Whew, we made it through Ike and now we have P-O-W-E-R!!

Warning: This post took me several days to write, so it is very long.

Man, I tell you, living without power for a week is rough. I really never knew how important electricity was until I lost it! Hurricane Ike swept through south east texas last Friday night. We decided to go to Huntsville since it is a little further away from the coast than where we're at in Sugar Land. Apparently that wasn't the best of ideas because the eye of the storm decided to come directly over Huntsville. I had never actually been through a hurricane (besides Alicia in '83 when we were babies, so that doesn't really count), so I really didn't know what to expect. I knew there would be wind and rain, but I didn't know how bad it would be. I was especially nervous having Jayda with us because I felt like I had to keep her safe, but was scared because I didn't know what could happen. We decided to go out to Jacob's house to "hunker down", as they say in Texas, for the storm. On friday night we stayed up late watching the news to see the latest updates on Ike. We ended up going to sleep around 12:30 a.m., but I knew I wasn't really going to be able to sleep. My goodness, there was a hurricane knocking on our front door. So, anyways, I layed down for a while and around 3:15 a.m. Jayda woke up crying for some reason. Jacob was going out of our room to get her a bottle (so that she'd go back to sleep since the hurricane was starting to hit) and as he stepped out of the room all I heard was "OH-NO!!" I said, honey, what's the matter? Then the next thing I heard was like the last thing you ever want to hear if you have dogs, "One of the dogs pooped EVERYWHERE!" I told him to go ahead and get Jayda some milk and take care of her and I'd come out and clean up the wonderful diarrhea mess that Nina had left all over the Paschal's house!! Mind you, this stupid hurricane has just really started getting strong outside. The wind is kicking up really loud, windows are rattling, lights are flickering, I'm freaking out and now I have to scrub the floors, and oh yeah, it smells TERRIBLE! I was just about to start cleaning everything up and Suzie came out of her room. She was so sweet and stayed in the hall to keep me company while I cleaned. The lights kept going in and out and I just kept hoping they would stay on long enough for me to just finish cleaning. I had put Nina in the bathroom near the hallway where I was cleaning and after I finished I kept smelling something. I opened up the bathroom to let her out and what do ya know, she'd gone in there some more! Poor thing, I have no idea what was wrong. It could of been the storm, although she usually never gets scared during storms, or it could of been something she ate. So, of course the power went out and I had to use a flash light to finish scrubbing up the rest of it. After that I asked Jacob to take her outside because something was not right. So, in the middle of this dang hurricane poor Nina went outside and went to bathroom. We thought she might get blown away out there, but she came back to the porch and ended up sleeping the rest of the night. So, by the time all that chaos was over it was about 5:00 a.m. Jacob and Jayda had layed down in the closet under the stairwell and slept the rest of the night until about 8:15 a.m. The rest of us were huddled up in the master bedroom closet. I kept going out to check on Nina every 20 minutes because I was worried she may need to go to the restroom again. Thank goodness, she ended up sleeping the rest of the night also. Justin had his blackberry in the closet with us so he was giving us updates of where the hurricane was and what was going on in Galveston and Houston. Suzie also had the radio on in the bedroom so every 5-10 minutes they'd give an update of what was going on and she'd fill us in. Around 8:30 the front part of the storm had passed and the eye was coming over us. It was so strange. We'd had all this high wind and heavy rain for about 5 hours, and then it all stopped. No more wind, just a slight sprinkle. We actually took the dogs out when the eye passed because we figured they wouldn't be going out for a long time once the back half hit. After about an hour the winds started blowing again and the rain started pouring. We were still out of electricity so all we had was the radio to listen to and get updates. On the radio they were saying that the worst was past and that the 2nd part wouldn't be quite as bad. They also said that the storm had moved slightly to our right, so we wouldn't get hit quite as hard. I was sooo happy to hear this! Also, by this time it was light outside and we could actually see what was going on out there instead of just hearing things and having no idea what it was. Whew, what an unforgettable night! Since most of us were exhausted from being up all night, we decided to take a nap during the 2nd part. After the storm had finally passed around 3:00 p.m. the boys hooked up the generator. It was so nice to have one so that we could keep our food cold and have some fans going to stay cool. That evening Kyle, Karen, Cole and Caitlyn came over to hang out and eat dinner. We made grilled cheese sandwiches, Jayda played with her cousins, and we talked in the dark. That night we slept in Jacob's parents room and hooked a fan up so that Jayda would stay cool and we'd all get a little bit of air. The next morning we woke up and packed up all of our stuff. We had talked to our neighbors back in Sugar Land and they had said we had power back home. We were so excited to go home and have power. So, we loaded up and headed home. We were worried we may get stuck in a lot of traffic on the way home (since everyone was probably trying to get home), but it actually wasn't bad, thank goodness! We made it home around 1:30 and we were so incredibly excited to have power here! I kept thinking to myself, this is too good to be true. No one in Huntsville, Houston, Galveston etc. has power, but we do?! I unpacked all of our stuff, ate some lunch and then around 4:30 we heard this loud boom. A transformer had blown, and guess what? We lost power!! Oh, we were so frustrated! We thought we came home to have electricity, and now it was gone. Not only did we come back to have electricity, Justin and Lourdes and Klint and Brandy had come to stay with us to have power! And, the worst part about it all was that it was just on our little circle. Everyone else in our entire neighborhood had power. At night you'd come into our neighborhood and all the houses would be lit up. You'd get to our street and it'd be pitch black. I called Center Point and they said that they were aware of the problem, but didn't know what day it would be back on. Day, what did she mean day? Are you kidding me?!!! Aaaahhh! I didn't know what we were going to do. Since we thought we had power we had no generator, no ice, no batteries, no nothing! What were we going to do? Thankfully our sweet neighbors, Scott and Michelle, let us run an extension cord over the fence from their generator so that we could hook up a fan for Jayda while she slept and also our refrigerator. Thank goodness for caring people like them! We were able to have cold food and since our stove and water heater runs on gas, we could cook food and take hot showers. So, it really wasn't as bad as what many people were dealing with.

I definitely will never forget a few things about ole' Ike:
cooking in the dark, doing dishes in the dark, checking Klint and Justin's blackberry at night to find out what was going on in the world, bathing Jayda at night with a flashlight, late night tennis with Justin and Lourdes and Klint and Brandy (since the tennis courts had electricity!), open windows, the constant hum of generators, late night chats by candlelight, seeing neighbors outside a lot more than usual, going to the park twice a day just to get out of the house, going to the bathroom in the dark, hitting light switches by accident then realizing that nothing was going to happen, the sounds of chainsaws and people hammering, the shortage of gas/food/ice...

We ended up not getting our power back on until Thursday night. And let me tell you, people were so happy and thankful to those guys that came and fixed the lines. Everyone was out in the streets waving and yelling "Thank you so much, hallelujah, y'all are awesome etc..." Once we got power it was like our whole world changed. I never realized just how important electricity was until I lost it. I know that I've said that already, but it is SO true!! Not only do the lights and air condition not work, but I also couldn't wash clothes, couldn't put food down the disposal, couldn't check my e-mail, and the list goes on and on... So many things I'd just taken for granted before that I would just about do anything to get them back (like being able to wash my clothes!!). It's so funny how your perspective can change once you go through something like this. I walk around my house now and I am constantly thinking about how grateful I am to be able to turn on my computer, turn on my light in the closet to see my clothes, have the a.c. running, have baby monitors that work. This storm has truly made me realize just how incredibly blessed I am!

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures in Huntsville during the hurricane or after, so here is a cute picture I took of Jayda a few days ago after our power came back on!