Despair

Consistency

Hurricane Ike Update - Hopefully the final one

This afternoon we got electricity! Yeah! We are all really happy about that and getting the air conditioners going and drying out the inside air is absolutely wonderful. I am really looking forward to sleeping tonight with a fan and air conditioner. The first day without power is tolerable, but by the second day it really gets old. I am very glad we have a generator so we could run our refrigerators and freezer, but the best we could do was run some fans in addition to the refrigerators. I was concerned about running the generator unattended all night for fear that it might disappear, so we did not even have those fans at night. It was hot and humid in the house. We were fortunate that it was a cool day (80 F) but it was still very humid in the house. During the summer we will keep our house at 78-80 F in the middle of the day to save electricity, but the air conditioner runs enough to keep it dry inside and we have the ceiling fans. Dealing with the humidity without the ceiling fans was tough. It is over for us now though and we are glad. I got the trees straightened and secured and I was even able to push the fence back a little bit. Last night and this morning it rained hard and we certainly did not need any more water after the hurricane (many roads were still closed due to flooding) but with all the water the ground was still soft enough for me to push the fence back up a bit. Now all we need to do is call our insurance agent and see about getting the roof fixed. I am sure with all the damage in the area that will take some time. We can now watch the TV and see what is going on and it is bad. We listened to the radio but seeing it on TV really brings it home. The kids do not have school until Wednesday and I am not sure when I will be able to go back to work. From what I understand downtown Houston is a huge mess and people will not be going there for quite a while but I have not heard about the Galleria area where I work. At least I can get on the computer and work from home if I have to. We have survived our first hurricane and we are happy it is pretty much over.

This is a picture from our front porch on Saturday morning as we were examining the results of the hurricane. Our tree is tipped and the neighbors fence was destroyed. Many fences have been destroyed so I guess we are lucky. The gate on our fence is damaged so I will have to do some work to repair it and it is leaning a bit, but nothing like the neighbors.

This is the stop sign just down the road from us. It was bent a bit.

This stop sign is by the pool and it was blown completely down.

This was a house in our neighborhood that was framed only. It was blown completely down.

This is another picture of the same house.

This is a new house that had the tree completely tipped. There were many trees that were tipped over. I am glad we do not live near any large trees. We went yesterday to help one of my home teaching families clean-up all the branches and limbs that were broken off from the large trees in her yard. This was a chain-saw type of job. There were many trees tipped over in that neighborhood and many house had the trees fall on them. I am not sure I ever want to have large trees around my house. They are nice but they can completely destroy a house in a hurricane.

Hurricane Ike Update

It is tough blogging with the Blackberry because the browser only allows a short space to write. So multiple posts may be required.

When we were able to go outside yesterday we discoved that we lost some shingles in the storm. We did not lose many and I checked the attic and I could not find any signs of leakage. That was some ggod news. A couple of our trees in the front yard were blown so they are leaning and the back yard fence is leaning a bit the same direction now. That is all the damage we have.

Hurricane Ike Update

It is morning and it appears the worst is over. As I anticipated, we lost electricity last night. It was a very long night but we made it through without any visable damage at this time. That means that the weather stayed outside. It is still blowing hard and raining outside so we will have to wait a little while before I can go get the generator started and the refrigerators running again. At least we have a generator. The good news is we are all fine, the house is in tact and the worst of it is over.

I am blogging on my Blackberry so please excuse any typos.

Hurricane Ike Update - Hunck'rd Down in the Closet

The wind from the hurricane has reached us now and it is getting pretty loud upstairs. The kids are sleeping in our bedroom closet tonight so they will be close to us and away from any windows. Lori and I are going to start out the night in our bed but we may move to the closet before the night is out. We are really hoping our windows hold. The noise is not too bad downstairs. I just made a walk though the house checking things and the windows on the back of the house and the side next to our neighbor's house, which surprises me. I thought that the side of the house would be somewhat protected due to the closeness of the houses but those are the windows that are doing most of the rattling. This will most likely be my last post tonight because I do not expect to have electricity much longer. The news reports show wide-spread power outages throughout the area including parts of Sugar Land, so I consider ourselves fortunate to have power this late tonight. I am shutting down all the electronics in preparation for the power to go out and so if I do have power later I will not start everything back-up to blog. If we have electricity in the morning, I will post a blog and let everyone (both of you) know what our status is. If you do not see a blog, you can rest assured that we are without electricity.

There is a mandatory curfew in Fort Bend County from 7:00 tonight to 10:00 tomorrow morning. I think it is to keep people from looting any damaged areas over night. Hopefully everything will be fine but we will not be leaving the house until tomorrow morning after 10:00 am.

Brett, Ryan and Jared getting ready for bed in the closet.

The kids brought some stuffed animals with them for comfort in the night.

If Lori and I have to join them in the closet at night, the stuffed animals will have to go.

Lori reading scriptures in the closet before going to bed.

Ryan is ready to go to sleep. The kids are really excited to sleep in our closet. We work hard to get a big house so they can all have their own rooms, and they always want to sleep in our room. Go figure.

Hurricane Ike Update

At about 6:30 this evening we had our first power blip and decided at that it was time to get everyone showered and ready for bed. Depending on how things go, that may be our last shower in a while. The kids were out flying their kites as the wind was conducive to such activities. In the last half hour the wind has intensified further so it appears that the effects of the hurricane have reached us. We had some very light showers earlier in the day but we have not had any real rain yet. I have to say as the windows rattle in the wind that I am getting concerned. Maybe I should have bought some plywood and large ladders and learned to install boards on the windows this summer so I would be better prepared. It has been a pretty casual day up until now just playing Monopoly and watching the news as Galveston gets flooded with the storm surge. We will be sleeping in the closet tonight if we do much sleeping at all. We have battened down the hatches and are now just waiting.

This is the kids flying their kites earlier in the day. The neighbor across the street from us put boards on his windows. We have not ever met them (this is not the friendliest neighborhood) but we have heard the guy plays football for the Texans.

The kids were flying their kites as the wind got stronger this evening. This was a little before the power blip when we called them in to get showered and we battened down the hatches.

Jared was getting his kit to fly better than he ever has.

Here it is whipping around in the wind.

Hurricane Ike Update

It is about 1:30 in the afternoon and I was going stir-crazy with the 3 energetic boys running around the house creating chaos. Earlier we went for a walk/scooter/bike ride outside to try and get some of that excess energy out of the boys so I will be able to make it through the next 24-36 hours with them. It seemed to have worked as the house is much quieter at this time. The kids came in the house when it started to sprinkle outside and the wind is picking-up. Nothing too dramatic so far. From what we have seen on TV Galveston is in for a beating as the storm surge was already going over the storm wall, which is 17 feet high. The beach houses on stilts already have water under them and there are warnings is some areas that the water has been contaminated. All the people were supposed to have already evacuated those areas. The good news is the estimates for the wind speed have been reduced and they expect it to be a Category 2 hurricane when it lands tonight.

We still have electricity and we have turned the settings for the air conditioner way down so if (when) we lose power the house will at least be cool to start out. I will update later this evening if we still have electricity. Otherwise, you can know that we do not have any power so blogging will be down.

During our walk there were people putting boards on their windows. We did not do that. I would estimate that in our neighborhood about 10% of the houses have boarded their windows. We are gambling that we are far enough in-land that we do not have to worry about getting the windows blown out. In addition, we do not have any large trees around our house because it is a new neighborhood so we do not have to worry about tree limbs and branches knocking out the windows. We are crossing our fingers hoping that not boarding-up the windows was the best bet.

This is the latest hurricane tracker. It is getting close.

These are the computer models predicting where the storm will go. You can go to Weather Underground or Storm Pulse to follow the latest on the storm.

Destiny

Hurricane Ike - We are in the path.

For both people that check my this blog and may be wondering, we are in the path of Hurricane Ike. The good news is we live in Fort Bend County and are not in the evacuation zone (see map below). We are prepared and are planning to stay home and ride out the storm. If there are power outages we have a generator and feel that it is better to stay home and take care of things than to try and leave with all the traffic. In addition, we are in a location where flooding is unlikely and we are well away from potential storm surge. Our biggest concern is the potential for wind damage. We will keep you posted on what happens.

Summer Vacation Part 17 - Museum of Natural History in Price

While in Utah we made a trip to Price to visit the Museum of Natural History there. With all the mines in the area they have a very good museum with dinosaur and mammoth bones. Sacha and her kids came with us on the trip so it was good for our boys to spend some fun time with their Cook cousins.

Here the kids are studying a dinosaur exhibit very carefully.

This is the mammoth display that is so impressive. Apparently this mammoth was discovered in the area and is one of the best skeletons in the world. I was impressed by it.

Jared, Brett, Morgan, Mason, Ryan and Dallas at the museum.

Dallas, Mason, Sacha, Morgan, Brett, Lori, Jared, Grandma and Ryan by some dinosaur bones.

One of the many complete dinosaur skeletons.

Brett, Jared and Lori by another dinosaur skeleton.

Here is a dinosaur being chased by a raptor.

The main dinosaur display. Very impressive.

The other part of the main display.

Archaeologists Brett and Ryan digging some bones in the kid area of the museum.

Morgan and Mason with some Dinosaur puppets.

Jared, Mason and Dallas with the dinosaur puppets.

Ryan with T-Rex.

Archaeologist Jared doing some measurements.

The main dinosaur display.

The Allosaurus was impressive.

Grandpa found a chair and took a little snooze. It was a good thing because we did not get home that night until after 1:00 am.

Brett and Jared fearlessly facing the Allosaurus.

Jared, Ryan and Brett with the Allosaurus.

Summer Vacation Part 16: Throwing Tomahawks and Knives

Grandpa Sorensen has tons of manly-man stuff and among his arsenal are throwing tomahawks and knives. After finding a leather store and buying some coyote and fox furs, what could be more manly than throwing some tomahawks and knives?

Here I am helping Ryan to learn the proper tomahawk throwing technique. These tomahawks have metal pipes for handles so they are quite heavy so it was a little tough for Ryan to throw.

This is me showing the kids how to throw as they look-on and try to learn.

Lori even got into the spirit of being a manly-man and threw the tomahawk a few times.

Ryan throwing one of the knives, which was a little easier for him.

Jared figured it out and stuck quite a few in the log.

This is Jared on the release.

The logs we were throwing at with one of the tomahawks stuck. Sticking one was great fun.

Ryan doing a mighty throw with one of the knives.

Brett throwing a tomahawk.

Brett coming over his head with the throw. He got pretty good as well and stuck quite a few.

Ryan holding a couple of his throwing knives.