Hurricane IKE

I used to sit in my nice comfy house in Utah and watch the news after a hurricane would rip through somewhere and say why this or why that. I would think if it were me I would do this different or what not. Well let's just say when you are going through it and it's your house you are worried about and it's your power that is off and your phone and internet that isn't working, it's pretty darn hard. We did pretty well through the strom. Apart from the fact that we lost power at about 7:00 pm on Friday night and it was so HOt all night long. I couldn't sleep because our house was being pounded by wind and rain for about 12 hours. I was worried that the windows would get blown out or that our roof would be missing pieces. We had all of the kids sleep in our room where the windows were covered the best and so we could all be together. They slept very well condsidering. Gracie would wake up and go look outside and talk about the wind and rain and go back to sleep. I wasn't so lucky. I was up most of the night looking and worrying. We were lucky enough to loose a few shingles from the roof and a few branches from a tree. A dish network dsish come off the roof and created a small hole that created a leak. Our family room has a small amount of water damage, but it will survive. It's more than I can say for some people in our neighborhood. Our power came back on at 7:00 am, and we had a working home phone until about 8:30 am on Saturday. It stopped working along with Internet. Now Monday 2 days later we have it again. Our cell phones haven't even been working. We have had to text people to try and get through but they have been taking up to an hour to go through if they did at all. Luckily we were prepared and had plenty of food and water. It does make me look at prepardness in a new way. I might have thought what we had was enough on thursday, but heaven forbid there is a next time I am going to have 3 times as much stuff and different things that we didn't have this time around. It has been an ordeal and there aren't really words to describe unless you have been through a hurricane personally. I am so grateful that we were protected. We didn't have church yesterday, the men went from house to house helping and giving service where they could. I am so grateful for so many great individuals and familys that have pulled together to help eachother out to make this a better experience for everyone. It's been hard having Brad gone from Saturday to today almost all day assisting others, but we would be ungrateful indeed if he wasn't out helping others less fortunate then we were. We did take some video of the storm as it was calming down. It came through at night so we waited until it was day time and you could see the video and it wasn't safe to even step outside prior to when we took it. Brad needs to Download it and then we will put it on here but we don't have it at this time. It was 25 years inbetween hurricanes in the houson area and I would be just fne if it were that long again. One is plenty for my life time. Also, thanks to everyone that called or emailed before or after the storm hit to check in on us. It's nice to know that we are loved and thought about.