First off, we're fine! We came through great. Our God is an Awesome God! We got our trees trimmed by our friendly neighborhood hurricane, but he was kind enough not to provide us with a sky light or anything similar.
Rob & I stayed up until midnight/1 AM listening to the wind howl and then proceeded to sleep through the rest of the storm. We lost the power sometime after that. When we surveyed the damage on Saturday morning after the winds & rain died down, we had a bunch of downed limbs & tons of leaves, but that was it. We also have a tiny bit of roof damage near our chimney.
The neighborhood came through okay - we lost a lot of fences, had a several LARGE trees come up at the roots, but only one hit a house. We also got to keep our land telephone lines until sometime Sunday afternoon. The folks who live on the neighborhood perimeter got power back Sunday night, those of us on the inside got power back on Monday afternoon. We got the phones back late Monday & never lost our water.
We likened it to camping in the house. We ate off the Coleman propane stove. Had limited light at night. Listened to other people's generators run all night long. Didn't shower for several days at a time.
Unfortunately, friends and family didn't fair so well. No one was hurt, but we know lots of folks who still don't have power. We know a few who had trees fall into their homes or vehicles. We also have friends whose homes and cars were flooded.
You become very thankful for the large things - a whole house, no injuries and for the small things - the folks who got power first & took your frozen foods to keep them frozen.
Life is slowly returning to normal on our side of town, the grocery stores & gas stations are opening. More & more stop lights are working. Each day more people get their power back. Rob went back to work Tuesday, I went back today. School should start again Monday. Hurricane season ends November 1. I can't wait.
It's a seven passenger cross-over, so no more cramped trips to Dallas or borrowing/renting a car to go on vacation
One downside - look at how much garage it takes up! Especially after only having parked sedans in here, this is a little mind blowing.
And the bittersweet, this is the one time that the new Outlook was parked next to my old Saturn, Ruby.
Ruby went home with a new owner today. My best friend, Stina bought her to replace the Ford Explorer that was flooded during Ike (it was parked in Galveston while she was on a cruise). We were talking today and she remembers when I first brought Ruby to Nacogdoches after my parents gave her to me in Dallas. Sniff. That was 10 years and 133,000+ mile ago!
