Are you glad you're not doing what you were doing last year?

At this time last year, myself as well as family members and friends dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane IKE. I vividly remember arriving to work and immediately leaving due to a mandatory evacuation of my home zip code.


Luckily, a few days before the evacuation, I took the hurricane warning seriously and went to Wal-Mart to purchase my hurricane preparedness supplies. During my shopping excursion the shoppers in the store calmly walked around selecting their purchases. Two days later...now that's I different story. After the evacuation telecast I ran to Wal-Mart to pick up a few last minute items, and this time the shoppers appeared frantic as they grabbed food and supplies from the shelves. The bare shelves no longer held coolers, batteries, candles, flashlights, water, non-perishables foods, generators, ice, you name it.


Again since I took the hurricane warning seriously I filled my gas tank the day before the telecast. But just to be on the safe side, I wanted to replace gas used during my drive to and from work. In search for gas I discovered the lines at the gas station stretched at least 2 miles down the street. And in some cases when you finally reached the pump, NO gas remained. Now this is the point where I silently freaked out in my head!


So the boys and I packed up and headed to my Mom's house to prepare to hunker down! My friends and I grew so tired of hearing the term "hunker down." One of them started the "hunker down" drinking game. Every time a newscaster said hunker down, DRINK! LOL. We all stayed in contact via our Blackberries!



Any who, IKE barreled through Houston leaving millions with out power and water. My Mom's home received some wind damage and we lost power, but that didn't stop my Mom from throwing down on the gas grill!

After 2 days of NO AIR, and my Mom grew tired of cooking on the grill, we fled to my grandmother's home in Louisiana! PRAISE JESUS... air conditioning and ELECTRICITY! While in Louisiana my mom purchased a generator and we returned to Houston where million so people still went without power (including us).

Well to make a long story short, our Hurrication lasted about 3 weeks! Eventually the electric company restored power and all was right with the world!

A few IKE aftermath pics:

This WAS a gas station.


This house was moved off its foundation into the middle of the feeder road. We saw this on our way to my grandma's.