Making Progress

Our home is slowly coming back together. However, I'm so tired of hanging around the house waiting for the workers to come and go. I'm feeling a bit of cabin fever coming on. I can't run errands, go grocery shopping or anything. I don't even like to talk on the phone because I feel like my conversation is on display for everyone to hear.

Our bathroom was the first to get worked on. We were already in the middle of remodeling when the hurricane hit. That's why it wasn't totally painted behind the toilet.

The kids loved helping with the demolishing.


I'm so glad to have a slate floor instead of carpeting.
The little corner seat isn't a seat. I thought having a bench in the shower was a waste of space so I didn't want one. However, I still needed a place to prop up my foot to shave my legs. So there you have it....a little foot bench.


We also had a second shower head installed on the opposite side of the shower.
I love my new shower!!



We have new ceilings and walls all over the house. It's hard to tell what you're looking at in these pictures, but that's what it is.



Everyday there was more and more plastic. It was beginning to be less fun taking pictures of it. I felt like we were living in a bubble and I hated it. This is the entry way. By the time they were done it had a circle of plastic up the wall, across the ceiling, down the next wall and taped all across the floor. It was very difficult going from room to room. I'm so glad it's over. It was much harder to live in the house with the construction then I thought it would be. I never want to go through that again.

Kipp's version of Hurricane Ike

As I was going through the papers sent home from school I came across a paper from Kipp. During the week they're suppose to write in class for a certain amount of time with little worry about punctuation or spelling (and it shows). But reading this makes me laugh, so I had to share.

Hurrikane Ike
by Kipp

During the Hurricane I was at my house in my room with my family scared out of their wits plus I saw lightning and thunder over here and over there it was very very loud because trees were falling down everywhere! After the storm I thought I was dead, and I was under the stairs with my grandma helping out while my grandpa slumping down in the couch watching television back in California! Like an hour after the storm I got electricity I was so happy even though I was just playing my DS that whole time! After that the storm wasn't over then my smoke alarms shorted out and went off it took us all day to get them to be quiet then we discovered a water fall in the attic so my mom stapled towels to the ceiling which would catch the water which would fall in a bucket and my dad would pour it in the bath tub oh yah I almost forgot that my dad got a jar of the hurricane and their were leaks down stairs but want to know what's really funny there were no leaks up stairs so the down stairs was flooded for like half a foot. So we tried to soak up as much as possible but we couldn't even soak up half so my mom ripped up the carper and that's a hurricane for you!


This is the jar Kipp refers to. Kent scooped up some water out of the attic into a mason jar for posterity. It has insulation, dirt, and who knows what floating around in the hurricane water.

Rain Gutter Ragatta

This is like the Pine Wood Derby you normally see for the Cub Scouts, but it's with a boat. This was a first for me, I had never seen it before. To win you had to put your boat together in a way that would float quickly down the water and be able stay upright when you blew on the sail.

Since we've been in a complete upheaval with all the construction we forgot about the boat until the day of the race. I was so relieved when it was finished only minutes before the race began. I spent all day while Kipp was in school, painting and letting each coat dry. It's a good thing there was a breeze today.

Once we got to the church Kipp quickly put on some stickers and he was ready to go.


It took some practice blowing on the sail to get the best propulsion down the water.
One of the boys had a top-heavy boat that wouldn't stay upright and Kipp quickly offered his boat for him to use. I was really impressed with his generosity. However, it made me nervous for him since the rutter was loose and ready to fall off. We managed to keep his boat together with some alterations.




While they were trying to figure out who the winner was they let siblings race the sailboats. Kati was so excited to be able to race. She did amazingly well.

Galveston--Where Ike hit land

A couple weeks ago Kent and I flew with Kipp and Kyli over Galveston to take a look at the hurricane damage. It didn't look too bad as we flew into Scholes Field to stretch our legs. That is, until we landed and got a closer look. I guess there is a lot that looks good from 4500 feet. Structurally the outside of the terminal building looked great but all the windows were gone and debris was flowing out every opening . Despite all the damage there was still someone sitting under a canopy to greet us with a basket of snacks and cold drinks. We were also given a pretty champagne-looking bottle of grape juice.


I think the airport was being used as a staging area. There were so many diesel trucks, ambulances, RV's, disaster relief trucks and one of the runways were closed due to parked vehicles on it.



As we flew away from the airport we could see a bunch of ships parked on the median of the freeway (I-45) with others randomly placed inland. However, the camera memory was full and didn't actually take the pictures. I was so excited to have such bizarre pictures. Oh well. The rest of the pictures are taken from Kent's phone. They're not the best pictures, but hopefully you can get the feel for the complete devastation Galveston endured during the storm.

There were neighborhoods missing all the homes. You could see lines from the streets and property lines, but nothing else, not even debris. Occasionally you could see sticks in the air where a home use to sit on stilts.



In this picture you can see that there are only a few homes left near the water.


Then there were no more homes or sign of anything.


For miles and miles there was nothing left on Bolivar Peninsula.



On the way home we flew through the VFR corridor. It's the small area between the two Houston airports that you're allowed to fly. It takes you over downtown Houston and all the skyscrapers. We don't do it very often so it's always fun.

Camping

The kids had been out of school for six days and still there would be no school on Monday. We had spent all our free days trying to pull the house and yard back together after the hurricane that we hadn't had time to enjoy our "vacation". Kent was in Austin for the weekend going to school, so the kids and I loaded up the car and met Kent in Brenham and drove up to Somerville State Park. We seem to be outgrowing our little van especially when we load up six bikes and all our camping gear.


Although we got to the campsite around 10pm we managed to pick a great site and set up our camp before crashing into our sleeping bags.


I thought it was funny that some sort of squash was growing in the gravel below the water spicket.

There were so many bugs!!! I've never been camping with so many bugs and that's saying something because I've been camping a lot. The bug we noticed the most were spiders. There were spider webs everywhere; they attached the grass blades like a big dot-to-dot, we had to break our way way through the door of our tent the next morning, I felt like everywhere we walked we were wiping webs off us. I took pictures of some.

As I leaned my bike against the tree I found this bug crawling in a hole. I'm not sure what it was, but it was ugly.

I was amazed at the long legs on this spider.

I found this one crawling on my handle bars while I was riding. It was very green and had a funny shaped body.


First thing after breakfast the kids tried fishing. It didn't work out so well. Kyli got eaten up by fire ants. Kipp's line got stuck on a rock. Kara and Kati thought it might be fun to swim, but changed their minds.

Kipp finally gave up trying to get his hook off the rock and cut it.


Kent also didn't do so well while the kids fished. His allergies hit an all time high. He took every allergy medicine we had with us, but still no relief. He was pretty miserable. Poor guy, look at those bags under his eyes.

As we recovered from our bad fishing experience we had a snack and got ready for a bike ride.

Kati is a real trooper, she's the only one without gears and she has such little tires that she has to peddle twice as fast just to keep up. This is always my favorite part about camping.


After the ride the kids enjoyed posing for the camera to show how hot and exhausted they were.



While we were cooling off and having lunch Kent saw a crane land on a tree across the lake. We all spent a long time trying to find in amongst the trees, because it's gray feathers were the same color as the trees it was very hard to spot. Finally, Kent took a picture to point it out so we knew where to look.

After lunch we started packing up. It was probably the shortest camping trip ever, but Kent's allergies were out of control and he was miserable.

Kipp was very excited to be the one to get on the roof of the van to help with the bikes.

Kati wanted to get on the roof for some pictures.

Kent needed a little help staying on the van while he strapped the bikes down.

The kids were hot, tired and getting bored while we finished loading up.

Kati seems to have found the best spot to wait, in the van with her Nintendo DS.

The ride home was a little cozy. Sometimes it's difficult getting a picture of Kipp being serious. He's a very silly boy.
After getting home we finished our camping trip with our favorite camping dinner, foil dinners. Then we topped it off with s'mores. Even though is was a very short trip it was a lot of fun.