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Monday, September 29, 2008

More Ike Pictures

Our Lassie

Snapped Stop Sign

My new commute



Community Breakfast (no power for 13 days)


I neglected to mention yesterday that the wonderful hubby had to go get a tetanus shot because as we were working in the back yard trying to string up a temporary fence to keep our dog in the yard, he stepped on an extremely rusty nail embedded in a piece of wood. He was okay, but he claims the shot hurts worse (even a day later) than the nail did. While he was at the urgent care waiting an hour for a 15 second shot, I finished piecing together some hogwire across the downed fence to keep the neighbor's Cujo in their yard and our Lassie in ours.


Sunday, September 28, 2008

Life after Ike







It's been a long two weeks. Hurricane Ike swept through here two weeks ago and wreaked havoc on our area. We fared alright – we have our electricity back on after 13 days and life is beginning to feel normal once again. Our home came through okay, however, the top 60 feet of a nearly 120 foot oak tree in our back yard took down part of our garage and back yard. Still, we are so very blessed as it is nothing that cannot be fixed and our insurance will cover.


That Friday night we set the girls up in the great room since we are prone to losing trees in serious storms and we didn't want them upstairs just in case. I don't think my wonderful hubby and I slept a wink all night long. The winds and rain began late Friday afternoon and by about midnight, it was getting pretty serious. We kept hearing large branches hit the roof and each and every time we would run upstairs to make sure there were no leaks or damage. At some points we could literally feel the roof lift a little and the pressure inside the house change. At 3:30 we heard an extremely loud "crack", but nothing else. A little before 4:00 am we heard a whistling sound and then the very foundation of our home shook and vibrated. We rushed to take a look out of the back windows, but all we could see was tree. One of our very tall and magnificent oak trees was now our back yard. It had come down on the garage wall and roof and had taken out our back fence.


The funny thing about that is that we had parked our one and only car inside the garage to keep it safe. LOL. We NEVER park in the garage; however, we figured that since we had just the one vehicle, we should move it indoors. God was watching for us, though, because the roof caved in, but didn't come quite close to the roof. We did have one casualty – our big chest freezer that was against that wall.


Even funnier is that the girls – who are normally afraid of regular thunderstorms – slept through the entire hurricane. They never heard any of the limbs hitting the roof an they never felt the tree hit the back yard.


In the light of day, our neighborhood looked like a war zone. Nothing compared to Galveston and other coastal communities, but still – it was pretty desolate. It took 13 days for us to get our electricity back on. During that time we lived outside during the day and ran the generator at night for the fan. Community meals became the norm and the pull of solidarity was strong.

Monday, September 1, 2008

9/1/08

It's been quite a while since I updated last. School has begun (Thank You, God!!) and all the girls have made it through the first week. This next week life gets back into what we hope with be our normal routine again. Since Kelsey's surgeries in May, the wonderful hubby and I have been working flex/remote hours at work so that she is not home alone and let me tell you, that makes for L-O-N-G days.

Kelsey is back in school, as well, and she is glad to be back. We figured out that she's been out of school essentially since January of last year – first due to all her absences and then from being placed on homebound instruction. For a teenage girl – that's a rough time. She is doing wonderfully, though, with no seizures in nearly three months. Right after surgery she began to get severe headaches, but those are resolving as well. At her last neuro check-up, her doc said that she will essentially always have epilepsy since they were unable to remove all the parts that were causing the seizures. The important difference now, however, is that we have control. Control with just ONE medication instead of four. Control with no seizures in-between. Control. What a wonderful word, right? If she maintains control as well as she has been, then her quality of life has improved 1000%.

Kaitlin is an athletic trainer this year and rotates through all the sports, however, it's high-school football time in Texas and that means that her primary sport right now is football. She's enjoying it and has really taken to it. Cam is Cam. <smile>. She's a good kid and too smart for her age. Her private school combines the 4th and 5th grades so this year she'll get a little higher scholastic interaction, which is something that she needs in my opinion, to continue to challenge her and force her to grow. She is so very intelligent that she sometimes stagnates on her grade-level work.

Life is good and God is great. I am so glad that we are on an even keel for now.