The Aftermath of IKE

A few pics from the evening of the hurricane:

The Zorns with Nathan - 6 days old! (They stayed with us b/c they live on a flood plane, near a bayou...)

The skyline before the hurricane hit

Ryan savoring the power that we were about to lose

The Best Sport I know - Lisa definitely has been through a lot the past two weeks and they STILL DONT HAVE POWER so are now staying in their 4th bed since IKE.

David catching up on ESPN before having to go days without a fix!

Nathan trying out Harrison's swing!

Our house before... David cleaned off all my plants from the the front veranda, but that was all the outside preparation we could do. We were just praying the pine trees across the street didn't fall on us!

The morning after:

After: only 1 tree down!

So tired, with Nathan

David and Ryan went to check out their house. This is Brays Bayou, which you can usually see the bottom of.

Flooding

Lisa and Ryan's front yard - The tree limb was 2 feet from the baby's room!

Near our neighborhood

Close call near out neighborhood

The clean up begins..... I was able to put 3 big pieces of salmon that my dad brought me from Alaska in a neighbor's freezer who had a generator. Other than that, we pretty much lost eveything we couldn't fit in our two coolers.... eggs, turkey, milk, OJ - just the essentials!

Houston, we have a leak!
When we arrived home from Brenham on Tuesday, we found a leak that had soaked through the sheetrock and into the carpet. I was always scared of the huge window in our bedroom. We don't have a house built behind us yet to shield us, so strong winds are scary. This was the main reason I slept in the closet last Friday night!

Our bedroom before:

I took pictures of every room in our house before the hurricane for insurance purposes, in the event of major damage. You can see the window is huge and definitely creaks with high wind. Our builder said this was normal and they make big windows to "give" a little, but WHATEVER! I was not taking the chance!

The repair process - small in comparison to so many people, but still frustrating. We are sleeping in the guest bedroom to stay away from the mold, and hope to be back into our bedroom by the time Harrison comes... (who knows when that will be). They sheetrocked today and are painting and finishing up tomorrow. David has lined up carpet cleaners to come on Saturday, then we'll be back to normal in the Slye household.

As for power, last night (Wednesday), it was restored in our neighborhood!!! YAY! David and I were packed and head for his parents' house, but were able to come home and clean and do laundry instead. We had watched the crew work on the lines all day... many of them were from out of town and one that we spoke to was in from Kansas and had slept in his truck the night before. I fixed them goodie bags of snacks and stuck out my belly a little further (not that there is much room to do this) in hopes getting our power turned back on through pure sympathy and guilt!!!!! ;) The crews are really working so hard - there are trees down everywhere and traffic is a bear due to the lack of street lights working. Many of my friends do not have power, as we are definitely lucky.

My friend Sherri sent me this link that has some good footage from the storm - you can really see how devestating this was for Galveston and Houston.

http://www.tpicks.com/pictures%20people%20have%20sent%20me.html

Baby Update:

Yesterday I went to my OB for a checkup and was contracting very strongly. Ofcourse, they are intermittent, but we know we are getting very close. I have begun to dilate and Damla is thinking within the next week we'll be meeting Harrison. Sometimes I think I have the cervix of steel because he still hasn't come, and if that is the case, we will be inducing on September 30th! So, there is some finality to this process and it's12 days away.

I'll be 38 weeks tomorrow, so he's a big healthy boy right now and we're ready to meet him!