Here are some pictures of the aftermath.

Notice the ladder in the shot below. We learned a lesson that you should leave electric gates open before a potential power outage.

Hurricane Ike

We survived!

I have to say that even after all the hype we heard beforehand, Ike definitely came on stronger than I had expected. It was a long and sometime scary night (nonetheless, Danielle did manage to sleep through most of it, she values her sleep a lot). The wind shuck our old little house and the sky repeatedly shone bright green with explosions from the transformer station near our house.

By morning, we could tell were very lucky. In our front yard, our two big sycamore trees had blown completely down (roots and all) , however, they had fallen away from our house. Had they fallen the other way they would have flattened our house as they were about 70 feet tall. It took a few hours of chainsawing with our neighbors before we were able to clear enough of one of the trees to get a car out of our driveway. We were similarly lucky in our backyard; one of our trees feel toward our house but got one of its larger limbs stuck on our neighbor's shed stopping its fall.

We are still without power, and may remain so for quite a while. However, we found a Borders with power and wireless, so we are pretty happy. We will hopefully post pictures soon.

Here it comes....

Apparently Ike is dead set on visiting Houston. Sounds like my first hurricane is going to be a good one.

Check out what we did to our little house:

I helped!

So now our house is like a cave on the inside and there's going to be lot's of fun holes to fill around all our windows when this is over.

We had our dinner outside (while we still could) and took turns picking which tree limbs we think aren't going to make it...

Seriously?

We have a racoon living in our attic.

Well, we think we have a racoon living in our attic.

I woke around 4am to a significant amount of scuffling and bumping - at first I thought there was someone in our backyard. Then we figured out it was coming from above us. Whatever is up there has a decent amount of weight behind it.

My solution: Call an animal control company and let them do what they do and take care of it.

TJ's solution: Venture up to the attic himself and take care of it like a real man.

Oh dear. I'm not sure this is going to end well...

Granny in Training

Yesterday I learned how to knit! I went to a little shop downtown that is devoted to knitting to look for a beginner's project. The shop lady ended up giving me an hour+ lesson and I'm so ready to go now. She started me out on a scarf to practice my stitches, which is a little less exciting since I'm pretty sure I didn't wear a scarf once last winter. But once I've got that down I'm going to be knitting everything.

You needed a new sweater for christmas, right?

Coming Home is Great

When I got home, TJ took the afternoon off work and brought me back to a house that was spick and span with fresh flowers on the table and fresh fruit for us to eat while we spent a lazy afternoon watching movies.

I need to go away more so I can come home more often!

Going Home is Great

I spent the last week at home and it was so great!


First, I met these two lovely ladies at the airport and we all flew home together...




Then I spent a lazy week at home where I got to stuff myself silly with all the amazing things mum kept baking. She quite outdid herself. She also designed and made the bridesmaids dresses for my sister's wedding and fit me for a tailored dress to wear to work that is going to be hot. Not too much for me to live up to then(!)

Also got in a few days of shopping in London - with ice cream sundaes for lunch, of course!




Since Nicki's fiance was in town there was touristing going on too --- we all went along with them for the day in Cambridge. Punting on the Cam never gets old.









I made this last pic bigger so that you can see the facial expressions --- that's the pole you push the boat along with in the background by the bridge. Corinne is politely trying to hide her giggles behind her hand, Kevin's not bothering to hide his, and Dad is thinking "come on!"