Oh, Ike!

I still don't have power. This is day 8. My mom's turned on last night. We skittered over here speedy quick. Ike has driven me into believing I'm a pioneer. Yesterday I thought about putting on a long skirt, pantaloons and a bonnet. By the grace of heaven, I can now blow dry my hair and turn on the TV while I eat all the food in Nana's pantry.

It's been a crazy 8 days. Hurricane hangover. Not fun. We feel so out of touch with the world. Its interesting what happens when there is no electricity. My kids reaction has been fascinating. Not once have they complained that they can't turn on the TV or play a gameboy. They haven't even complained about not having any lights at night. They just want to play with their friends, ride bikes and cover themselves in the mounting mud across the street. Delightful.

Ike hit during the night. It was quite scary to hear 90 mph winds and trees snapping, but not be able to see anything. We didn't get any sleep. Worry can keep you up at night. Here is a small snapshot of the aftermath:


A tree fell on the corner of our garage. Can you see the beam that is barely resting on our water barrel and not on Todd's car...just another testament that if you follow the prophet and store your water, it will save your car.

This picture is the back side of the garage. The tree also took out a portion of our fence.

This is our neighbor's house. Ginormous tree fell from across the street. Makell, Addie and a friend are waiting for chainsaws. This is the morning after the hurricane. We are all outside, drenched because it is still raining. We had huge trees down all throughout my portion of the neighborhood. A group of men started cutting the trees into sections and pulling them out with chains and a truck. The rest of us pulled branches and cleared debris for hours.

This is what a lot of the trees look like around my house. This one is around the corner from me.

This is the view as you drive down my street. At one point, there were trees laying across this road and we couldn't get out of our neighborhood.

This house is just slightly around the corner from us. They also had a gas leek.

This is a view from Makell's bedroom window. Our house backs up to open space with lots of trees. At least a third of them were torn down in the hurricane winds. Directly to the right of this picture is a huge section of big trees. If the winds had been blowing in any other direction, they would have taken out our house. Blessings.

The girls standing on one of the trees behind our house.

This generator is my new best friend. I'm adding her to my christmas card list because she was so good to us. We stole this generator from my mom's house. She was in Hawaii, sunbathing in her bikini. So we put this to good use. We couldn't run it all day because of the availability of gas. A lot of the gas stations were not up an running again, and those that were had a 2-3 hour wait. We ran it at night so that we could sleep with a fan and not melt into our sheets. The first two days after the hurricane were unbearably hot--94 degrees with 85% humidity. But then our blessings showed back up again, and the weather cooled down. We could open the windows and it cooled the house down. I just love blessings.

I have never washed clothes by hand....until now. Love the little girl panties.

It's so nice to know that people (OK, 3 of you) have been checking my blog, looking for signs of life from the Fosters. We are well, we have just been living like pioneers....who had shelter and running water. Yesterday I had lost all patience to deal with this any longer. Its trying. School has been canceled since last Friday, and won't start until next Wednesday (if you're counting, that's 8 full school days). But alas, I am now at Nana's and I can wash all our muddy laundry.

Trying times are, well....trying. And, you gain perspective and gratitude. Compared to what I've been through over the last year, Ike hasn't been too bad, he's just made life crazy inconvenient. But, he has made us see that a shattered garage doesn't compare to a destryoed house and that eating peanut butter sandwiches every day doesn't compare to personal safety and amazing neighbors.

I'm off to make chocolate chip cookies. I haven't had fresh baked goods in 8 days! Cookies from the oven are blessings too.