Hallelujah

The lights are ON! Thank goodness!

We worked hard today to help Steven's sister clear a path to her house. We are exhausted. We ordered up a pizza, and I am enjoying the Relief Society general broadcast on the BYU channel....too tired to drag myself up to church to watch it with the other sisters.

2 Weeks...Still No Power

No sight of a center point crew anywhere. I love roughing it, but 2 weeks of this is getting tiresome. We have been very blessed though. There are people here whose houses were destroyed. This is a minor inconvenience compared to how it could have been. We are just longing for life to get back to normal.

I am dying to have some peace and quiet. My neighbors run their generators 24 hours a day. There is a dull roar on our street. I have forgotten what it sounds like to hear the birds sing in the morning.

Tonight my awesome sister has invited us over for game night which will be a very welcome reprieve.

A Sliver of Hope

Today a large truck carrying some new electric poles drove down our street and dropped them off. Maybe just maybe they might have power for us in the near future. This is getting O L D.

Hurricane Humor

From an email I received today........

Lessons Learned During and After the Storm

The hurricane grouch quotient can be calculated by adding the number of children and pets in a home without power, multiplied by the number of days quoted on the Energy telephone recording, divided by the number of fans or portable air conditioners powered by your home generator, (however if you were last in line at Home Depot and have no generator then multiply by the daily high for that day), then add the number of trips to the washateria and the days left until school opens. Discount by the percentage of time spent at neighbors who have power.
Recalculate as often as necessary.

Other things to note:

No matter how many times you flick the switch, lights don't work without electricity.

Vienna sausages only appear on the food pyramid during hurricane season.

Gas mileage is recalculated based on miles per fume.

Lovebugs do not disappear in 80 mph wind gusts.

Despite protests, kids can re-live their parents' youth when there were only 3 TV channels!

Cats are even more irritating without power.

Houston without traffic lights resembles Mexico City , Rome , Los Angeles and New York City all rolled into a single snarl.

A 7 lb bag of ice will chill 6-12 oz beers to a drinkable temperature in 11 minutes, and still keep a 14 lb. turkey frozen for 8 more hours.

There are/were a lot of really big trees around here!

Just because you're 18 doesn't mean you can stay out as late as you want. They mean business when they say curfew.

People will get into a line that has already formed without having any idea what the line is for.

Calories consumed during a hurricane or power outage do not count.

Telemarketers function no matter what the weather is doing. New Delhi does not check the weather report on the Gulf Coast .

Most popular text message after September 12th: do u hve pwr

Twenty-seven of your neighbors houses are fed from a different transformer than you, and they are quick to point that out!

Crickets and cicadas can increase their volume to overcome the sound of 14 generators.

Dirty clothes in an unsupervised hamper multiply at an exponential rate.

Coffee, spaghetti and frozen pizzas can be made on a grill.

He who has the biggest generator wins.

Tree service companies are under-appreciated, except after hurricanes.

There are a lot more stars in the sky than most people thought.

If you owned a store that sold only ice, chain saws, gas, and generators, you would be rich.

Day 10....Still No Power

All is well. We still don't have power restored, and we don't expect it to be soon. The tree trimmers at least came and cut the trees off the lines that were down in our neighborhood.....so there is hope. The power company has us estimated to get power back on Thursday, but last Friday they said by Friday evening. LOL

The kids are back home now and getting the opportunity to experience what it is like to rough it (a little anyway). The generator still affords us a few conveniences like being able to run the washing machine and pump water from the well. It only runs when we need it though....so there is no all day computer access or TV.

Oh...and tonight's dinner plan is cornish hens cooked in the dutch oven.....outside.

A Picture Update

This is what greeted us as we arrived on our street.

Our lake was overflowing it's banks and over the road.

This is the powerline that is down about 3 houses down the street from us. It is still down today. There are power lines like this one everywhere.

This is a picture of our backyard. I had just mowed the yard the day before we left. You can't see all of the detail in the picture, but our entire yard was coated with sticks, limbs, and leaves.

Here is the limb that pierced our roof.

Here is the hole with the stick removed.

This is a picture from a service project we attended today. This poor family had a huge pine tree that was growing in their backyard fall over their house. The guy in the blue shirt up there on the tree is my husband who almost gave me a heart attack.

Here is Steven after he cleared more of the limbs. The tree would bounce as the weight on it was lifted by cutting the limbs of of it. He did have a harness on though, and the guys had a good prayer before they got started.

One more of Steven in the tree. Today he earned himself the nickname "The Squirrel".

Once all of the limbs that were hanging over the front of the house were cut the tree was tied up to 2 separate winches to raise it back up and off the roof.

This is a picture from the back of the house.

This is the tree after it was raised up.

One of the other guys is cutting the tree to drop it into a good place.

Here is the tree after it was taken down. Those guys did an awesome job! It was amazing to watch. The guys loaded up and went to another house and cut down yet another tree. The second one was not nearly as tricky. I'm tagging along tomorrow just to watch them work again.

Day 7

Here we are on day 7.....still no power. Things are slowly getting better each day. Steven and I have been keeping busy helping neighbors and church members. Many have it much worse than we do. Yesterday we helped a sister from church move her belongings into storage because she had THREE trees on her house....her home is destroyed.

We are still hopeful to get power back soon. We are still on a generator. The linemen are all over the place fixing the power lines. We see huge convoys of them rolling all over town. I'm going to hope that by Wednesday we might get power back.

We are off today to go and cut some trees down....I'm more of a spectator in the process.The men around here love to play with their chainsaws. On Sunday we get to help Steven's sister get her property cleaned up. She had a tree come through and demolish her daughter's bedroom.

A sweet sweet friend of ours from church showed up yesterday with the supplies to fix our roof and went right to work. He patched the hole and reshingled it, so all of our major concerns are taken care of! We have been very blessed.

Survival

We are doing pretty well here. I am actually updating from home. We returned home early Sunday morning. As we got closer to home things were very ominous. There were more and more fallen trees, the streets were covered with leaves and limbs, the power lines were just mangled, and people were waiting in hours long lines for things like gas and generators.

As we drove down our street it looked like the site of a bomb explosion. The street was covered in inches of debris. Every one of my neighbors had large trees down in their yards. One neighbor has one on his garage. We had huge piles of limbs and leaves. We changed clothes and got to work....it took 3 solid days of cutting, raking, sweeping, and mowing to clear our yard up.

I can't complain though. The only damage we have suffered is one limb that was in our roof like a dart. I have a perfect 4 or 5 inch hole in my roof where it landed...just like a cookie cutter cut out the hole. The weather is beautiful though. We have been outside working along with our neighbors. There is a strong sense of community going on at the moment. Neighbors are helping neighbors and checking on everyone.

All of our needs are met for now. We have a generator that we are running for a few hours a day to keep our deep freeze frozen. I have a gas stove and hot water heater, and we have a well too. As long as we run the generator we have nice hot showers and all of the water we need. I can even wash clothes in the washing machine, but we are hanging them out on the line to dry. We don't expect to get power back for at least another week(optimistically). There is major damage to the power lines in our area....there is one line almost down on the street just a few houses down from us. Cell phones are working, but coverage is very spotty.

This evening we heard a sound we almost didn't recognize because we hadn't heard it in so long. Our home phone rang! It took us a few minutes to realize that that meant that the internet was working too.....YAHOOOOO!! So 20 minutes later here I am.....running the computer on the generator.

I have pictures we took on Steven's cell phone, so as soon as I figure out how to get them on the computer I will post them.

Take care!!

What to Expect

A good friend of ours that lives close by our house took a drive over to take a look for us. He said we have a few limbs down, but nothing serious. There is no power in the area and we have been told to expect it to take a few weeks to get power restored.

Steven and I decided to take a trip home in the morning. His mom has a generator that we can borrow. We will need it if we will be out of power for more than a week....after that we will need it to run the well for water. At least we will be able to have a shower...that will make things bareable. We will leave the kids with Steven's mom to save them from the certain boredom that will exist at home. I need to get back and start cooking the food in the freezer before it all thaws out. At the very least I can get it in a cooler and send it up to Steven's mom's house. We have plenty of food and supplies to get by for some time. We aren't very worried.

Once we head home tomorrow I will not be able to update the blog. I will check back in when I have access to a computer again.

A Update From the Eye of the Storm

Well....not literally from the eye...maybe a few miles west of it. We are high and relatively dry. We are experiencing CAT 1 hurricane winds and rain....it is raining sideways at the moment. We are 150 miles north of our home, and staying with Steven's mom and step-dad. Things are good here. Steven's mom is a great cook, so the food is awesome. We are bored, so we are eating and eating....and eating....and watching news coverage of the storm.

I woke up several times last night to check the news to see how things were going. I watched news reports as boats sank in the gulf and debris lashed the houses that were actually still standing. As daylight shined on the destruction we have been glued to the TV to see what Houston looks like. What we have seen so far is quite shocking. Downtown looks like a war zone. The glass is blown out of the buildings, and there are computers and office equipment littering the streets.

Steven is getting text messages from our friends from church. Most of our friends have several trees down...some of those trees are on their houses. No one has power, and some of them don't have home phone service either. The phone lines are clogged and it is hard to get through to those that do actually have phone service. I suppose that everyone is calling to check on their loved ones.

We are still trying to get though to find out what our own home looks like. I'm biting my nails and getting a bit restless waiting to get through to one of our neighbors to find out what we have to come home to. We have probably 15+ trees on out 1/2 acre of property. With what we are hearing about the destruction from our friends and family that live close to us there is probably a 100% chance that we lost several trees.....where they might have landed is what has me concerned. It is all replacable though. We will muddle through it. We are prepared to handle it when we return. We are safe and that is all that matters.

For now we are very comfortable. Steven's step-dad joked this morning that we better not end up like a bunch of Katrina refugees and refuse to go back home. LOL It's tempting to stay.

I will update when I find out what our home looks like.

Thanks for your prayers and thoughts!

Take a Hike Ike

Hurricane Ike is brewing in the gulf. It is projected to make landfall in my back yard some time very early on Saturday. The weatherman is estimating winds will be 75-125mph when it gets to us. We have many very very tall trees within a stone's throw from my house. They are really suggesting that people in my area shelter in place, but we are going to bug out. Steven's mom has a nice safe house about 150 miles further inland......Hurricane Ike seems like a great reason to go for a visit.

Now I have to spend the day making preparations. We most likely will not have power when we return so we have to fill up our water storage barrels(because our well won't work). I need to pack up some clothes for the kids. and get everyone ready to go. Thank goodness for all of the preparations we have done in advance. We have a well stocked 72-hour kit and loads of bottled water and food. No worries. This should be fun!

Drive-By Posting

Things have been quite hectic around here lately. I really wish I could find that stinking camera. I think I will have to start looking for a good deal on a new one. So....here's the run down on what has been going on...


-School is going great. We have just been plowing through the books. The kids and I are really enjoying having some structure to our days. We just had a planning meeting last Thursday with our homeschool group and we have got some really fun activities on the calendar for our fall semester.

-Family Camp was canceled. Big Bummer. We had planned to attend a week long family summer camp put on by our homeschool group as a summer vacation. Unfortunately it was canceled, so we are going to have to make some different plans. We are leaning towards some great camping trips.

- We are gearing up for our first year of 4-H. Lauren is raising a pig for the county fair, and we are trying to get involved with the 4-H shooting sports club....if only some people would return their emails. This morning we are going to wash cars for a fundraiser.

- Reading, reading, reading. In the last 2 weeks I have read almost the entire Twilight series of books. http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/index.html What an amazing author! I can't remember ever being so wrapped up in a book that I literally could not sleep because I couldn't put it down. There is a movie coming out in November based on book one.....I hope it lives up to the book.