Hurricane Ike - Part II

I know it has been so long since I posted the first part of our experience with Hurricane Ike - and it has been making me crazy that I haven't finished it yet. It is just so damn time consuming to post personal stories and pictures! I takes too much thought. That is why I fill our blog with so much nonsense. :) Because it is mindless, easy and fun! :)

Well, anyway, here is Part II. Hopefully tomorrow I can make myself finish with Part III and you will have the complete Smith Family Ike Experience! And when it is all done you can go to the left side of the blog and click on 'hurricane ike' under the labels and it will just bring up posts relating to Ike. That way you can read them in order... well backwards order anyway!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2OO8 (cont'd...)
Robert came upstairs about 930pm that night and said that the power was already out. This was it. Our power went out before it even started storming on our side of town. A bit later it was starting to get really windy and rainy and started to get warm in the house from no AC. We tried to sleep a bit. I wasn’t too scared at this time and thought we could stay in our bed as long as possible so we could be comfy. An hour or two later I woke up and listened to the news more. The eye had made landfall and they were reporting that it was moving towards our part of town specifically and would be to us within the next hour. That is when I started to get a little worried. At this point they could track the storm and wind speeds to the minute and to the exact location and all they kept talking about was northwest Harris County – which is us. The big, bad ‘band’ (as they call it) was going to hit us. We were on the ‘dirty’ side of the storm. Parker was getting a little freaked the louder it got. Carson was… Carson. Saying things like, “Want to play Star Wars, Parpar!?” – at 2am... in the total dark... with his little lisp – oblivious to what was going on around. And Demi was on her little ‘bed’ at the foot of our bed with her blanket on and her head covered – which is how she sleeps. I kept trying to take off her blanket. At least from her head since it was so hot, but every time I looked she was back in the exact same position with her head covered. She never woke up the whole night. I kept looking out the window and it never seemed too bad to me, but what do I know!? Parker was so scared that Carson, Parker and I finally went and slept in the closet. Robert stayed in bed and Demi stayed at the foot of our bed because she was shielded from the windows and because she never woke up – she wasn’t scared. Robert said during the worst part he could feel the wall pull away from his hand that was resting on it at the head of the bed. Weird. I guess from the pressure… Anyway – we made it through to morning.The kiddos wanted to play in the rain and water. They were being so funny...Heading out to survey the damage... Too bad we couldn't get out of our subdivision. The following are the next street over. What was amazing is that even though a tree might not have uprooted, so many had to be taken down. Look at how the tree is leaning in the photo below. So weird that they became so weak. Herman Park, downtown, lost 115 old and beautiful trees alone. So sad. And the city is still dotted with blue tarps on rooftops and fences are still down all over.Finally... a little later...
Spring Creek Oaks & KuehnleOut and about... Kuykendhal, Louetta and down Champion Forest Drive...