Shelly's Blog

Wow, I can't believe that it has already been an entire week since the hurricane hit! I haven't been able to go to the office due to the city-wide power outage. If power isn't restored by Monday, I'm going in anyway and bringing something home to work on. The kids re-start school on Monday after being out since last Friday. I think we're all going stir-crazy and wandering around without a purpose. We rented movies from Blockbuster this morning. We had to walk over cords that plugged in generators all over the store. We watched Penelope.......really cute movie. I took the kids out today to the bookstore, to pick up Jessica's contacts and then to visit Nana's and see her new furniture. We hit so much traffic getting there and getting home due to all the traffic lights being out and cars backing up. We finally made it home and I'm not going anywhere for at least a couple of days.

Before Hurricane Ike came, I had no idea what a POD or MRE was! Thanks to all of the people that have set up the "Points of Distribution" that give out "Meals Ready to Eat"! I haven't had to take advantage of any of these but I know that they are being used by many in this area. We have had electricity & phone since Monday but many, like my sister and mother-in-law, still don't have any power. We have opened our home to any friends and family that need to come and shower or wash laundry or just crash for a little while in the air conditioning. Donna and Brianna came over today, picked up the kids and me and we all headed out to the outlet malls in Fairfield to get away for awhile. (Mom didn't come because she is getting new furniture and was scheduled to be delivered today!) We picked up some cute shoes for Jess and Alyssa and a great pink jacket for Jess at Aeropostale. After shopping, we stopped at Alicia's Mexican Restaurant in Cypress

Guess What?????? I was able to find gasoline today!!!!! Yay!!!!! I ended up waiting in line at Valero for about 15 minutes, made it up to the pump, just to be told that they had run out of gas. Then I went to the Krogers' gas area and waited in line for about 20 minutes before I made it to the pump so now I have gas!!!!! Tomorrow, I plan to make it to the grocery store and stock up on food, which I have run out of. It looks like school will be out at least until next week. I'll keep everyone posted on our progress.

The power came back on sometime yesterday while we were at Mom and Dad's. I decided to head home around 4:30 in order to give us enough time (if the power was still out) to get packed up and back to Mom and Dad's before the curfew started. Once home though, I realized that we are out of a lot of stuff so I decided to take the girls with me and wait in the long line at the grocery store. They would only let in about 15-20 people at a time to shop and as people left the store, more were allowed inside. Luckily when we got there, the line only had about 20 people in it but while we waited the line behind us got longer and longer. We only waited about 20 minutes before they let us in. Most of the people in this area still don't have any power so they were all scrambling for the ice, which thankfully was in abundance at this store. They had cleared a whole row in the frozen section and just had ice in it. It was really sad, though, to see the people moving in fast motion to fill

Well, Ike has blown on through and we made it with minimal damage. We lost several sections of our fence in the backyard but had no damage to the roof that we can see. We lost some small trees in the front yard. Power went out early Friday night and was out until Sunday night. We stayed at Angela's house in Sugarland on Saturday night because for some reason, her power came right back on after the storm. It came on at our house during Sunday night and went back off at 7:15 am this morning (Monday).......I'm not sure when it will be back. Luckily, mom and dad have power at their house so I'm am able to get access to the internet while I'm here. If the power doesn't come back on, then I'm staying here. My main concern at the moment is when and where I'm going to get gas. There are very few stations open and those have at least 50 people in line. I'm down to a half a tank and don't want to waste it riding around looking for the gas! I also ne