Blessed through Ike

I've been blessed in many ways in my life! I've really seen the hand of the Lord blessing me throughout this hurricane experience. First of all, we've escaped any real damage. We're safe, we've had enough to eat and drink, our water has worked through this whole process, and the weather has been FANTASTIC! The latter has been pretty miraculous. The first night after the hurricane and the power outage, the weather was still hot and muggy. Sleeping was miserable, but since Sunday we've had ridiculously cool weather! We've had our windows open and it has been perfect! We've even been a bit chilly on some evenings. Needless to say, we've kept ourselves busy with lots of household projects AND lots of fun!

We've really utilized our candles - and I've loved taking pictures of some of them!
At nights, we've been playing cards by candlelight. Ryan Bushman would be scared if he knew how well I was doing at Skip Bo!

This is a common sight at a lot of the gas stations - especially around residential areas.

We've seen lots of assistance trucks for different purposes. This one was for food. Abraham actually stood in line at the Civic Center and got us some free food, water, and ice. It was so nice.
Speaking of Abraham, he's joined us on several of our daily bike rides. He and Susannah were perfecting their "no hands" riding.

My current bike has a basket and is pretty heavy. I never felt very safe with less than one hand on the handles! We did respect knuckles for the picture instead. We've loved our bike rides!

We've done a lot of outdoors things. One day we had a bunch of friends over. We went to our subdivision park and played ultimate frisbee in the mud. Abraham took Susannah down before we even started. She repaid the favor . . . with a little help.

Abraham even brought all but one of his siblings. It was fun to see them interact.

They wrestled each other in the mud and then grabbed Eva's husband and tossed him in as well.

We all ended up with a few fire ant bites. Brock played with his shoes and socks off. He got bit TONS and found out that he is allergic to ant bites. He got so red and swollen, got hives, and his airway started to constrict. We borrowed some Benedril (sp?) and sent him to the bathtub with some vinegar and baking soda. He got back to normal after awhile, but he gave us quite a scare.

We're blessed to have a gas stove so we haven't suffered in the cooking department. The only problem comes when we wait to start cooking until after the sun goes down. We've become good friends with our head lamps.

I've enjoyed practicing some photography using candlelight. I'm still working on it.

We have got a LOT of projects done thus far. We've cleaned, organized, and painted. Our roommate Seana even let us clean and organize her room one day. We decided to recycle some of our cardboard. Initially we tried to load this box full of magazines and other cardboard onto the basket on my bike, but I couldn't ride with it, so we pulled out the wheelbarrow. We had drawn a bit of a crowd as we tried the bike.

Susannah carted Jen home in the wheelbarrow and got lots of comments by passersby.

I had to take a video of the action. She almost tipped the thing over several times! It was hilarious.

We found another good sign as we were riding bikes today. Don't you love Texas?
Another crazy sight during the bike ride was this Mustang. You could tell it burned there. I'm not sure what happened, though!
Some things we've noticed from this ordeal:
1. The hurricane has brought people (especially families) together because they haven't had a lot of distractions from each other.
2. The prophets really know what they're talking about when they say that we should go to bed early and wake up early. It's been wonderful.
3. People have learned to appreciate each other more and have become more eager to share and help (Thanks to Sonia for letting me use her computer AND washer/dryer!).
4. It's nice to have quiet.
5. The Lord is VERY mindful of us.
Lastly, a little update. Still no power, but we are happy to hear now that we don't have to go back to school until next Wednesday!