Hurricane IKE!!!

Oh hurricane season......

Actually, living in The Woodlands for as long as I have (22 years) you would think I'd been through more hurricanes. We have actually been very lucky, and living nearly 100 miles off the coast, haven't had to worry too much about storms.

And then there was IKE.

I knew we were in trouble when we got out of school a day early just to prepare for the storm. Then, when I went to the store....the shelves were bare. When I went to the gas station.....there was no gas. Then, I started to get a little nervous!

The storm came in during the night on Friday. I woke up around 2:30am to the sound of what I thought were bombs hitting our roof. Turns out it was tree limbs and pine cones. Our power went out at 6:00am and stayed out for 5 days. Then it was the wind and rain that started to scare me. I love living in The Woodlands....but that was the problem....the WOODS. Our house is surrounded by HUGE pine trees, and boy were those puppies swaying in the wind! I was sure our house was a gonner!

Because John works for The Woodlands he had to go into work at 9:00am Saturday, while the storm was still going full force. Thank God my parents know me well enough to know I was home alone crying and scared because my dad came to rescue me and take me to his house! If he had come any later, I would have been trapped. Our street completely flooded. Here's what our street looked like. Keep in mind, these were taken late Saturday afternoon.....after the storm had passed.

And the backyard......the first picture is what the drainage ditch behind our house USUALLY looks like, then the next pictures are what it looked like after IKE.

We've always talked about having waterfront property someday, we had no idea we could have a lake behind our house here! We ended up being very lucky. We did have some water come in the back doors so we have some wood floors that need to be redone, but compared to what happened to so many in our area, we are counting our lucky stars. The most we had was a lot of debris to clean up.

Thankfully we got power back, and a few more days later we got cable, then internet, and this week we finally got back all of our movie channels. Life is slowly getting back to normal around here. Hopefully hurricane season ends soon!