37 hours

(I've been working on this blog for the last 3 days, so I'm now going in and adding some updated information in red.)

Hurricane Ike. A category 2 storm. Just a category 2. Wow.

I'm happy to report we're all doing absolutely fine, and our friends are all doing great, too! Thank you God! Our plan all along was to stay, and then assess once we had a chance to take a look around. After 37 hours, Josh and I decided to quit waiting for the power to come back on, and head on home to our parents until things were up and running here. On Wednesday evening our power finally came back on. Hooray! Almost 5 days. Please say a prayer for some of our friends in Kingwood who are--as of Saturday--still without power! Obviously, not to mention all those south of us who will be without power for some time to come.

Here's our story:

Friday evening was LOVELY. We had a wonderful breeze, we chatted with the neighbors outside and were able to see everyone's preparations. Abby really enjoyed playing with the older girls. A little after 8, Abby got her bath and went to bed. I also took a shower because I wasn't sure what the next morning was going to hold for us! We stepped outside again, and the wind was about 50mph (We only know this because we were still able to watch the news, and that's the information it was giving us.) We were talking to some neighbors again, but some debris was starting to pelt us, so we all decided to say goodnight and be safe.

Once we came back inside, we wiped down the bathtub and put all the blankets and pillows inside the bathroom. This was our place we were going to go in case of tornado warnings, the wind, and all other hurricane related things ;-) Doesn't the tub look extra comfy?

I fell asleep early on the couch, around 9:45pm. I guess I was anticipating I would have next to zero amount of sleep that night so a power nap would do me good :-) Around 10:30pm our power went off, and that woke me up. It came right back on though, and continued to flash on and off every so often for the next few hours until we lost it for good at 12:30am. I am definitely surprised we kept it that long. The wind seemed so strong then, but actually the wind was nothing like what we experienced when the strongest part came. Between 2:30am-3am is when the extreme rain and wind was hitting. It was the craziest thing! LOUD! Everything in the house was making some kind of noise.

I turned on the camera at 3am when I was sitting in the middle of my living room (obviously it's pitch black). This is basically what I heard. Keep in mind I was not standing beside a door or window. I know it doesn't sound like that much, but trust me, it totally was! The next part of the video is the next morning when things had TOTALLY calmed down, but on any other day we would consider this a pretty strong storm.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Surprisingly Abby did SO good during the night. She woke up one time upset because it was so dark in her room (she usually sleeps with a night light), and she couldn't find her paci. Once I held her for a few minutes, and popped it back in, she pointed back at her bed. She wanted to go back to sleep! That's my girl :-) She woke up at normal time that morning.

Once everything started dying down, we were so eager to take a look around. Here are a ton of random pictures of what we saw throughout our neighborhood and around town.

These are the only two things that we got...one slat of the fence down and a leaning fence, and this limb.

Lucky neighbor...

Not so lucky neighbor...

Our friends, Matt and Kim, with a tree down in their backyard...

Signs and trees down all around...

This particular tree was down in front of Target on 1960 (one of our main thoroughfares)

We were SO surprised to see this EXTREMELY long line for gas just 2 days after (on Sunday). I mean really, didn't they know a hurricane was coming? This line was way longer, but by the time I actually got the camera out, we were more than half up it. Crazy!After a category 2 hurricane--pure genius! :-) We got home yesterday (Friday) and had the pleasure to clean out our most nasty fridge. I will say, this is the most clean the fridge has been since we moved in! Things didn't smell that bad, but they looked gross! Unfortunately we lost a lot of food--we didn't have room or ice for that matter to take it all home with us.

There are still some people in our neighborhood without power, and some of those people are right down the street from us. Crazy how that works.

And during ALL this chaos, our friends, The Snowden's, had a baby! Noah was born on Thursday morning, and he's doing fabulous. Our friends told us they have 24 babies in the hospital nursery, and that doesn't count the babies that are in their parents' rooms. The hospital has kept the families longer so people wouldn't have to go home with a newborn to no power.