Ike...The Aftermath (Many pictures ahead!)

We are doing just fine and have power (yippie)!!! Over 2 million people in our area lost power and we were told power could be out for two weeks. Thank goodness that was not the case for us. IKE has passed over our area and the majority of the rain was done by about 2 or 3 today. I have attached some pictures of Galveston and Houston (from chron.com) and also a few I took from our area in Cypress.

Tidal surge on I 45
Road leading into Galveston
Galveston on the Seawall.
You can see the Flagship hotel in the back ground. They lost a bridge connecting them to the seawall (it is on a pier over the water). People were actually staying in this hotel during the storm (crazyyy). There is a walk way that is still intact so people can walk to and from the hotel but the cars are trapped until the bridge is fixed, which they say could take months to fix.

This is the restaurant I ate dinner at the night of my prom in Houston. It caught on fire during the storm and is destroyed. (So sad!)
This is the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown Houston. ALL of the windows were blown out.

It looks as though the devastation to Galveston will take months even years to repair. Fortunately the storm surge was only about 10 feet, they were predicting it to be 20 feet. There are areas in Galveston that they have not even been able to access. I just hope everyone is safe! The Houston area also has a lot of clean up and reconstruction ahead of it. We are very thankful that our area seems to be okay. Our house looks to have a few loose shingles but its not near as bad as some of our neighbors. We also took in just a little bit of water at our back door from the rain beating against the door so hard. Nothing was affected inside by that though. There are small trees in our neighborhood that have been uprooted and a few fences are down. As far as we know that is the extent of damage in our area. Last night was really scary. Although I slept through most of it between 3 and 6 this morning things got really crazy. I could feel the walls moving against our bed. The wind sounded like planes taking off and you could hear sheets of rain against the windows. Zak stayed up all night and said that he watched the blinds in the living room move from the wind outside. He could also hear the walls popping inside the house. My parents and Zak's parents neighborhoods are littered with large trees that have fallen. My parents house was okay but Zak's parents house has a hole in the roof. Unfortunately a basketball goal also smashed out the window of Zak's moms car. Zak and his little brother went over today to help out where they could. I feel so bad that they had so much damage, I hope that they are able to repair things quickly and without too much hassle.

Here are some of our pictures.

Colton "hunkering down" for the storm.

As the storm rolled in about 9 last night.

This morning about 9.
Trees uprooted across the street from us.
Our house made it!!!

Mom and dad had no power so they came over for breakfast and coffee this morning around 10:30.

Sadie was not happy about the rain. We had to PUSH her out to potty this morning! Poor thing..her and Chloe had NO clue what was going on last night and they were both scared!

This evening my parents, Jerry and Glenda and my little sister came over for dinner and some much needed AC time. It seems that we were very very blessed when we got our electricity back on about 9 this morning. We have come to find out that very few people around Houston have power. As of 10 tonight my parents and Jerry and Glenda were still without power. Zak's parents got their power back right after the storm hit.