We made it

I finally have some time to make a write up on our Hawaiian vacation.  But let me back up first. Yes, we were able to make it on our trip.  Aside from many obstacles, we were able to change our plane tickets to fly out of San Antonio, since both Houston airports were still closed due to the Hurricane.  We woke up even earlier Sunday morning, to drive 3 hours to catch the flight to LA.   From there, we caught another flight to take us directly to the island of Kauai.  

I'll admit, on the drive to San Antonio, it all felt a little surreal. I couldn't believe that we were actually going, because I had basically prepared myself mentally and emotionally that it wasn't going to work out.   I'll give you a clip from a family email that I wrote on the way to the airport (see below)

With a 3 hour drive early this morning, I find myself suddenly having lots of time to reflect upon the last several days......  I feel so many things: relief, gratitude, anxiety, humility, exhaustion, wonder and awe . . .

As we are driving up the feeway OUT of of Houston, there are lines & lines of emergency vehicles Driving towards Houston from San Antonio. Ambulances, buses, Red Cross & Salvation Army trucks, trailers hauling heavy moving equipment, all types of military 

vehicles .... It's pretty impressive.  I can't imagine all of those coastal peoples' lives so abruptly and completely devastated.  It's very humbling to think how awesome that Hurricane was, the destruction it made, and now watch all of these people on their way to help. It makes me feel like we came out unscathed (which we did). Yet at the time, it FELT like a heavy burden - just to live without power and ride out the storm.

Watching these response vehicles drive in, I realize that since 11PM Friday night, I haven't heard any further news about Ikes aftermath. We went to bed Friday night not knowing what would happen to us and we woke up without power, so I haven't seen any news on tv, and haven't had the time to read anything online. It's a weird feeling to feel so disconnected.  They talked about that on the news Friday night--that because Ike was going to make landfall during the middle of the night when it's dark, it  would be very disorienting for people, because you can't see what's happening outside aroundyou and without power to see the reports on tv, it makes things all the more unnerving. I think that's a large part of why it was so frightening .......

It's a weird feeling to actually be a part of all of this.
It's always been hard for me to comprehend or relate to disasters that
have happened half-way across the country when it's had little to no
impact on me.  It's almost as if they didn't happen at all, or might
as well  have happened on another continent because I've just always
gone on with my own life- which is busy enough that I don' t really
have much time tothink about it too much.  Well, not this time . . .

After experiencing a taste of this , I learned a few

things.  For one, A/C is my friend .  Especially living here in TX.
Yes, I can get by without power, but it's so hard to SLEEP when it's
90+ degrees with 85 % humidity in your house. 

I realized that I was glad we had a gas stove in our kitchen.  When
the power goes out, it still works if you have a match to light it.  I
don't thonk i'll ever want to live without one now if I can help it.
We also had a  propane camping stove, but still-- it was much easier
to use the one in the house.  And we also got our charcoal grill ready
to roll just in case.  Grills in general come in REAL handy when you
don't have power.

We got our coolers out of the garage and bought huge bags of ice from
Sams club before the storm hit, so we could keep some of our food from going bad.  We were told that after power goes out, our fridge/freezer would stay cool for about 8 hours if unopened. But after that, we'd have to put everything in coolers.  I wished I  had more coolers!

A few other things: 

1) we had lots of water storage prepared beforehand
that we didn't end up needing, but we heeded a few peoples' suggestions to fill up our bathtubs with water, if for nothing else than to use to flush the toilets if we had to.  (keep in mind we were expectig to
have no power or water pressure for 1-2 WEEKS!) It would have been
much easier to use a pot of water from the bathtub to flush the
toilets than to haul it from wherever the 50 gallon drum was!

2) I'm also grateful for the church!  It is such a blessing to have that
instant support system In place and know that there's people around to
help.  Whether it's a natural disaster or vacation plans, there's
people we can trust - anywhere we live- who are more than willing to
be there fore us.  Our trip to Kauai, for example, wouln't be possible
weren't for the 3 different families who are helping our  kids
while we are gone.

Ok. that was a long excerpt.  Sorry.  Anyway, before I move on to a vacation summary, here are a few pics I took just around our neighborhood showing some damage that was done by Hurricane Ike.  Nothing too major, but still . . .  They cancelled school for the entire  next week, so they could clean up the schools that had water and wind damage.