We survived! We decided to not evacuate because in my memory of Houston and hurricanes the worst that happens up in our neck of the woods is a loss of electricity for a day or two. This proved to be true for us with the exception of the length of time we were with out power. Our power actually went out Friday morning before the hurricane even hit - I guess because everyone was charging things up and cleaning everything before it was too late; I know I was. Power came back around three and went out again at around 3:30 am. I have never been scared during a storm before but I must admit in my semi-asleep state I was worried that a tornado would come and suck my children away and I was trying to decide whether or not I could grab and carry them both at the same time and head for our closet if I had too.

It is amazing how much I rely on electricity. I was way to distracted by the announcement (on the radio) that our loss of power could last "2-4 weeks" to be able to study very effectively. My sister and I found interesting ways to keep our selves entertained.


Here we are playing Rummikub (my favorite game)



We took apart the DVD player (I hope it still works) so we could get Ugly Betty out to watch on my sister's laptop.


Once we had exhausted the power on her laptop we resorted to taking creative pictures of each other.





Can you tell what we spelled out with our bodies?







The kids were so good during the whole thing - Joe lost a tooth and the tooth fairy actually remembered to come. They played a lot with the neighbor kids and played their Nintendo DS, which we kept charged in the car. I passed off a couple of Joe's scouting things with him including a 2 mile bike ride. I ended up riding eight that day and my tushy sure hurt the next day. The kids spelt out "mom" in stuffed animals for my birthday.



By the time my birthday rolled around some restaurants were open and we went out to eat. We ended up taking Joe to the ER after that because he was having some sort of allergic reaction which we are still dealing with... still don't know what he is allergic to which is kind of scary since it seems to cause him such a big problem.

The power finally came back on almost exactly 96 hours after it went out but we heard rumors about the water going out and since resources were scarce and neither the kids nor I had school we decided to head up to the Dallas/Fort Worth area to visit some friends. Here is a little treat I bought for my friend Becca while I was on my way up.



We had spaghetti for dinner, I bought meat in a tube.... it is actually Laura's, which doesn't normally come in a tube but we were at Wal-mart. Becca and I figured that the marketing people must have thought Wal-mart people wouldn't know it was ground beef if it didn't come in a tube.


We have a few more stops to make and will head back to town on Saturday...