I hate Ike!

It's been awhile since I posted, thanks to a little hurricane named Ike. I was so unprepared for the wrath of Ike. I think Jason and I have become jaded towards hurricane warnings after hurricane Rita turned out to be not a big deal (for us anyway). So even when it started looking like Ike was headed our way, we still weren't very concerned. I filled up the car with gas and bought some water and canned food. Then all we could do was wait and see what happened. The worst of the storm hit our area around 2am Saturday morning. Sometime around then we lost power and since I couldn't hear Kate on the baby monitor, I moved to a couch outside her room. To be honest, I also felt safer there since I sleep on the side of the bed close to the windows! Jason got up to see what time it was, and we were both glad to see it was around 6am, because we thought the worst had passed and we had avoided any damage. I fell back asleep for a few minutes and was woken up by a huge BANG! I had heard other bangs from tree limbs falling so I wasn't too worried, but when Jason came running into Kate's room, I knew something bad had happened. Sure enough, I went in the bedroom to see a hole in the ceiling and rain pouring in the room. We got buckets to catch the water and moved some stuff out of the room. After that we just kept emptying the buckets. I think we were both in shock and didn't really know what to do. We happened to look out the front window to see someone in the ward driving around to make sure everyone was okay. We ran out and told them what happened. They got a hold of some other ward members and tracked down some chainsaws and tarps. The bishop (!) sawed through the tree and managed to get it off the roof and covered up the hole with a tarp. Other people in the ward helped us get everything out of the room and closet and take out the now ruined carpet. It was an awful day, but it was pretty neat to see so many people rally around us and help us out so much. The insurance adjuster came Saturday and said we would get a check in about 2 weeks. Let's hear it for home owners insurance! Until then, I am getting bids from contractors to do repairs. I have no idea how long it will take to repair or how much it will cost, but I guess once this is all over, I will be schooled in building houses, right? We didn't have power for almost a full week, but it wasn't as hard to deal with that as I would have thought. We have a gas water heater and stove, so we could take hot showers and heat up soup and stuff. Also, the weather really cooled down and the humidity was low so we slept with the windows open and it was quite pleasant. I didn't miss TV as much as I would have thought, but I tell you what, I couldn't stop smiling after the power came back on!