It's just a little wind...

After spending much of the night trying to calm the fears of an 8 yr old (thanks to a certain weatherman's fondness for using terms like "certain death", "significant damage" and "catastrophic"), we woke this morning to light wind gusts and an intense cloud cover. No rain, as Ike stayed about 100 miles east of us, and most importantly, no power outages! The biggest hassle for us today came from all the additional traffic on the roads. Since we were the point city for Galveston (the hardest hit area), it looks like our evacuees may be staying for at least a few weeks. We celebrated our not being stuck inside by going out to lunch. Will took this picture as we walked through the lot. Notice Ike's remains still coming through (he was 900 miles wide after all).

Our thoughts and prayers are with those still "hunkered down" in The Texas/Louisiana area.

Will he or won't he?

Still waiting for word on Ike. He is massive. The storm is a category 2, but the storm surge could be a category 5. We started getting wind this afternoon and he's still 300 miles out. They're calling it a certain death storm. About 1.4 million evacuees (ok, so maybe not that many, but it sure feels like it) rolled into our area starting yesterday afternoon. Schools closed early today to help with the traffic/congestion. Within an hour we should be feeling winds from the outer band...between 29-57 mph wind gusts. Here's what it looks like here right now.

Company's a comin'

We're expecting a houseguest this weekend. An univited and unwanted one. Come on Ike, don't you have better things to do?


Things to do before he arrives:

1. Bring all the patio/bbq stuff inside. We've lost our share in smaller storms.

2. Stock up on water/batteries ( the hubby has a tendency to over prepare us for these events)

3. Locate the flashlights.

4. Laundry (ok, so maybe this won't be affected by the hurricane, but it does need to get done!)

For entertainment:
I'm a reader and have some lovely new paperbacks just waiting to be read (and some crafty projects to keep me busy). As for the boys, not sure what they'll do if anything interrupts the power supply...perhaps sleep?
Any suggestions? How would you ride out the storm?