After Ike: Day 7

We have started Day 7 without power. We SHOULD have it back on today but I am not holding my breath. Ryan's parents have power, no cable as of 7pm last night, but we might go there tonight as we are both really tired of flashlights. I am about to run out of clean underwear (too much information????) so I at least have to go wash clothes!!! :)

This will probably be a long post as I ramble on about the past 7 days... I have lots of pictures to post so you can at least scroll through them and ignore my rambling!

This is the house pre-storm. We brought all the patio furniture in. We also brought Admiral inside which he really enjoyed. This is from Friday afternoon, he was very much unfazed by the activity and was happy to be inside with his tire.

The power went out about 2am, just after my last post from Friday. We had decided we would stay up all night so we started putting together this crossword puzzle - puzzle. It was not easy to start with, and doing it by candlelight made it harder. We are champs at putting together puzzles in the dark... something we started during the Jackson Tornado.

The actual crossword was too hard, we knew NONE of the answers so we just crumbled it back up and put in the box. We have a Sodoku one as well, might try it soon.

We seemed to stay in the middle of the heavy west side winds and rains most of the day on saturday. The really heavy stuff got to us at about 4am and lasted several hours. We weren't on the "dirty" east side but our area stayed in the heaviest west side bands. Again, Admiral was pretty unfazed by all this, he just slept. He would not go out and use the potty which caused us to get really nervous as the day went on. It finally slacked up enough around noon for me to venture out to the yard with him. We both got soaked.

If you enlarge this first picture (just click it), you can see the rain. It wasn't coming down sideways but was definitely at a good angle. We passed the time with more board games, this on a favorite of mine from middle school... Mancala. I beat Ryan in our best of 3.


When we finally were able to go out with getting rained on, I got some pictures of our neighborhood.

Just a few saggy branches on our tree	Both the neighbor's trees are knocked over. He was able to get them standing back up.	Tree on neighbor's house.
Tree on different neighbor's house.
And another. This one had 3 on the back, lots of rain got in.	Trees down in culdesac by mailboxes
Our backyard after the storm. Notice missing pine in left from pre-storm pictures.

Since Saturday, there has been lots of grilling, candlelit dinners, board games and puzzles. Ryan made me play Stratego... I lost horribly! Payback for Mancala. Admiral is still unfazed... just sleeping inside, a lot. He got very spoiled with us being home all day everyday. We also played a game of Rummicube. I don't know who won. I do know I kept falling asleep while we played. I think Ryan won.

It took a while, but I was able to get the side burner on the grill working. We did get to have bacon and eggs for breakfast which was fantastic!


On Sunday morning, I heard that they were giving out Ice and Water so I headed up to city hall. As I got there, the lines were SOOO long that I wasn't going to stay. I parked at a nearby business and walked up to see what was going on. About that time the trucks were pulling away and I was scared that they were all out. Another man was walking back his car as well and heard that they were moving locations for better traffic flow. Because I was not in the long line of traffic I was able to get over to the stadium before the lines got long and got my two bags of ice.

All in all, Admiral has thoroughly enjoyed Hurricane Ike. He got to spend lots of time inside for several days, and he LOVES all the little branches and sticks in the yard. He loves to fetch sticks, but he doesn't bring them back. He lays down and chews on them.


I guess on Monday we went out looking for more puzzles. This is the best we could find... Photo Mosaic Mickey (we got Winnie the Pooh as well). Mickey is complete and Pooh is in progress.

I guess that is the update for now. Ryan said as of noon today, still no power. It's definitely starting to get old, but we are very lucky to have water, cool weather, and an undamaged house so I try not to complain too much. I have emailed The Woodlands Associations to see if they can give us an update on power... hopefully I get some answers!! I do feel very disconnected from the outside world as all we hear is local Ike news. Isn't there an election going on or did I miss it?