Ike's Still Messin' With Me!

We had a big storm last night and when I woke up this morning I was greeted by yet another tree down in our yard. Thanks, Ike! This tree started leaning during Hurricane Ike and the little storm we had last night finished it off. Poor JR is starting to think that every time it rains a tree falls down in our yard. Here are some pictures...

AAANNND...If you remember I thought I had accidentally deleted all my Ike pictures off my camera. Well, I didn't. While suffering from Post Ike Stress Syndrome I had put the pictures under September 06, so when I went to look for them under September 08 they weren't there, and I thought I had deleted them. I wouldn't have posted them since we all seem to be over Ike, but since I'm having to talk about it again, here are the before and after pictures I didn't get to show you the first time around. And yes, the before pictures were taken the day of the storm. That's another spooky thing about hurricanes, look how gorgeous it was just 12 hours before it hit!

And this is what it looked like when we were trying to get down our street.

I'm Done With It

When I checked the Centerpoint Energy website today it said maybe we'll have power on Sunday. Sunday! I've been through all kinds of emotions since finding that out...anger, sadness, depression...And I wrote two posts on the subject. One in a rage filled rant, and a more light-hearted post comparing my feelings about Centerpoint to Obama and Tom Cruise. After deleting both, I've decided this is my last hurricane post, although I'll still continue to update our electricity status to the right. I've dedicated enough time to this hurricane and I'm tired of Ike stealing my blog's joy. So to wrap up all hurricane talk, here are the pictures of our street and house waiting for "big trash pick-up" AND electricity.

Watch Us on TV

Click here to watch our big TV debut. We show up about 22 seconds into it, and we're only on for a second or two. Jason walks into the frame first and them me. He's wearing a white shirt with thin red stripes, and I'm wearing a blue tank top and sunglasses. (I know we look way too casual for church, but remember, church was outside and Houston is HOT!)

The Ingys and Ike-We're TV Stars!

I've always known Jason and I were meant to be on television, and today, we made it! We noticed Chanel 2 news was at church today, and when we watched it this afternoon, there we were walking into the service. 2nd Baptist is one of the largest churches in Houston (I'm guessing we're right behind Joel Osteen's Lakewood) and our campus was severely damaged. Ike pealed the copper right off the domed roof, picked it up, and then slammed it back on the church. Our 5,000+ seat worship center had 2 feet of water in it, and everything was ruined. It's millions of dollars worth of damage (think sound and computer equipment) and 6 months to a year before we'll be back inside. The news was there to cover the story of the damage and to show us having church on the football field. We were told to dress super casual, so Jason and I were wearing shorts for our big TV debut. I'm glad we were too, even at 9:30AM the sun was beating down on us, and with my milk-toast skin, I actually got a little bit sunburned. Of course our channel 2 exposure was only a couple of seconds, but JR was pretty upset that we were on TV and he wasn't. (He was at children's church) In fact, he burst into tears that he wasn't featured...he's so my child. If Chanel 2 puts anything about it on their website, I'll be sure and add the link. Here's a picture of the dome damage that I took this morning.

The Ingys and Ike- Need A Break

I'm taking an Ingy and Ike blog vacation starting tomorrow. The Traveling Ingys just got back from a fabulous European vacay, so I'll be posting our European adventures tomorrow.
I got the saddest phone call from my mom today. She called the power company and they told her it would be at least 3 more weeks before they get their electricity back. I've never heard her so sad or depressed. Their neighbors down the way got it back yesterday, so she was thinking they would be getting it any minute. Unfortunately, they aren't on the same power grid. In other East Texas news, the gas station owner in their little town was going into Crockett and picking up the free FEMA ice and water and then selling (actually price gouging ) it in his store. They sent in a high school kid undercover and they charged him $26 for ice and water. The owners were arrested and taken out in handcuffs. I say, AMEN! He deserved it!
In Ike messing up stuff for the Ingys news, the worship center in our church was badly damaged and it will be months until we can have services inside it. I don't know what we'll be doing long term, but Sunday's service is out on the football field. They still don't have power either, so it remains to be seen if JR will be going to school on Monday.
I leave you with some pictures that were emailed to Jason today. And Houstonians, I know you're as sick of Ike talk as I am, so I promise no hurricane blogging tomorrow.

The Ingys and Ike-Going Stir Crazy

As you can see, we're loosing it a little bit around here. Poor Granny Sherry is used to only sharing her house with her dog, Pee Wee. Now she's got our family of 5 moved into her 2 bedroom house. I'm sure she's thinking that she lived through Hurricane Ike and now she's having to live through Hurricane Ingy! The babies are both crawling, and boy are they fast. We've baby-proofed the shelves as far up as they can reach, and I've given up on taking the dog toys away from them. Besides, Granny Sherry's house is so clean that Pee Wee's dog toys are probably cleaner than most anything. Jason's dad read in the paper that they are aiming to have power restored to our zip code by Tuesday. The local channels aren't doing 24/7 news coverage anymore, so it was nice to see some network television shows tonight...hopefully "normal" isn't too far off.

The Ingys and Ike- Aftermath Day 4

I had an awesome set of before and after pictures I had taken around our house so you could see how bad it is here. But in my stressed-outness I accidentally deleted them when trying to get them off my memory stick. It's awful here. 70 person gas lines, no gas, lines just to get inside the grocery store, and still no electricity. I feel bad being upset about the 4 big trees we lost in our yard since those trees could have so easily landed on our house. Our neighbors across the street, like thousands here in Houston, have a tree right through their house. Or, we could be like the thousands of people whose homes were blown or washed completely away. We're still refugees over at Jason's mom's house, which again, I'm not complaining. I could be a refugee in a shelter. Most schools are closed through the end of the week, and some are closed indefinitely. My parents still don't have power, and have no idea when they'll get it. They have to go through the FEMA line everyday just to get ice and water. JR's school is supposed to start up again on Thursday and it will take me close to an hour to drive him to school from out here in Katy. Luckily, my friend, Shelley, has power at her place (which is close to JR's school) and she's letting me go sit at her house with the babies until JR gets out. We're going to have to go to the store tonight to get baby food. I haven't left the house since we got here (except to walk JR to the park), and I'm not looking forward to it. I lived in a third world country for 3 years, and I've never experienced anything like this. Everybody is under a curfew, we have to worry about looters, we finally got water back at our house and we can now stop boiling it here at Sherry's, and I now know what a POD site is (It means "Point of Distribution" and that's where you go line up to get food, water, and ice.) Our definition of "normal" has been completely altered, and everything about Houston -the people, the landscape-has been changed forever.

The Ingys and Ike- Hurricane Home Video

Here are the videos from the storm. I tried to do my best Mariza Reyes impersonation that I could. (Jason and I love Mariza Reyes from Chanel 2. When we would be up with the twins at 5 A.M. they would always have her reporting from the absolute worst part of Houston. Every morning Jason and I would joke...wonder where their going to have poor Mariza this morning.) I was trying to stay calm while I talked, but you can hear in my voice that I'm scared. In this video you can't see anything because it was so black, dark outside. What you're hearing isn't rain, it's wind!

The next two videos are after the sun came up. At the end of the second one I had a "Jan moment" and started screaming when the rain started coming down sideways and soaked me. The crazy thing about the second video is that a huge oak tree in the backyard fell about 5 minutes after I quit filming...Can you imagine the squealing that would have come out of me if that had happened on camera?

The Ingys and Ike- It was BAAADDD

Okay, no joking here tonight. It was bad; I was scared. Our yard looks like a war zone. We lost 2 big trees, but neither hit our house. We were certainly blessed. Jason's dad lives next door and lost about 10 trees. There's no telling when we'll have power again. The news is saying everybody should have power again in a month...A Month! Katy, where Jason's mom lives, is in West Houston and got the least damage from the storm, so her house has power. It came on again about 9:00 P.M. tonight so we broke curfew and came here to stay. JR is out of school until at least Wednesday. I took video and lots of pictures, but in my hurry to pack in the dark I left the camera at home. We'll pick it up tomorrow, so I should have video and pictures to show then. As bad as it was, it could have been so much worse. We want to thank all of you that called and text messaged to check on us. We really appreciate it. My parents are also okay. One side of their barn blew off and they lost some trees. I'll have more tomorrow, I'm going on to bed since I didn't sleep one minute last night since I was too busy pacing back and forth and hiding in the closet.

The Ingys and Ike- 9:45 P.M.

Jason has cranked the air conditioning down to 70 so when the power does go out it will hopefully stay cool in the house for awhile. Needless to say, we're all freezing right now...I'm sure in a day or two I'll be wishing I had just a drop of this cold air. JR and the babies are asleep in our room, and we only have one set of windows in there, so that's probably the safest room for us to be in (besides the closets). The wind is gusting to about 45 MPH and the storm still hasn't reached us. This will be my last post for tonight, and I'll post again as soon as I'm able. Here's some latest video from our front porch..

I'm also including the latest picture from Channel 2. If you want to see what the storm is doing in our area visit Channel 2 and our location is the actual city of Houston, inside the Sam Houston Tollway/Beltway at I-10W.

The Ingys and Ike- 6:45 P.M.

Getting more serious out there, and this is the easy part. Our neighbors down the street just lost their power so it's only a matter of time. The winds are up to 110 MPH and its about 100 miles off the coast of Galveston. Our phone, TV, and internet is all through our cable so don't worry if you can't get us on our home phone. Here's a video of our front yard.

The Ingys and Ike-3:30 P.M.

It's clouding up, starting to sprinkle, and winds are gusting to 25 MPH. I just asked Jason, "At what point do you think I'm going to say..We should have gone...I'm scared?" He said, probably when a tree comes crashing through our house. In wildlife news, the peacock is back. First he was eating the squirrel food in the backyard, then later he was hanging out in the front yard. I called my mom to tell her and she said, "go catch it and bring it in the house!" Then her friend, Karen, said, "Oh no! The hurricane will blow off all its feathers!" About that time Granny Sherry's dog, Pee-Wee, chased it and it flew up in a tree. So if you see a naked peacock hanging around our street, totally our fault. Here's the latest picture from Channel 2. Poor Galveston is taking a pounding with this storm surge.

The Ingys and Ike-11:40 A.M.

We've made all our hurricane preparations. We've put all our outside things in the garage, I've washed all the clothes, and everybody has taken a shower...we want to make sure we look our best for the TV cameras when they rescue us from the roof of our house! I'm kidding about the last part, if our house floods, then all of Houston will be underwater. Their forecasting we'll have to deal with 70-100 mile an hour winds and 4-8 inches of rain here in town. Of course the storm is supposed to hit around midnight, so we won't be able to see what's coming at us. The water is already over the Seawall in Galveston. For you non-Texans: The seawall was built in 1902 after the 1900 hurricane that killed between 6,000-12,000 people and is 17 feet high and 16 feet thick. Here's another picture from Chanel 2 showing the waves hitting The Seawall.

As you can see from the picture above, and our pictures, it's still not raining...not even cloudy. Here are pictures from our preparations this morning. JR's swing-set with no swings, our empty back porch, and Jason and JR working on clearing our front porch.

The Ingys and Ike-7:30 A.M.

We've had non-stop news coverage of Hurricane Ike since yesterday morning. We haven't seen anything else on TV now for 24 hours (I'm happy to let JR watch "his shows" just to get a break from it). The latest news still has Ike hitting Galveston, we're hoping to be on the west side of the storm when it hits, as that is the "clean" side. The "dirty" east side produces all the tornadoes. The models they are showing now have the hurricane going right through downtown Houston, so I guess we won't be worrying about east or west, and we'll be dealing with the eye. It's still a beautiful day, but parts of Galveston and Kemah are already under water do to the storm surge. Here's the latest map from Channel 2 here in Houston. I've chosen them as my news provider since their weather men haven't been getting hysterical.

It's A Sunshine Day...Right Now

We were living in Beijing during Hurricane Katrina (praise the Lord). And during that time we were talking about living in Houston and dealing with hurricanes and tornadoes. Our Bosnian friend, Sunny, looked at us and with all seriousness said, "Why would you live in such a place?" Jason and I really didn't have an answer except to say "that's where we call home". You'd never know it to look outside, it's just a normal, hot, sunny, Houston day...but Hurricane Ike is on its way, and it looks like we're going to take a pretty direct hit. We've decided to stay put and "ride it out". You might be thinking, "Their crazy! Why would they do that?" Well, with hurricanes, you really never know what the safest thing is to do. Parts of Houston near the coast are under mandatory evacuation; we are not. (We're about 10 miles from downtown, Galveston is about an hour drive for us). Jason and I have both been through a hurricane before-Alicia in 1983. They aren't fun, they can be very scary, but we've made the choice to stay. The mayor made an announcement that Houston will be closed on Friday- basically we're just supposed to stay put and be ready. The storm is supposed to hit early Saturday morning, and we'll for sure be without power for quite awhile, so I'll keep you updated best I can.