A year later...and we have "power"

It's hard to believe a year ago we started our trek of 15 days without power.

The whistling front door, the clanging of the garage door, the lovely tinging sounds of generators throughout the neighborhood...and then there was our 5 month old little boy. He was oblivious to all that was going on around him. All that mattered to him was eating and rolling around on the floor. And oh...sitting in his bebe pod watching us cook waffles all the while plugging in the toaster to the extension cord.

It's just amazing and hard to fathom all we went through a year ago. I look back and we have a stronger bond with our neighbors, met some we had never met before in the 6 years we have lived here and we grew as a family. Learned how to survive without power, TV's (OK we cheated and had one station all day every day), computers and the more frivolous things in life.

The days and nights were long but were mostly occupied with visiting friends and watching the kids in the streets, chatting about when we would get "power" and of course the infamous trips to find water, gas and food. We BBQ-ed a lot, especially out in the front yard this time so you could share some time with your neighbors instead of getting away from them. And of course shared stories of friends, families and strangers of whom needed help, got help or just how easy they had it.

It's crazy, I don't think I will ever forget about Ike or where I was or what I was doing. Or how we camped out in our bedroom with the door closed to keep the "window a/c" cool in the room. Or how I put on makeup with a flashlight next to the mirror in order to look somewhat decent when I went to work. Or how D got extremely sick with Croup a few days after we got power...could it have been the hot to cold room we kept going in and out of?

I just remember when we "finally" got power...thinking "how are we going to sleep without all the noise of generators in the background?" It was almost like music to our ears...almost that is!

Bottom line, it's hard to believe it has been a year! We were oblivious to all the damage that actually happened in Galveston due to no power. But our hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to all the families that were effected and are still recovering. We thought we had it rough with no power, but some had it so much worse!