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.

The end of this week was really busy as we left the girls with Jennifer’s parents and Jennifer and I flew back to Orlando in order to get the house packed up. We arrived on Wednesday night at 1:00 a.m. to find out that the air conditioner was out. I reset the system and we waited until 2:00 a.m. to see if it would cool down, but it didn’t, so we just turned our fan on high and toughed it out. First thing in the morning we called the air conditioning people just to find out that we needed a new compressor. Great. Just something else that I had to fix on the house I no longer live in.

On Thursday afternoon, some people from the movers arrived in order to pack our house. We helped, but it didn’t take long before our house was full of boxes. Then on Friday morning, the big orange truck pulled up to the house. It took about five hours, but everything was put on the truck and we were left with an empty house. We cleaned as much as we could and painted a few walls that got nicked by the movers and then we were off to a hotel to clean ourselves up and collapse after a long and stressful day.

This weekend we took the chance to see if Sienna Plantation would allow us to go ahead and give us passes to the pool. Our lease doesn’t start until August 14th, so right now is the calm before the storm.  Without much to do since the next two weekends will be busy with moving plans, we decided it was time to give the pool a whirl. So, they didn’t care that it was still two weeks away until we take possession of the house and they went ahead and let us in. The pool has a huge kids area with slides and a giant bucket which fills with water and then dumps down onto the kids below. Emily loved this area and spent most of the time diving under the water and holding her breath. We kept getting worried that the water from the giant bucket was going to drown Izzy, and we always looked up every time she got close to where the water sprays down. They also had other water slides just the right size for Abby. Looks like we are going to have some fun weekends down at the pool once we move in.

Last weekend we traveled to Shreveport to see my parents’ new house. They recently moved into a smaller patio home and this was our first opportunity to see it. We met my grandparents and Aunt Marci in Lindale on Friday night and then headed over to Shreveport on Saturday morning. Since we were all together, we celebrated my birthday a few days early. Jennifer amazingly smuggled my gift, an acoustic guitar, all the way from Houston. I didn’t even know she had hidden it in the truck while we were driving. We had a good time spending time with my family, it was one of the reasons we decided to move back to Texas so that we could visit more often.

Since I had received a guitar and I haven’t played an instrument since sixth grade, I signed up for lessons. Starting on Tuesday, I’m going to have weekly lessons at Smack Guitars in Missouri City.

On Friday, Jennifer took the girls to Geopalooza at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Abby has shown an interest in geology recently and so, we thought this would be something she would want to go see. They looked at all different kinds of rocks and got their very own geodes at the end. They also explored the  Butterfly Center and had a great time.

This weekend we went and looked at a couple of rent houses over in Sienna Plantation, the area we would eventually like to buy a house. We figured this way if we did buy a house in the area, the girls wouldn’t have to switch schools. The houses were smaller than we were wanting to buy in Houston, but about the same size as the one in Orlando. We decided on one that had three bedrooms upstairs for the girls and a small play room. We figured that upstairs would be the “girls’ domain”. Downstairs was pretty compact, but enough room for us. We figured it was good enough as temporary space for the next year, so we went ahead and put in an application for it. We are now waiting to hear back if we are approved. It’s going to be tough paying rent and a mortgage for the house back in Florida, but we figured it’s time that we move into our own place before school starts.