Hurricane Ike

So we have officially survived what was Ike. Owen was completely unfazed by the whole ordeal and didn't seem to mind not having power. Probably because he got a ton of quality time with Bryan and I but I'm still amazed at how easy going he was through the whole thing. Since there was not much to do, I of course had to take lots of pictures to document the whole thing :)

The Hulshof and Rodrigue families in full hurricane preparation mode before the storm. Leigh is no doubt tracking the hurricane on the laptop.

At around midnight, Bryan went to bed in Owen's room and Leigh and Adam and I stayed up for a bit. The storm really started around 1ish when everyone was in bed. I decided to sleep in the downstairs gameroom to keep an eye on things (which sounds kind of funny) but somehow everyone else went to bed without a problem :) At around 4, Leigh and I went out on the back porch and watched it come through and it was CRAZY. I tried to video some of it but it was too dark to see. I do have some video of it later in the morning that I'll try to upload if youtube ever lets me.

At around 7, I woke Bryan and Owen up, who by the way slept through the ENTIRE storm, and told them to go look in the backyard and they saw the following...

Because it was way too hot to start cleaning up outside, we went over to Mimi and Popi's house and celebrated Bryan's 36th birthday in the dark.
Bryan, the ultimate collector of stuff, had a charger that would charge his laptop while his truck wasn't running so every night Owen got to watch a video which was a total lifesaver. His hands look strangely blue in the pic because that day he and Bryan did some science experiment involving cornstarch and food coloring. Don't ask, they were bored.

Then an amazing cold front came through and we finally got around to cleaning up the front yard. No real damage, just lots of debris to pick up.
By Tuesday, boredom officially set in but Owen still was in a good mood. He actually posed for this pic because he thought it would be funny to make it look like Fat Cat was sitting on his head.
So we broke out some playdoh and Owen made me spaghetti and meatballs or as he calls it, basketti and meatballs :)
And then the law came to town. Bryan and I both got arrested for speeding.
We didn't have power, but we had light up drum sticks for Rock Band that we couldn't play. Thank goodness!!! They were actually a birthday present for Bryan that came in the mail today.


And now we finally have power. I know we were INCREDIBLY lucky to not have suffered any major damage and for all of our friends and family to be safe and sound but I still REALLY appreciate electricity :)