Ike Came to Visit Us!

Last week, we realised that a hurricane named Ike was brewing out in the Gulf and as the days passed by, it occurred to us that he was going to blow right through Spring, Texas. We were worried and were going to head North to Denton because he was a 3 and possibly a 4. I didn't want to hang around for something like that. Well, the school didn't even close down until Thursday afternoon at the regular release time, and teachers were still responsible for moving things away from windows, picking computers up off the floor, covering things with plastic, etc. That is not too much for a regular teacher, but the library is a pretty big room, with lots of computers and windows, etc. It was down right ridiculous. Anyway, by the time I got home the storm was surprised to find out that A. The storm was to hit Friday night as a Category 2 storm (great news) B. Spring would be on the clean side of the storm, or the eye would go right over us. and C. The drive to Dallas would take us over 10 hours. We decided to stay and "hunker down".

We weren't too worried about a 2...but it was a storm that literally covered more than 40% of the Gulf of Mexico...it was almost the size of Texas so he was a really big storm. We decided to keep the kids busy during the storm, so we met up at our neighbors, the Crenshaw's, so that our kids could play with each other and the parents could sit around and play cards. It worked well. The kids were elated to have their very first sleepover!!! We slept under their dining room table on Peyton's mattress. Kaytlynn, Delaney and Peyton close by. We also gave all the girls benedryll so they slept like babies while the storm lit up the sky. It was an amazing sight. Transformers were going off about ever 20 - 30 seconds and they would turn the sky a bright eerie green color. I had never seen anything like it before (and hopefully won't see it ever again). We lost power at about 3 a.m. and we stayed up through the worst of it and then went to bed. Ill have to post later about Jeff and Todd walking out in the storm in the middle of the worst part of the hurricane....they are nuts, but we love them.

We woke up the next morning to Kaytlynn saying it was the best day of her life...it was so funny! We found out later that morning that our house had quite a bit of damage!

I am off to my mother's house for dinner, so I will post the rest later...but we are all fine and feeling so thankful. I am sure you, as the reader are a bit tired of this long post as well, so I guess I am doing both of us a favor. I am posting this, not so much for everyone to see the ins and outs of it, but for us to be able to look back on all of this in a few years and remember the good and the bad and be able to count this as one of our many blessings.