Hurricane Ike

Hi everyone! It is 1:34 am, and we are up listening to the howling winds and rain outside. Yes, we are some of the crazy ones that decided to ride it out. We evacuated for Gustav, which turned out to be a waste, and our evacuation destinations are College Station and Austin, which up until a day ago were in the direct path. Well, Ike did what hurricanes do best...turn another direction and catch everyone off guard! Luckily, my parents have that full house generator that I have raved about before, and we are all over here. Kenadie, Laurie and Aaron are the only ones asleep. Aaron (my brother), his friend, and Michael all went outside a few minutes ago and were nearly blown away and attacked by fire ants! Aaron did discover that a couple of boards had come off the kitchen window, and could potentially blow into the cars out front when the wind shifts in a couple of. So, he and his friend bravely ran out there and grabbed them and put them safely in the garage. I think I can say that I will never do this again. It is cool to say that I did it, but with 2 small children, I do not feel it was the smartest move I have ever made. Ok, there was just a HUGE gust of of wind and it sounds like this house is going to blow over any minute. This is just crazy! If I sound like I am rambling, it is because this is really a record of what tonight was like for me and my family, and you just get to read it if you want. Our hurricane party participants are: me, Michael, Tye (who is running around like a crazy person), Mom, Dad, Aaron W., Laurie and Aaron M., and Ryan (Aaron W.'s friend). PaPaw is down at his house, because he can't hear without his hearing aids in! He will be down tomorrow since the power is out. Oh-- I have to tell this story that any Entergy customers may appreciate. When you have an outage, you are supposed to call and report it to ensure that you have it restored as soon as possible. There is a fuse problem that happens when the wind blows and it only affects our 3 houses and one right up the road. So, when we call and report, we try to tell the person that it is a simple fix, hoping that they will put it on the top of the list. When I told that to the girl tonight, she said ok. I then explained that we did not expect someone to come out in hurricane force winds to fix them, I just wanted her to know it would take someone 5 minutes to fix it. She said ok and then proceeded to tell me that they would be fixed between 8:40 pm and 9:20 pm...tonight. Now, the funniest part of that (besides that it was about 7:30 pm, and a hurricane outside) was that the recording when you first called in apologized for any outages by Ike, and all customers would have restored power within a few weeks. A FEW WEEKS!! And this lady just told me they would be done in about an hour!! I think she was in Kansas and had no idea there was a hurricane. And no, they did not come! This wind is so loud and this is not even the worst of it, yet. Well, I am going to have a snack and deal with "hurricane Tye!"