Blessed

Well, we survived IKE. On Thursday morning last week Boyd and I decided that we would rather not "hunker down" as Judge Ed Emmett put it, so we packed up the cat (with a small dose of dramamine) and our other belongings (mainly Boyd's Wii and our wedding picture proofs...still haven't ordered!) and hit the highways. It was a long trip, at one point it took us 45 minutes to get 8 miles!!! Thankfully, Boyd and I are still country enough to know the value of backroading it, so that is what we did. Let me tell you, next time we will do that again! There were maybe 7 cars on the back roads and we kept a top speed of about 65 mph (they are curvy and hilly and only two lanes after all). So after about 4 hours in the car, as opposed to the usual hour and forty-five minutes, we arrived at Tutu's. We spent most of Friday watching the weather channel tell us that if you lived in Galveston you were dead meat and helping Tutu get the house prepared for strong winds. We also went to lunch with Gary and Gale, which was great! When we went to bed on Friday, we were fully expecting to wake up at some point and hear howling winds and rain...no such luck. It was a little windy and it did not rain at all! Saturday was spent watching the TV to see what had happened to Houston, but mostly they showed what happened at the coast, with the exception of the glass blowing out in Downtown. We also found out that Boyd didn't have to be back at work until Tuesday. I finally settled down to spend about 4 hours on my Estate and Gift Tax Homework and Boyd played Wii. Sunday we found out that our apartment HAD POWER!!! One of the very few places in Houston to have power back already, Tutu and Jim have family here that might not have power for three weeks. So, Tutu and Jim took them some generators. Sunday, I finished up my homework and watched the news and found out I have school on Wednesday (today). We decided that we would go home on Monday. We bought some groceries in La Grange, because we had seen the long lines on TV and hit the road. It really didn't take us that long to get back, we were surprised. And when we got to our apartment.....everything was fine. Down limbs and some trees and bushes fell over, but no damage to us. Our lights had been out for less than 18 hours so everything in the freezer was fine. We have electricity and running water! We have air conditioning and TV! I feel so blessed that we are able to have all of these things when just a few blocks over people have none of them. God is really watching over us!