Saturday afternoon J went up to put a tarp on the roof where the shingles blew off until the rain stopped and Home Depot opened to buy repair materials. For those of you who don't know, J has experience in roofing because of some past work he did when he was younger. He also had experience in building fences. He was able to fix our roof and our fence without any problems. I'll post pictures of the repairs later.
Me standing on our lawn in the back yard. Can you tell it rained just a bit?
Can you see the sweat on J's face? I thought it was rain when I saw him but realized it was so humid and muggy that he was terribly sweaty from working in the yard. We were amazed how many of our neighbors and people in our community who were out in their yards starting cleanup within ours of waking up Saturday morning. From Saturday till Monday neighbors were out in the yard raking, chain sawing each other's big branches that had broken down, sweeping, etc. Everyone really came together and helped one another.
Damage to our City:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GaiA-xfxYQ Watch this video we took while driving around the neighborhoods around our house. Excuse whatever I say, I don't like listening to myself on video.
Here are some additional pictures of our house, city, and some of Jace playing in the rain. He loved it. Look closely. Huge sycamore and oak trees were pulled out of the ground by their roots, some of them taking up sidewalk and pipes with them.
Centerpoint Energy is the company that services most of the Houston Area. I heard on the news that they have 2.2 million customers and after the storm, 2.1 were without power. We were without power at our house for 36 hours and that was not fun so I can't even imagine how people are feeling who are still without power over a week later. Schools have been cancelled all week and some who still don't have any electricity are canceled going into this next week.
Grocery stores were running on generators at first and some still are. Most stores had limits on how much milk, bread, and ice you could buy (usually 1 per family). It is all slowly getting better though. 
Sunday mid morning we went out to assess the gas situation just in case we needed more soon for our generator and we found a madhouse of people. The entire Kroger parking lot was full, in fact I thought it was open because there were so many people parked. In fact, everyone was there thinking they were in some kind of organized line waiting for their turn to get gas. The funny part was we finally figured out that this particular Kroger gas station did have gas but didn't have any power and their generators weren't working to be able to pump the gas out to the cars. We were all waiting for nothing. Jace and I got out of the car and he started waving at all the cars that went by him. I think he is standing on a stand that a table goes in...it must have blown over from some near bye restaurant.
I don't know if you can even tell what this picture is showing, but on each side of the picture their are lines. The gas station is in the center of the page in the very back of the parking lot. Don't worry, we left and found somewhere else a few days later. We didn't end up needing gas for the generator because our power came back on Sunday afternoon just so J felt special on his birthday.
I just love this picture. Jace staring at the generator, trying to stay cool in his oh so cute onesie.
Without power and AC in Houston after a storm, you are destined for some very humid weather. However, mother nature blessed Houston with a very welcomed cool front that came in pretty quick after the storm. Our friends without power were able to sleep comfortably at nights with the breeze coming through their windows. 
All of J's hard work made for a perfect fence. Eventually we'll have to replace the whole thing but for now, it looks great and Annie is loving being able to be free outside again. 
1 comment:
so glad you only had minor damage and everyone was safe.
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