Weathering the Hurricane

Hello friends!! As I'm sure you know, Hurricane Ike came through last week and left behind it some major damage. Emma, Abby, and I left the Wednesday before the storm, deciding it would be best to leave before traffic, not wanting to get caught in 36 hour grid-lock like Russell did with Rita. Things went much smoother this time though, and even those evacuating Friday did not have terrible delays. So, us girls went to Tyler and Russ stayed to board up our house. He then came and met us later. It was weird watching the news because there was one reporter on the weather channel in Clear Lake, doing reports like 5 minutes from our house. Our city looks kind of like a train wreck - at least as far as trees go. People have limbs and tree trunks piled all at the front of homes all throughout the neighborhood. Right after the storm you couldn't drive the roads there were so many down. Russ and I went on a drive to Kemah last night (the boardwalk area right on the water). There were sailboats at the bottom of the bridge, and up in people's yards. I think the majority of the homes on the water and on Clear Lake, were flooded or majorly damaged. Many of the homes and businesses we drove by were being gutted or had been and people's ruined belongings were scattered everywhere. It was really sad to see, and I know that was small in comparison to Galveston. Our house suffered little damage. The roof is intact and there was no water damage - praise the Lord! You cannot tell well in this picture, but we have a big tree in front, and kind of like an ice cream cone, the top was basically knocked down. Russ had already cut off a lot of the big branches when he took this pic.

We lost my favorite tree in our backyard. It was already leaning a bit, so the wind took it down.

We weathered out the storm in Tyler, where Emma and Abby were up to their usual business of sitting in cabinets and putting things on their heads.


And of course time was filled with cuddling and looking at pictures with Nana and Papa Smith.
I need to take some more pictures of the area and post them later. I hope that everyone is well! Love you all...