Power!!!

Lights, electricity, and a/c! Oh my!

Yea! So Friday night about 7pm or so we get a text from neighbors saying the lights are on! For a while, I thought it might have been a really really mean joke. But no joke, we had electricity! Clay and I have never slept better, I instantly crashed. It was also so so wonderful to just be at home during the day on Saturday. We had a lot of work to do (like 20 loads of laundry, 10 piles of leaves/debris to pick up, and lots of cleaning to do) but we were home.

Clay and I really needed to cut loose after 2.5 weeks of stressful living. So we went to watch college football with some of the Kingwood crew. After football was mostly over, a dj came in and turned on the kareoke. How histerical it was, I haven't laughed so hard at our friends in a while. They really hammed it up.

Church this morning was really good, I think everyone kind of shares even more of a common bond with each other now after Ike. Houston's mayor Bill White attended our church this morning and it was really great to just have our whole congregation pray over him and for him as he leads our city to restoration.

Gypsy-land

Clay and I are nomadic gypsies. Because...yes, we are STILL WITHOUT POWER. We spend our nights roaming from a/c to a/c. Although 76% of H-town has power, we (of course) are part of the 541,000 homes without. Thanks to friends and Kristi we always have a cool, lit place to stay.

School started back Tuesday, I was glad to get back and see my kids. I was worried about them but luckily none of them lost their homes and most of them only lost power for like 4 hours. (insert Napoleon Dynamite saying "Lucky")

The estimated time frame for electricity is Friday, Sep 26. yep thats almost 2 full weeks. We will wait and see (with lots of praying.) Until then the gentle hum of generators continue to fill our neighborhood along with the smell of pine-scented airfreshners. (So many pine trees fell/cracked/split it still smells so strong)

This is a pic of a street in our neighboorhood. These piles of debri are mild compared to some.

Yikes a tree fell on many of our neighbors homes. (One man even woke up to a branch crashing into his bedroom...it impaled the matress he was sleeping on.)

Centerpoint...were is Centerpoint??

IKE-arumba part 2

Ike is the perfect example of how God reminds me that he is in perfect control, and that what is our will may not his will.

-First we must rewind to 1 month ago. Clay and I were frantically pray and spraying (bug spraying that is) because 1 of our oldest (50 yrs), most beautiful pine trees in our backyard became infested with pine beetles. Pine beetles happen to be extremely destructive and within a week it killed our tree. And within another week it killed yet another tree. Yuck. Not only did we lose our trees but we have to pay for them to be removed (not cheap, not cheap at all.) Tree man said we could wait up to 6 months before cutting them down, but that it was definitely best to do it sooner than later. So TIMBERRRR.
-Fastforward to Saturday Sep 13, Ike coming straight to H-Town. Had we not gotten pine beetles we would have never known our trees were weak (the beetles attack weak trees) and they most certainly would have fallen during the storm on either our home or our neighbor's brand new home.

I prayed and prayed for those silly trees, and God knew what was best. Clay and I are so blessed to report that we had no major damage to our home. Kristi, my sister, did have some damage to her car (which was left in front of our home.) Unfortunately, water krept into her car. But we are lucky compared to many.

We have not gone back to Houston, we are still hanging out with mom and dad; but from what we've heard it is like a war-zone. There were 10 trees that fell on homes in our little tiny neighborhood. We and most of Houston are still without power, no street or traffic lights, no water, no ice. Yikes. It is amazing how much we take for granted on a daily basis and sad that it takes a disaster like IKE for us to acknowledge it.

IKE-arumba

Yikes, Ike is on its way...barrelling toward our door. Luck for us they cancelled school for today. :)

Months ago Clay and my dad had made plans to go hunting this weekend. Clay was going to leave Thursday and come back Sunday. Well, lucky for me since there was no school I was able to come up to Ft. Worth and hang out with my mom and sister while the boys (+ Scout) hunt. So we left right after school on Thurs and luckily the HOV lanes were not too bad. It only took us about 30 mins longer than usual to get to my parents. Wow! What a difference from 3 years ago when we evacuated for Rita. It took us like 17 hours to drive to Lubbock. Yuck!

It was so nice to just hang out today and lay out by the pool, relax and not worry too much about Ike. Although we live across the street from a large bayou, our house is built up pretty high from the street..so I don't think we have to worry too much about flooding. I'm mainly just concerned about trees falling (our backyard is semi-forest-like) and losing power. I do not want to come home to a disgusting freezer. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Slow start

...so the transition to first is not quite as smooth as expected. I neglected to realize what an incredible difference in attention spans, motor skills and listening skills there are between end-of-year second graders and beginning-of-the-year first graders. First graders are quite the little wiggle worms. :) This made for an interesting first week back to school. And while everything went really smoothly, I was extremely exhausted.

The first week of school is filled with learning and practicing procedures (walking in line, how the teacher will get your attention, cafeteria procedure, etc) I am so ready for the kids to pick up our classroom routines and procedures so that we can move on to fun, exciting learning! I know this year will become great and I will form relationships with these children just like years before but I am just ready for that to happen now!

I do love how first graders laugh at almost everything silly I say. They think I am hilarious which is really fun! And besides being silly, we get to sing many many many songs which usually makes all of us in a good mood. :)