The Aftermath...Part Deux

Just another interesting picture from around the neighborhood....


Let me preface this post by saying that I have the most wonderful, hard-working husband and I'm so glad he's mine :) I stopped by the house this afternoon to check and see (yes our power is STILL out...), and start cleaning out the freezer. Greg's Mom and I packed up all the food that was salvagable (including our wedding cake top) and left because it was so hot and mildew/musty smelling.

Greg was unfortunate enough to have to work today, and after his 10-hour day, he headed to the house to see what he could fix. He wanted to make sure the floors and wooden stairs didn't get molded and rot, so he tore up all the carpet he could. I haven't seen it all first-hand yet, and I'm not looking forward to it. The pictures are all that I need to see....

Our entryway...

The living room.

Another pic of the living room.

The stairway :(

Baby Allison's future room :( You can see a corner of the ruined white dresser...

The hallway

At least we are blessed enough to have family that is close that will let us visit for a while!!! It's becoming a slumber party here at Greg's parents house. One of Erin's (Greg's sister) friends who lives in Houston and is out of power came to stay as well. We had a wonderful dinner tonight and I've been trying to find things to keep myself occupied today while Greg worked. Much to my Mom's surprise, I'm sure, I even gardened a bit this morning...that's almost unheard of for me!!! We did have a nice perk this evening though: Greg's Mom's masseuse came to the house this evening (because the power was out at her office) and we all got massages...so this whole Ike thing isn't all bad :)

I'll keep everybody posted. Take care :)

The Aftermath...

So we left San Antonio and headed back to Houston this morning without any problems. Traffic wasn't bad on I-10; we drove along with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Army National Guard caravans as they were traveling to Houston. As we got closer and closer to Houston, we were amazed at all the sign/billboard damage and the windows that were out, but nothing seemed too bad (being on the West side, we didn't see all the flooding).....then we took the exit to go to our house.

Here's a picture of Richmond Ave right in front of our house; boy am I glad we own a Yukon!!!


Me following behind Greg's truck as we drove to his parents house in SugarLand (since we didn't have power at our townhouse). We're such the stereotypical Texans-I have a Yukon and he has a Dodge truck....no good gas mileage for either of us :)

This was the big shocker for us....This is the tree Greg usually parks under and is about 5 feet from our front door. We were all blessed that it fell the way it did; it tore up the sidewalk and the lightposts, but didn't hit the building or any cars.

We lost our little cute tree that I love....I guess all the trees around here have pretty shallow roots...

What we walked home into...

The ceiling above the stairway.

The hallway ceiling.

Apparently the wind knocked off some of the shingles and it started raining into the attic, which saturated the ceiling in our hallway and the guest room. One of our dressers (a brand new white one) has some water damage (Note to self: next hurricane don't leave a purple piece of paper sitting on a white dresser-it bleeds through). The stairway carpet and the guest room carpet are pretty wet, so we hope mildew doesn't set in.

I know it's a little selfish/silly of me, but I was most worried about checking the bathroom walls and ceiling to make sure there was no damage there....I just finished painting!!! Everything there seems fine-most of our damage was to the hallway and guest room, and a little in our living room, so nothing terrible.

The good news is that our HOA should cover the damage, and if not, we have insurance, so we won't be out much. It's more the stress of having to deal with all this now (on top of work, baby stuff, Aggie football tailgating, Volleyball season just starting, etc). My school district is closed for at least 2 days, so that's nice :) but Greg has to go in to work tomorrow.

We're staying with his parents in SugarLand for the time being until we get power back. Greg and I have been so blessed; no matter what, we have each other :)

Baby's First Hurricane Evacuation

OK, so maybe it's not really an evacuation, but we are sitting here in San Antonio while Houston gets pounded with wind and rain.

We were planning to head to San Antonio for a friend's wedding on Saturday, so with all the weather issues, and with school closing and Greg's office closing Friday, we decided to leave a day early. We already had a hotel for Saturday night, so all we had to do was call and add another day to our reservation. This being my first evacuation and Greg's second ever, it went pretty well. The traffic wasn't too bad; there were no huge bottlenecks or problems on I-10 West so we lucked out. We even stopped at a really nice (yet crowded) rest stop on the way. The only thing we realized that we forgot to prep before we left is moving the grill into the garage and away from the plate glass patio doors. So who knows, when he head back, we might have our Webber grill sitting in our kitchen.

We spent this afternoon out on the Riverwalk and seeing a movie, so it's been s nice weekend getaway. We've never been to the Alamo together (though we've both been bunches of times before), so we had to take the obligatory tourist picture.

So for your hurricane funny of the day....

Houston Hurricane Evacuation Routes:
Katrina victims take I-10 East back to Lousiana
Mexicans take I-10 West to San Antonio
Yankees and Democrats take I-45 South to Galveston Island
Longhorns take 290 West to Austin
Aggies take the 610 Loop

:) hehehe

And on a side note....don't think the only thing Greg and I own are maroon Aggie Tshirts...it's always just the easiest thing to throw on. Walking around San Antonio with us in our Aggie shirts and Greg in his Aggie hat, you'd think we were getting ready to tailgate or something :) School pride is a great thing!!

Another Doctor's Appointment :)

So we had another checkup today and Allison looks good (we think that's the name we're going with...Allison Rebecca...it seems nice, so hopefully it'll stick). After our ultrasound, they're saying that she's in the 85 percentile for size, so our baby takes after us :) What I wonder is though....if our baby is in the 85th percentile, how big are the babies in the 95 percentile?!?!

Things are going well with the house. We're deep into the bathroom renovations now...I just finished painting everything this past weekend. Greg is becoming a pro at texturing the walls, so I'll rent him out if anybody needs some manual labor :) We should be done with the downstairs 1/2 bath and the upstairs guest bath in the next couple weeks, then we can move onto the master. Lots to do!!!

Work has been a bit stressful and crazy for the both of us the last couple weeks, and since Mom always taught me "If you can say something nice, don't say anything at all", we'll just let that be that...

Now I'm off to go get some dinner started....yummmmm....