

If we were not blessed with modern technology to let us know that a storm was coming, it would have been like any other day. After we were as prepared as we could be it was a wait and see mode. We invited our friends to come and play games with us for a while to try and take our minds off the impending storm. I was very nervous and the baby could tell because it was very active. Probably more active than it has ever been.

After our friends left to go to their own houses, we took showers, put Alex to bed and then waited. Eric had gotten up very early on Friday morning (4 am) because he couldn't sleep and then at 10 pm, with Ike still hours away from making landfall Eric passed out. With the wind howling around us, he was sleeping so soundly. When it got really windy, I took Alex from his bedroom and brought him down to the make-shift bedroom down in our entry. Before crashing Eric brought down a mattress and we had set up his pack'n play.

I sat half awake from that time until Alex woke up at 2:30 in the morning crying. I could see green flashes of light from transformers popping and could hear the wind howling and the rain pelting against the glass. The only thing that would calm Alex was singing hymns and primary songs to him for about 2 hours. I listened to the electricity flicker and come back on. Finally about 3:30 it went off for good. I kept drifting in and out and finally was able to sleep at about 4:30.Eric woke up briefly and we discovered that we had two small leaks upstairs. We found buckets and then tried to go back to sleep. I was awakened at 8 the next morning with an update from my friend Melanie. Luckily we still had phone and could contact our family and let them know that we were safe and that we just needed to ride out the rest of the storm. Later that morning because of the shift in wind direction, we got water in our back door. After we surveyed the damage to our house and neighborhood we were convinced that we were spared the brunt of Ike.

We lost some shingles and then had that minor leak, but we were extremely blessed, we know that Heavenly Father has spared us and had a watchful hand over us.We went and checked on our ward family and neighbors. Most had the same amount of damage as us and we are so grateful for being protected.

We were also blessed to get power on Sunday about 9:45 and even though it has been splotchy at times, we have had it continually from that time. We just got our phone and internet working again and that also seems splotchy, but we are thankful for the time that we have it. Eric has had the week off work and has been helping to clear debris and help around the house. I wanted to thank all of you who have been praying for us and our safety during and after the storm. I didn’t take many pictures of the damage that we saw, but we are thankful for so many volunteers who have come to help those who have been adversely affected by the storm. Please continue to pray for those who have lost so much in such a short period of time.