Yikes, Ike!!!

If you read my post from Saturday you know that my plan was to post several recipes to keep myself occupied during Ike's rampage across Texas. But just when I thought we would endure Ike and all his power, the wind and rain picked up even more and we lost power.

We are warm weather loving household so our house is not kept very cool to begin with. After a couple of hours without power in humid warm temperatures, it became obvious what a hot miserable night we had ahead of us. Mark and I paced back and forth trying to decide if we needed to evacuate to Dallas. The wind was no longer terrifying but still high. Then there was the rain and dark of night to combat.

We called Grandma and Peeps to let them know they may have house guests and they checked the radar and road conditions for us. After much stress and contemplation, we packed a few things in the dark of night and left for an indefinite amount of time.

Sunday we made the best of it knowing it could be several days before power was back on. We slept late (in air conditioning praise the Lord!), Grandma cooked a big breakfast, and later we all jotted over to Best Buy. Perhaps it was post tropical storm stress that caused us then to buy a new Cannon DSI ESLR (A.K.A. very nice digital camera) and an awesome telephoto lens. Peeps must have been feeling the stress too because he bought a new LCD flat screen. Ike was turning out to be a very expensive hurricane.

We came back to Grandma's and played with our new toys while Savannah napped. We had called home earlier in the day and the answering machine came on so we knew we had power but we were having a good time and in no hurry to get home.

Finally, we headed home and arrived around 7pm only to find the power was out again. Since 1pm! Our house had been without electricity again all day and if we had known we could have stayed in Dallas. The amount of frustration Mark and I felt can not be put into nice words so I will just leave it at that.

We were tired, it was getting dark, and Mark and I, as I stated above, were frustrated. We thought about pitching a tent since it was cooler outside. But it was already getting dark and we were too tired anyway. So, we grabbed more clothes and headed back to Dallas! Yes, 45 minutes after arriving home from Dallas, we left again. Mark and I just had to laugh about the situation.

Once back in Dallas, we decided to make it a mini-vacation which I will blog and post pics about soon. We called our house late this afternoon and the power is back on yet again. If it is still on tomorrow morning we will probably go home.

It's easy to be frustrated about the inconveniences and wasted time that we could have been having fun instead of driving back and forth but it's not worth it. I told Mark, we can't change our circumstances but we can change our attitude toward them. He said it sounded like something "management" would say but he knew it was true. Thus, the mini-vacation continued after a 6 hour interruption of driving.

Tonight when Savannah and I prayed before bed, we thanked God for these few days to relax (minus the hours of driving back and forth) and have fun with friends and family. We are grateful to have an undamaged home to return too. What frustration and stress we endured are nothing compared to the people on the coast and we are thankful for that.