Post Ike

So, we made it through Ike. We stayed down at my mom's (14 houses down the street...so I wanted my mommy) just through the actual storm. I didn't sleep much. We all slept in the master. Drew and McKenna were on an air mattress beside the bed, Ethan was in a playpen and baby Kate slept in the bed with me. I heard the roar of the wind at about 2:45 am. I laid in bed just listening to all the pops and crashes and just praying that one of those crashes wouldn't be on the room we were all in. I was scared and almost woke the kids up to huddle together in the hall, but I didn't . I just waited, listened and prayed. The loud noises woke everyone up at around 3:15 am, the power had already gone off. So, I scrambled for a flashlight and took the kids into the living room where we could sit together and listen to the storm. They sat and played with flashlights and were oblivious to the danger outside....just like kids. Mom and Johnny came in from their lovenest (garage apartment like a penthouse). We looked outside at the nature warzone and knew we could do nothing but go back to bed....so we did. The storm brought elephant size mosquitos (yeah, we needed a new West Nile threat) and a mess of leaves, branches, fallen trees, smashed cars and broken homes in our neighborhood. We waited until the evening when it quit raining to go out and assess the damage. My mom (Gigi to the grandkids) lost all of her Crape Merdals (sp?) and a big tree that fell on the fence in the backyard. She and Johnny couldn't sit still, so they went out into the street to clean out gutters. I was left inside with 4 bored restless children to entertain (without television, video games, lights, A/C)...so we went home. My husband bought the biggest generator he could find (over 10,000 amps/watts?) so at home we had really a back to normal existence. So, for 5 days without power to the rest of the area, we spent a lot of money in gasoline for the generator, had many playdates with friends, had a potluck outside bar-b-que with friends, and just waited for things to return to normal. Nothing was open, food was sparse, gas was hard to find and lines were long. We take so much for granted. It took about a full 2 weeks for life to return to somewhat back to normal completely. We no longer had to wait in lines for gas or groceries, the fallen trees were cut up and removed, yards were cleaned up and tractors were gone from our streets (Ethan loved watching the tractors). School lunches are still free and there are places that closed for remodeling because of damage from the storm (Target and Kroger and others). There still are many without power. I feel for the families with small children...it's hard.