What A Ride!

And that ride's name is IKE! Hurricane Ike that is. It came onshore and went straight thru us September 13-14. Victor, the girls and I evacuated to Brian's house (again - we always end up there) and drove home - I kid you not - Saturday morning only a few hours after the hurricane went thru. We were anxious to see the damage or hopefuly the lack of damage. Driving home was - I am at a loss for words - but as we drove home windows were blown out, power lines down, trees blown over or wrapped around other things. It was so scary thinking if it is this bad on the north side of town what will it be like at home?
As we turned into our neighborhood destruction was everywhere - trees and power lines down everywhere, fences laying flat where they used to be standing tall, and just a mess. Heart wrenching and gut twisting - what would we find at our house?
Arriving at our house the front was fine - trees were down in the front yard but none on or in the house. The backyard was another matter altogether. All the fences were down, our tree had fallen into our neighbor behind us yard crushing his shed, a tree fell on our shed but only did some damage not total damage.
We found out from those neighbors that the power had been off since 11 pm the night before so the rush was on to save what food we could - not much was salvageable - we cooked hot dogs, porkchops and some hamburger meat on the grill. Cleanup was an ongoing and still is an ongoing affair.
Power was off for eight days, phone was in and out after about four days without and of course I had no internet for a looong time hence my not posting this until now. We learned alot about ourselves in those eight days without power. First of all cold showers suck no matter how hot you are because there is no A/C, MREs (Meals ready to eat) are fun science experiments - just don't experiment err I mean cook on the dining room table, you get in lines not knowing why you are in line (hopefully it will for something good like ice), and the worst part for me is listening to Amory cry for milk and not being able to cook a hot meal for my family.
When power came back on Victor and I got tears in our eyes but we stayed strong for the girls - now it just getting back into routine. Priscilla was out of school for 11 days - two weeks that thru us all out of wack, Amory took everything in stride - it just meant she got to play outside more, and Victor and I lost five pounds and seven pounds respectively.
I am ready to put all of this behind me - tuck the memories away in my heart and my scrapbook and know that we have proved the old saying true "what doesn't kill us will only make us stronger."