Our Story- Part 3 after the storm

Once Ike passed it was time for the clean-up to begin. We had no power and for the first couple days Jason had no work. Madison's school just reopened yesterday, so she missed 8 school days (count the weekends and she was home for 12 days). Luckily for the first week or so we had wonderfully cool weather... not like Texas at all, so that was a blessing. Just as it starting getting really hot again we got power back... thank goodness because when it's 95 (or hotter) and sunny outside, you NEED the A/C on!
We really got to know our neighbors during this time. I mean, we know some of our neighbors and some others we know in passing just to say hello to and others we just didn't know at all. Over the 10 days of (preparing for, during and recovering from) Ike, our neighbors became our family. We helped each other prepare, we helped each other clean up after the storm. We shared our meals in huge neighborhood barbeques... the kids played and we kept each other entertained. We even had neighborhood movie night outside in our neighbors driveway (thank goodness for generators). When Brady was sick with a fever of 104.5 and it was not easy to find a store that was open (remember... EVERYTHING was closed and without power), everyone brought me Tylenol & Motrin to alternate between the two because they were worried about him, too. As bad as Ike was, something really good turned out of it... we have neighbors that are now not only friends, but our family away from home. It's sad that it took a natural disaster to make that happen, but we are thankful that we have such a wonderful neighborhood.

it was a wonderful day when Jason & our next door neighbor, Eddie, were able to buy generators (thank you to all the stores in Dallas that sent them down!!)


I think this was the most wonderful purchase we ever made... being able to have a drink of cold water meant everything to us!


some of the kids at one of our neighborhood dinners


playing after dinner



one of our neighbors passed out glow sticks to everyone (even the adults)... it was the only light we had after sunset!



with no power, M & B said it was too spooky to sleep upstairs in their own rooms, so for 12 nights they went camping in my room!

it was a week and a half of playing for the kids, they didn't seem to mind!
here's Madison with her friend, Ellery, on the left and her friend, Kaiden, on the right (he sits next to her in school)- isn't he adorable!





Madison was paying more attention to her friends than she was to where she was going...

so she fell...

and Kaiden was the first person to run over to make sure she was ok then he cheered her up and made her laugh... he's such a sweet boy

after that she was fine

it's hard to see, but just to the right of the roof of the house you can see one of the many linemen working on our downed power lines... that was a nice sight!


So, although it was not a fun experience, it could've been much worse. So many people lost everything in the storm...
this is the house out on the Bolivar Peninsula (in Gilchrist,TX) that we were supposed to spend Thanksgiving week at

it was beautiful

we've spent so much time out on the beach here and in Galveston... if you look at some of our older posts you'll see, but this is what it looks like now on Bolivar








the broken road



there's nothing there out on the Peninsula, most houses are completely gone (the things that you see sticking out of the dirt is where the houses used to be), people have lost everything... We are so sad we won't spend Thanksgiving there and so sad that it's all gone... so, it could've been much worse.