Hurricane Ike Part II

We have power. Two little streets in our whole neighborhood. The trade-off is we have no water. At all. Not one drop. We are using water from our pool to flush our toilets. Bathing? Nope. Washing hands? Good thing I have lots of baby wipes. But we are lucky. We have power. For now. It flickers on and off. We will have power for three hours, and then none for five. Enough to keep the house cool, and make ice for the cooler.

We drove around yesterday. Emmi's school is missing a section of roof. The playground is in bad shape. Jill's school appears to have fared better, but not by much. It is hard to describe the feeling of it all. Street after street of damage. House after house. No one escaped without something. We knew before we came back home that the fence was down, the shop damaged. I didn't expect two streets away to see roofs caved in and trees on top of house. The house directly across the street lost windows. I didn't expect the magnitude of it all. The destruction. The feeling of not even knowing where to begin.

One neighborhood over from us. The whole front half of the house is destroyed.

Kenny's shop. (No, not his truck. This is about two down from him.)

Behind the shop. Property belonging to our friend's company, now covered with the roof to the neighboring property. And a kayak!

Our backyard. Looking into eight surrounding yards. I expected our fence to be gone. I guess I never thought that ALL the fences would be down. And, really, Fence, did you have to fall in on all of our landscaping. The fence is nothing. All of our landscaping is destroyed. But again, we are lucky, and I am not complaining.