Hurricane IKE

Well, as I am sure you have heard, we were hit by Hurricane Ike early on Saturday morning. We boarded up our windows, grabbed our important documents and left town on Thursday morning, before there was a lot of traffic. We came to San Antonio to stay with Heidi's parents, who graciously opened there home to us.

On Saturday morning, we spoke with several of our neighbors who rode out the storm. They said the hurricane was worse than they expected and did quite a bit of damage to their homes. Unfortunately, we hadn't given them a key to check the damage inside our house so we didn't know until Robby drove back into town on Sunday what had happened. The news was not so good. Sophie's entire ceiling collapsed, Noah's was water damaged, our fences were down, the garage had extensive water damage, the roof was missing many shingles, and our chimney looked twisted. Most of our neighbors had similar damage. We think that there might have been a tornado on our street because it got hit so hard. But I guess we will never know...

The good news is, we left and are safe. There still isn't power at our house and we really can't live in it under the current conditions. Robby cleaned up what he could, tore up the carpet, and put tarps on the roof to prevent further damage, but we basically just have to wait for the insurance company to come by and access the damage. If you are thinking of us, please pray that everything goes smoothly with estimates and insurance coverage. Dealing with insurance companies can sometimes be a pain, so we just want things to go as quickly as possible. Obviously, there are a lot of people in need just like us, so we know we will have to wait, but just pray for patience and wisdom to know when we should go back. Thanks so much!

P.S. If you read this, please leave a comment. We would love to hear from you! =)

Gators!

Yesterday, we finally went to Brazos Bend Park to see the alligators that everyone has told us about. That was quite an experience! A little scary actually...We hiked around a marsh and saw alligators everywhere! We were about 10 feet from a baby gator that was on shore with its mouth open and then later, while we were walking (I was up ahead a little), I turned and saw a huge alligator staring right at me! He was probably 10 feet long! Needless to say, we kept the kids close by at all times.


On a huge tree stump

A "tower" overlooking the marsh

Noah and Sophie are prepared with their walking sticks

The biggest spider I have ever seen! (Besides a trantula) It was bigger than my hand!


At the entrance

On the pier

The first alligator we saw under us while out on the pier

The baby alligator

The monster staring at me!