Our adventure with Ike

Whew! That was SOME storm! Well, we finally have our power back after 15 days without. We're very grateful to have made it through the hurricane as easily as we did, I know soooo many people are still without their basic utility services and some have had MAJOR loss.
We spent the night of the hurricane out in Hempstead, with Wes' parents. So, we were about an hour further inland, and Northwest than our house is. It was still incredibly intense in Hempstead, and they lost power for a day or 2 also.
Going back to town the next day was a challenge, as there were a lot of trees down, and some flooded roadways. My jaw hit the floor when we turned into our neighborhood. It looked like an absolute war zone! Nearly every home in the neighborhood had at least 1 tree down, and there was storm debris EVERYWHERE.
My mom and Heather met us at our house, and Jimmy, Virginia and Shawn came to help too.

We had one very big and tall pine tree, and the tops of 2 smaller trees fall down in the front yard, thankfully missing our house, and then lots of "tree trash". The Big tree had fallen across the road and out neighbor's driveway, so part of it had been cleared before we got home. Here are a few pictures of the yard mess and the clean-up crew. The only other damage we had was a flooded playroom, due to backyard drainage that just couldn't accomodate the enormous amount of water that got dumped here. Unfortunately, we didn't know about the flooded playroom for a day or so, as we had gotten to work on the tree mess right away, and didn't come into the house until after dark, and nobody went to the playroom. The next morning we woke up and went straight to church, so still didn't notice the playroom. Finally, the terrible odor screamed at us, and the boys went into the play room... squish, squish, squish. Ewwww!