A cold front came through last night and removed the humidity and cooled down the house. For lunch we were craving civilization so we went to Incredible Pizza Company for the first time. Hot pizza and cold Coke hit the spot.

One good thing about the power being out is that I’ve gotten a lot of work around the house done. Today I got the garage all unpacked and organized. After that I got my office all cleaned up. This week I was supposed to have off from work because of our crunch to “Second Playable”. I was hoping to have a nice relaxing week at home playing video games while the kids went off to school. Looks like Ike really ruined my week of relaxation. At least I did get the garage and my office cleaned up. That was on my todo list for the week. Didn’t know I would be doing it in the first day.

Later in the evening, one of our neighbors called us over for an impromptu block party. He called it “cook it before it spoils” party. They got the grills going and we sat around and visited while the kid ran around playing. Found out that school has been canceled until at least Thursday. Did I mention that this was supposed to be my week off?

It was a rough night sleeping. Ironically with the hurricane now 24 hours past us there wasn’t a breeze in the air at all. The air in our house was warm and thick making it tough to breathe. Around 2 a.m. Emily woke me up saying she was hot, so she made herself a little bed on the floor and went back to sleep.

In the morning we headed out in search of ice. We’ve become pretty used to eating out of an ice chest from our camping trips, but the key thing you have to have is ice. Fortunately Jennifer’s parents had stock piled some in their freezer which was kept cold using their generator. On our radio we kept hearing the City of Houston officials and FEMA pointing fingers at one another why certain necessities hadn’t yet been distributed. One excuse on why the ice hadn’t been distributed was because they had no where to store it. How about this or an idea: drive it in a refrigerated truck and hand it out. No need to store it.

In the evening we got word that parts of Sugar Land now had power so we headed out in search of cold drinks and some candy. After some driving around we finally found a place. They had cold drinks, but no ice. A cold Coke tastes great when you haven’t had one in a few days.

We made it through Hurricane Ike safe and sound. We finally did loose power at midnight, which is about the time the rain started to fall. It was a long night pacing the floor listening for sounds. They say a tornado sounds like a train, but I wasn’t sure what type: modern or choo-choo. I finally fell asleep, but would wake up every hour or so to another strange sound.

At dawn the wind was still whipping, but it was no where near the pace it was earlier in the night. Soon it was over and it was time to survey the damage. Our rent house had lost several rows of shingles and the satellite dish was all bent up. That was the extent of our damage. Driving around Sienna was saw several downed trees, a few blocking the road. We came over the train bridge and noticed several cars pulled over. It wasn’t until a second time through that we noticed everyone had cell phones to their heads. It turned out you could get enough bars to get a call out at the very top of the hill. We stopped and called our parents to tell them we were okay.

Jennifer’s parents lost pretty much every shingle on their roof. Water was now getting into their house. We didn’t want to venture very far from home, so we didn’t head over there to see the damage first hand.

In the evening all the neighbors and their children came out. We talked while the kids ran around. It’s too bad it takes something like this to get neighbors out talking.

Finally, still no phone and no power, we had the girls take a shower to clean up from all the running around.  We then drove around in the car with the air conditioning on full blast. It wasn’t too long before Emily and Izzy were fast asleep. It’s probably going to be another miserable night. Hopefully the power will come back on soon.

The winds are whipping outside, but the rain hasn’t started to fall. We are all sleeping on the ground floor tonight. The girls are sleeping in our room while Jennifer and I are sleeping on the sofa bed so we can watch the TV. It’s looking like Ike is going to go straight up the bay, so we will be on the weaker side.

At least we have power. Yesterday at noon the power company turned off our power with a hurricane 48 hours away. Our energy provider, Green Mountain Enegy, made a mistake when we set up power for our rent house. We live on Carribou Cove they put in a request for power for our house number, but on Carribou COURT. Without warning they cut off the power. We made several calls of despiration, they told us there was nothing they could do. It was a hot night, but they came and turned back on the power this morning. We still have power for now, but the hurricane is just now starting to coming on shore.

I’ll report again tomorrow to report on how we faired.