after the storm

well, we survived ike - sort of. it's hard to believe that it all happened a week ago.

we lost power sometime early saturday morning on the 13th, before the worst of the storm hit. needless to say, we didn't get much sleep - every time something hit the roof (which was pretty frequently), we jumped up and tried to see what we could out the windows with flashlights. around 4:30 or 5:00 we heard something quite loud - all we could see from the windows was a very large branch from our biggest pine tree lying in the middle of the backyard, and part of a tree on our roof. the storm blew through by about 9:00 or so in the morning, giving us our first chance to survey the damage. wow ...

turns out the tree on the roof wasn't part of our tree - it was the top of one of our neighbors giant pine trees, which also took out part of our fence. another of their trees took out a different section of the fence.

on the other side of the house: one of our trees broke in two during the first part of the storm, and was originally resting on our neighbor's two-story roof. that turned out to be a good thing, because during the second half of the storm one of their trees uprooted, and the only thing keeping it from crashing down onto both of our houses was the fact that it was wedged against the broken part of our tree.

our neighbor had a group from his church come by first thing saturday morning to remove his tree from our garage and clean up the big debris (that was truly a blessing!). the damage to the garage roof was minimal, and neither of the cars were hit. we spent 3 days cleaning up the rest of the mess, and wound up with a pile of debris in the front yard that's taller than the boy. i can't believe how many pine cones we picked up (and we still haven't finished the backyard).

we did't get power back until tuesday evening. fortunately, we had running water the entire time, and the weather was unseasonably cool for this time of year, so it was tolerable in the house with no a/c and the windows open. most of the immediate area is still without power, although it's coming back slowly. school has been out since last friday, and right now is tentatively scheduled to open again next wednesday (although the boy's school currently doesn't have power, and isn't on the list to open).

overall, we were very fortunate - i feel for the people down along the coast (and in other areas) who lost everything. so many can't even get back to their homes to see how much damage there is, or if there's anything left to salvage.

thoughts and prayers for the areas hit by ike would be most appreciated...