Hurricane Ike

We are doing fine after riding out Hurricane Ike. Where we live in Katy is just west of Houston so we experienced the left side of the eye wall. It was pretty intense for a little while last night. There were a couple of times I thought we were going to be picked up like Dorothy and spun around. The wind and rain was coming in sideways, like I have never heard before. I had the girls sleep with us on the floor in our bedroom "just in case". We all started to go to bed about 10. No problem for Craig, he went fast to sleep. Ashleigh was soon to follow. Ryleigh on the other hand kept me up until about 12 or so and then finally crashed. She thought is was a little party not having to sleep in her bed. Between my nerves running crazy and being very pregnant I didn't get much sleep. But when the girls were ready to get up at 6:30 this morning and we were all okay, I didn't care. Plus the fact that we still had power when we woke up was a bonus! In anticipation of the power going out I lowered all the AC units to 65 and put all the fans on high... we were a little cold this morning. But we had power!
Here are a few pictures of the "Hurricane Party" at the neighbors yesterday. Of course they were drinking Hurricanes. Here is Ryleigh guarding the food on the table...

Ashleigh and Ryleigh with the wind in their face before it got too bad

Pretty but ominous skyline
Camped out in our room between my bed and the bathroom
Mom and Dennis lost power and a fence. Mom had to stay at the hotel last night, so we invited Dennis and Bryan to come over this morning for some coffee and some cool air!
I don't know if you can tell, but all the damage we can really tell we got is a trimming on our palm trees. We are so thankful that none of us were hurt, nor were any of our friends and family!