A Family Vacation with Ike

Well as most of you know we took off to Texas to spend a few days with Pat's family and attend the Arkansas vs Texas football game. Pat mentioned to me while we were still in Utah that there might be a hurricane headed towards Texas. I remember telling him "don't tell me something I can't do anything about....I don't need anything else to worry about". If I had been smart I would have started watching the news and weather and possibly calling the airline for a different trip.

But we headed off to Texas and the boys were great on the flight. They slept, ate and colored. We didn't even have to get out the DVD player which we carry for the final meltdown. We got to Texas Wed.night, picked up our rental car and headed to his sister's house where we were staying because she had kids close the boys' age so there would be toys to play with.

We then started hearing more and more about this hurricane. I got into stress mode and told Pat we HAVE to go buy food, water, gas etc. We headed out Thursday to Wal-Mart only to find the shelves of bread, water, batteries totally bare. We did manage to pick up some necessities and just hoped we wouldn't need a lot. (this is Pat's parent's house and the part of the tree we had to get down before it went into the house)

Friday was a beautiful day in Texas. We had the kids out playing in the yard, driving the jeep and just burning as much energy as possible. It was the weirdest thing though that afternoon when the black clouds started rolling in. The bad weather hit us Friday night, we lost power that night as well. Saturday was a lot of rain and strong winds. Our family's 3 houses all held up well. There was part of a tree that was hanging over his mom's house that we had to deal with and his sister lost some shingles but all in all we just had a lot of leaves, limbs and trash to clean up. Pat had to get up into the tree about 30 feet and then pull up a chain saw from a neighbor to cut down the large part of the tree.

We did the best we could with no water, no power, no phones and in the Texas heat. The boys were a little out of whack and it was so hot they could not fall asleep so we would drive them around in the car each night until they fell asleep then take them back to bed.

We were not able to get a flight out on Monday as planned and the 1st two flights we were scheduled on for Tuesday were cancelled but we finally got home Tues. night. It was so good to be back home in our bed with a nice long shower. Though we hated leaving his parents without power and water. The good part is they got their power back this weekend.

It was not the vacation we had planned but we know we were there for a reason. We did not get to attend the TX vs AR football game as it was rescheduled for the 27th so we do have two tickets for sale at a good price if you know anyone who might be interested.

The boys are back in school and we are gradually trying to catch up on all the sleep we lost.

Hope you are doing well and thank you for all the prayers while we were gone.