Hurricane Ike :-(

Well we survived Hurricane Ike and are even among the fortunate few that have power restored in Houston. Neither of our families nor most of our friends have power, so we have had lots of people over here, we are happy to be able to provide air conditioning and a fridge!!

For the record, I will NEVER again shelter in place or "hunker down" as they call it here if a hurricane of any strength is coming neay my home. Luke did fine of course during the storm, we all stayed downstairs during the storm and Luke hardly even woke up. It was very scary and Vic and I spent most of the evening huddled in the bathroom while winds and rain that sounded like they were going to tear our house apart ripped by. I just kept waiting for the sound of broken glass, but fortunately we never heard that! We suffered little damage, which we are tremedously thankful for. We lost most of our fence and had some minor tree damage, and we had water in our sunroom, but our house is fine other than that.

As awful as the storm was, things are absolutely crazy now. I just went to run an errand and if you can find a gas station open, there are lines as far as you can see of cars waiting for gas. Some grocery store are open, but many don't have anything cold and there are lines to get in those. I am going to try to venture out today to get some more food to feed people that come over!

To all my friends in Houston that I can't get a hold of, I hope you are ok and that we can get in touch soon!! Here are a few picture of our house.

This was Austen and Vic boarding up both of our houses. We felt a little wimpy putting boards up, but wow, we were glad to have those when the storm came. The wind ripped a board off our kitchen window and was beating against it, but by some miracle is stayed on the ground and never went anywhere.

We had a few pieces of fence still standing :-) Oh well, this is an old fence that needs replacing anyways!

We had a section of our tree dangling that needed to be cut down. Vic cut this section down, and then fortunately a neighbor came by with a chainsaw and helped cut it apart.

Lastly, I just want to say how thankful we are for God's protection during the storm. On the day the storm came, I was doing my bible study and it was no coincidence that it was on God being our refuge and shelter and this was one of the verses, which came in handy when we were riding out the storm "....I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed." Psalm 57:1