As most of you know, Hurricane Ike blew through our area with much gusto. We lost trees and power. Our power was restored on Friday night giving us power 1 week after we lost it.

We were one of the lucky families that had wonderful neighbors that gave us an extension cord to their generator so we could keep our freezers running. The last few days of no power, a friend of ours brought over her generator so we had fans and lights and such. No AC, but still - it was awesome.

Neighbors pulled together, we chopped up trees and brought grilled food to all the neighbors who were without. We had a little lady living behind us, she is 86 and by herself. We thought about her after a couple of days and I am glad we did. She was living on cold chicken noodle soup.

We grilled lunch and dinner at my house everyday. Neighbors kicked in on food and we fed lots of families.

We also went through the food/water/ice lines every day and got what we could for the neighborhood. So many families lost all the freezers.

It is amazing how something like this pulls a group together. I kinda miss the evenings in the front yard, grill burning and folks walking up and down the roads chatting with each other.

I hope that part of what Ike brought remains.

We are lucky to have power - 30% of the area is still without. Luckily, now food, generators and gas are easy to find. It was not fun to sit in a gas line for 3 hours to get a maximum of 25$ worth of fuel and then to find out they ran out.

We drove hours to find gas stations and grocery stores open. Everyone would pile into one vehicle and we would hit the road. It was so nice to find milk and BREAD :-)

Thanks everyone for the prayers - they were answered. I have included a few pictures of our neighborhood. I also have a video on myspace - you can find me by looking up Wendy Baldwin in Conroe TX

The first picture is our backyard, the second is a neighbors tree, third is a sign that was completely bent and the fourth is a car that thought it could make it through a flooded street.