Our Ike Experience

Hand written at 7 this morning~

At 10:30 we lost power lastnight, it came back on but our cable and internet never came back.  At about 11:45 we lost power for the night.  It would flicker on for a few seconds, but ultimately continuously lost power.  Kevin and I finally made it to bed at about 1, and didn’t get to sleep because of the noise for a while longer, well and Joey was busy kicking each of us, but in that noise I couldn’t just leave him in the other room…

Around 3:30 AM the wind REALLY picked up and Kevin had another coughing fit.  He and I both got up to explore what’s going on.  We managed to accidentally wake the boys, decided to move them into the hall (the only real windowless area in our home) and they couldn’t get back to sleep.

The hurricane got so loud.  Pipes were singing, windows tapping and creaking, and the ceiling/roof that always creaks with just about any wind was just rumbling, and water was flying around outside as if projected from a pressurized hose.  At one point our front door started too Moo.  I would have been totally freaked out accept I recognized the sound from my parent’s garage door that sometimes moo’s when the wind hits it just right.  Michael and I had a good chuckle over that.  There wasn’t much hope in getting the boys back to sleep.  We moved them into the floor in our room at about 5 because I was starting to nod off, and wanted to be in my bed.

I told Michael scripture stories for a long time before I was too tired to talk, he still asked questions and pestered me for a while, but I was beyond responding.

I told him to go to his happy place, he said “What’s my happy place?”

I said, “Well what makes you happy?”

“Rainbow sprinkle covered brownies”

“OK, think about rainbow sprinkle covered brownies and the Wii.”

“OK Mom.  Mom!  Can I play Wii tomorrow?”

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…”

At 6:40 this morning the power flickered on again, and off a couple times, all night long we’d had some “silent lightening.”  Flashes of light, but no thunder.  That was confusing, but the storm was loud, so we wondered if that may be why we weren’t hearing thunder.  At this point we realized it was the box on one of the power polls that was arching, sparks were flying everywhere, and our black outs, were in direct relation to those flashes, scary stuff!

This morning at 7:10 it’s still as dark as night.  Our home is intact though the windows and doors on the West side have towels at the bottom cause they’re leaking a little.

The parking lot is flooded to the curb, and the sidewalks up to the top of the grass.

We may go to the car in a while to listen to the radio since we don’t have any radios inside, especially no battery operated radios.  But with the power lines acting the way they have…  We hear a hum.  I think a neighbor has a generator.

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Since I short handed that this morning, we’ve slowly woken up and found daylight.  Ahh, blessed daylight.  Taken a bunch of photos, and the boys have been enjoying digging into their hurricane goodies.

The tree that I asked the apartment about taking down about a year ago because it’s so poorly and leans so severely, and they ignored me, lost three major branches in this hurricane.  In the kitty pictures I took about a month ago, the big branch I got pictures of her climbing is gone.  BTW the kitty’s are doing great and happy in their new home.

We were all hanging out in the boys room this morning to suddenly hear Michael say “Huh!?  It’s raining in here!”  And looked up at the ceiling to see a leak trying to drain in three spots.  So Kevin got his handy steel hunting knife and stabbed holes into those so they could drain and we moved the bed that had been underneath that, and put out bowls.  We’re pretty glad we were all in there otherwise it probably would have gone unnoticed and gotten to be a REALLY big problem.

Aiden’s quote in all of this?  “Mom!”  “What?”  “Hurricane MAD!”

At around 8 we got both power and internet back, and it’s been continuous ever since.  And have been watching TV, it was scary to be so disconnected.

We’ve been watching the news and the eye passed East of us at about 7:30.  We’ve been devastated to see the damages in our communities. Apparently there was a restaurant that burned down because of a transmitter that blew, so given this morning situation, we’re trying to get ahold of the power company, to get that resolved.  Apparently out of 2.6 million people getting power service, 2.1 million don’t have power, so we’re very blessed this morning.  They say we should be done with the storm at about noon, so that’s an hour and a half.  That will be nice. 🙂

I have a lot of pictures, so it’s going to take me some time to pick through them and process them to show.  (((HUGS))) and please keep praying for those around us who have not been so blessed.