Safe and sound

Whew! I never knew the power of hurricanes until two weeks ago when Ike came our way. My dad had the day off on Friday, when the hurricane hit. We spent the day putting away outdoor furniture, flowers, and the trampoline. As the sun was setting, you could see the dark, sinister clouds swirling around the beautiful sunset. It began to grow dark, and strangely still. Even though it was nighttime, you could still see the clouds moving around in an eerie sort of way.

The power went out at 2:40am--I know this because Elena and I had stayed up to watch a movie while we still could :). I went to bed right after the power went out but Caro decided to wake me up at 5am because the neighbor's tree had fallen, blocking the road. As all of us were looking at it, their second tree also fell and almost hit a car! That was pretty cool to watch. The wind blew so hard and it rained like crazy. Once everything had died down, around mid-morning, we went outside to survey the damage. Our side fence had fallen down in the backyard, we had a small lake, and lots of big branches had fallen in the front yard. Since we didn't have much damage to speak of, we got together with some of our neighbors and cleaned up each others yards. That was a very tiring day where everyone got really wet and sticky.

Saturday night was definitely the worst night without AC (the words "sizzling" and "sticky" come to mind). However, the Lord gave us cool weather Sunday through Friday. It was so nice to sleep and do school on those days (we made sure to leave all the windows open). The AC soon became the least of our troubles; the first, being our fridge started to become an oven instead and our cell phones wanted to die. We ended up cooking a lot of food on our grill and going to the Baucham's for various reasons is always a treat :). We were so thankful when my uncle offered his generator to us! We made the fridge cold again and the cell phones were saved. Looking back, it wasn't so bad without electricity; no distractions, eating outside, and lots of fellowship. On Friday, the Houston weather was back but the Baucham's graciously invited us to stay with them and we did. We had a great time! While we were there, Nicole called us on Saturday with her news. A few minutes later, my mom called to say our house had just gotten electricity! We were only one week without power. The Lord is so good to us.

The End

This story would be loads better with pictures but we haven't uploaded them yet. Ha ha I guess you'll just have to wait for that.

In Christ,

Micaela