Hurricane Ike (our Hurrication)

When we woke on Friday morning and saw the size and position of the storm we changed our minds about staying home. It was Jacob’s 4th birthday and we wanted the best day possible for him under the circumstances. So we packed up and headed to Austin where we threw together a very impromptu party Friday night. It lacked none of the essentials – other children, balloons, pizza and cake. Randy even picked up a package of bubbles which were a huge hit! On Saturday Will and I took the kids out to a shopping center called the Arboretum that has an Amy’s Ice Cream and a huge park area with cow sculptures and a fountain. This was especially fun for me as this was a place that was a favorite hang out spot when I was a teenager. We ducked into one of our favorite fancy baby clothes stores, Janie and Jack where Bella tried on the most adorable pumpkin hat. I scoured the sales rack and was very pleased to pick up jeans, a shirt and leather shoes all for $24. It was such a beautiful day that we decided to completely wear out the kids by taking them to Mt Bonnel. Afterwards Jacob said – “My legs are TIRED!” We took them back home to Grandma Julie’s house and that night Will and I went out to dinner at, ooh big surprise – Z-Tejas. It was great to have an hour to ourselves! On Sunday the kids played with one of Jacob’s birthday presents, a giga-ball – which is a huge inflatable ball that children can crawl inside of and roll around – it was super fun. Needing to get the kids out of the house we took a drive on Sunday afternoon and ended up on UT Campus. Bella was happy to roam off on her own across the Main Mall, she would stop and look over her shoulder as if to say “See ya, I’m going to college now!”(I am glad I have a while to get used to that idea.) Jacob has a book about Bevo and so he was all excited to see the things in the book in person. He loved the clock tower and decided to call it the “Hook ‘em Horns Palace”. Monday morning we were up at 6 AM to head home, after stocking up on ice and milk and asking our good friends to pick up a box of diapers for us while they were in Fort Worth since I wasn’t sure what the grocery situation would be once we got back. Our tiny car was totally packed tight! As soon as we pulled into our driveway a neighbor came up and offered us a bag of ice. Neighbors on the other side had been feeding our cat and cleaned out our fridge for us (We didn’t want the brand new fridge to be full of rotten stuff when we got back). That afternoon we cleaned up the yard and unpacked. That night we drove into Houston to stay with Will’s parents in their townhouse in the Heights. By now Will and I had really had enough traveling and sleeping in other places but the kids were awesome and took everything in stride. Late Monday night we got the call that our power was back on. We were the only house on the whole street that had power, we don’t know why it is just our house and not those on either side but we are deeply grateful. I’ve been really impressed with my employer – they have provided meals and supplies to their employees, plus assistance for those with homes that were damaged. They have even been providing employees with fuel each day. Also we’ve had all kinds of kids here in the office since many child care facilities are closed. It was funny to be working and hear little feet running down the hall. Overall I had thought we had done a pretty good job of explaining things to Jacob without scaring him too much. He was crying on the way home from Austin, saying he didn’t want to go home and at one point he asked us if our new house was smashed to bits. I guess he’d picked up more on the news than we thought. Generally speaking though he is doing great and he certainly enjoyed the time with his grandparents and cousins. We walked around our neighborhood trails where several HUGE trees had fallen,a s you can tell by the picture, by this point Jacob was more into the "adventure" mode than the scared mode.