Goodbye Ike

It's early Monday morning, since 3:15 AM Saturday morning we have been isolated from the world. Last night when our power came on and after our celebrating stopped, we turned on TV, it was our first glimpse of the damage that Galveston/Houston and surrounding areas had sustained. Friday we sat around, watched a few movies and waited for Ike, the wind was stronger than normal but certainly not hurricane material. It was late afternoon when the winds picked up a notch, they were probably around 35/40 mph, but still not the big time. Boring!!!
We watched a little TV and hit the sheets around 10:30 pm, the wind was blowing pretty good with a "now and then" gust that show signs of potential. Wind was still about 40ish mph but the gusts were more frequent. Around 11:45 pm all hell broke loose, no more wind but just one long gust of about 80 mph wind with increased gusts of who knows? The trees and shrubs were moving all over the place, leaning one way then whipped around leaning in the opposite direction. Our power when out at 3:15 am.
We were all awake, but we stayed in our rooms thereby not realizing the each others nervousness. Mark's car alarm tripped a few times, windows rattled and howled, and strange noises were occurring all around the outside of our house.
Around 6 am I went went outside in the backyard, our long wait was over. The newly planted trees were all on their sides, some snapped while others were just laying down, the big tree (45 ft) snapped halfway with it's debris all over the place. Our back door, which is about twelve feet under a covered patio, was wallpapered with leaves from the tree. The wind was still strong but decreasing by the hour, no one in the neighborhood had ventured out yet and we hung out on the patio oohing and ahhhing, like you would do while watching fireworks, but in our case it was the gusts of wind.
We spent most of the day checking the place out and listening to the portable radio only to find that Houston had really been hit hard. Colleen cooked spaghetti that evening and it was then we experienced our first and only hurricane Ike accident. She cut her finger on the foil on the bottle of red wine. OUCH. Around 8 pm our neighbor John strolled over and asked whether we would like a generator. He had a spare one and this way we could plug in the fridge, lights and other various appliances. We thought we all died and went to heaven. We hung out in a well lit room and played cards until 11 that night, we are very fortunate to have someone like John and Pam living next to us.