The girls knew that a big storm was coming and helped get out flashlights and batteries and get things ready in the house. We tried not to scare them, but wanted them to know what could happen. We put them to bed in their rooms Friday night, knowing that if we needed to, we would get them up and move them somewhere a little safer.
The power went out at our house at 1:40 a.m. (Brian couldn't sleep very well and had gotten up to check on things!) Elizabeth woke up at about 3:00 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. She is used to having a nightlight in her room. But with the power out and her window covered, it was very dark. It sounded pretty loud outside, so we decided to get the girls up and have them go back to bed on an air mattress in our master closet. (Our closet is huge! Enough room for the whole family to sleep during a hurricane!) They thought it was great fun to have a slumber party!
They took a while to get settled down and then we all slept for a few more hours. It was still pretty loud when we got up Saturday morning. We stayed in the house most of day and played games. It was kind of dark, since most of our windows were boarded up.
When we looked out in our backyard, we could see that a neighbor's tree had fallen over the fence into our yard. The branches were just a couple feet from our bedroom window.
We could also see that the top of one our our trees had broken off, just missing the fence on the other side of the yard.
Other than that, there were just a lot of tree branches everywhere! We cleaned up the driveway and sidewalk on Saturday afternoon, then did the backyard on Monday morning.
Elizabeth liked helping pick up leaves and branches and making a pile. Abby liked riding her bike.
Elizabeth wanted to use the broom and Abby kept riding her bike!
Finally, Abby decided she was missing out and decided to help!
Saturday night there was a huge thunderstorm. It was very loud and lasted a long time. It was even louder than the hurricane the previous night!
We heard that our power would probably be out for a while, so Monday afternoon we decided to drive to Uah to visit family. We arrived late Wednesday afternoon (after about 30 hours in the car!). We were able to attend all of Grandpa Russ's funeral services. We were glad we made it.
The girls and I had fun visiting with family while Brian worked in Salt Lake the next week.
We kept hearing reports that our power would not be restored until sometime between September 28th and October 6th. So we were planning to stay at Grandpa and Grandma McPheeters for a while.
Then on Friday night, September 26th, we got a call from the Ralstons - our power was back on! We decided to start driving home on Saturday. We got home really late Sunday night, and spent yesterday doing laundry and getting our house in order.
We are really happy to be home, and very grateful that we did not have any major damage from the hurricane.
Here is a link to Woodlands Online where they have a photo gallery of Hurricane Ike in The Woodlands.
2 comments:
Kind of a mess, eh? Glad that you rode out the storm well and had a good reason to come see us in Utah. Good luck getting everything back in order. I tagged you on my blog, so take a look. --Brenna
Wow! You survived your first BIG storm! If it isn't earthquakes in the Bay Area it's a different natural disaster somewhere else right? Take care--glad you are well!
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