Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike hit Houston on Saturday night. It was quite noisy. We had all of the boys sleep in our room that night. Benjamin is the only one who woke up from the storm. Duncan and Tavio both slept through it. We did well. We didn't have any real damage to the home or yard. Just lost half of a lime tree. We had some neighbors lose part of a fence. There were trees down around the neighborhood. I wish we would have gotten more pictures of some trees. We did take pictures of our yard. We were without electricity for 36 hours. That was super miserable yesterday night especially. Yesterday and today when we would get too hot, we would go outside and go for a walk. The breeze would cool us off, but last night there was no breeze, and it was super humid, so it was awful. Benjamin couldn't/wouldn't go to sleep. We think he was just hot and miserable. Brandon ended up taking him out for a walk in a stroller at about midnight where he finally fell asleep.

Then we had quite the thurnderstorm last night. No boys woke up from that storm. Brandon and I did. We had left the windows open until the thunder and lightning got too bad, then we finally closed them. It has been a crazy couple of days, but everyone is fine. We're happy to have power back. Brandon is supposed to return to work tomorrow, but the Elders are meeting to chain saw trees of ward members who had more damage, and his boss said to go do that. The boys don't go back to school until Thursday. Downed tree
Movie night - after a day with no power, we let the boys watch a movie on Brandon's laptop.

Our side yard took on a lot of water because our drain was clogged, and we had some rocks on the side that had gotten clogged with pine needles. You can see Brandon in the background with his rake. We got the drain cleaned out, and cleaned up the rocks, and it drained just fine.

Benjamin trying to "help" the boys. He's really just playing in their branch pile.

Branches that fell from the pine trees in our yard. The boys are running through the rain happy as can be to collect them and swing them like swords.