The Aftermath of Ike

Well, we survived Ike and so did our house! Because of all of the problems we've had with our house, I was so worried about what we'd come home to.

After watching coverage of Ike, seeing pictures of the rest of the city and seeing lots of destruction while driving around town, I know that we were very fortunate.

Let me catch you up on how things went down for us. :)

D and I were planning to shelter in place. We had already secured our house with lots of duct tape and bought our food and water. Thursday evening I made my hubster his birthday meal (chile con carne and refried beans) and birthday dessert (lemon sandwich cookies). Thursday night we had heard that the hurricane had been downgraded to a Category 1. We felt some relief, but still decided we'd wake up early and make sure there were no changes overnight. We woke up Friday morning at about 5:50, turned on the news and learned that Ike had gone back to a Category 2. We quickly packed up the important stuff (pictures, computers, hard drives, important docs etc.), some clothes, and the "kids" things. We secured some things in the garden, secured the front gate and moved our t.v. out of the way. We were on the road by 6:45. I cried a lot, but I knew we had to go. We didn't feel safe with all of the windows in our house and it doesn't have a central part, where you can be away from windows during a potential tornado. I cried on the way up to the farmhouse, knowing I had family back in Houston that decided to stay behind and not knowing how much of Galveston and Houston would be destroyed by Ike.

At the farmhouse, we watched continuing coverage of Ike from a Houston station (thank you satellite). We expected to get the same system in the town by Saturday evening and boy did we! I can't imagine what the winds were like in Houston as a Category 2 because the winds we were feeling up there were up to 50 mph and it was crazy! We lost power up there at about 6 p.m. on Saturday. When you lose power in the country, you also lose water because the water well is powered by electricity. Not fun! Fortunately, the in-laws have a generator so the main house had a few lights, 1 t.v. and most importantly the fridge! On Sunday, we were able to take a bath at D's uncle's house, so that was nice. Other than constantly worrying about our house and family, we were doing good in Atlanta (TX). We heard from my dad that our house didn't appear to suffer any major damage, so that was great to hear!

On Monday, we decided to head back to Houston to check on our house. There were concerns of little to no gas throughout the city, so we filled up a 5 gallon gas canister before we left the town. By the time we got to Nacogdoches we could see some of the damage Ike had done and noticed that all of the gas stations had long lines of cars. We had to fill up D's car and we were lucky enough to be the first in line after a gas station had re-opened so we patiently waited.

As we drove into Houston, we could see a lot of restaurants and companies had no electricity and a lot of the gas stations had signs that read "No Gas".

We drove down our street and there were limbs and branches on curbs. It appeared that half of our street had evacuated, while the other half had decided to shelter in place. Two trees in our front yard were leaning at an angle and there were some branches in our driveway from a neighbors tree. Our street floods easily, so we were expecting to see some high water marks, but there was none. The only thing we noticed right away was the backyard.

No, we didn't leave the chairs and herbs out there. :)

We lost some of our beneficial wild flowers and basil. :(

Branches from neighbors tree

Surprisingly, the okra held up pretty well!

Leak!

This was a leak we had from Tropical Storm Edouard and it just got worse with Ike!

After accessing the entire house, we noticed a few leaks around the windows. We did a lot of cleaning of the yard, the fridge, and the overall house-because well there wasn't much else to do. We lost everything in our fridge, which was what we expected, but it was still sad to have to throw away the top of our cake. :( We listened to a lot of radio shows and watched some black & white t.v. (damn, it takes a long time to try to find a channel!). We spent a lot of evenings at my parent's house because they had a generator and were able to cook because they had food in the fridge! They were lifesavers!

From talking with our neighbors, we learned that the neighborhood had lost power on Friday evening. The winds were obviously strong from what we saw around our neighborhood. Some neighbors had more damage than others. It was sad to see a lot of old, beautiful trees uprooted and some had lost some limbs.

Our house was without power for less than a week and we were without power for only 3 nights! The weather was not too bad during this time because we had a cool front. We were not expecting to get power for awhile, but Thursday afternoon at about 3 p.m. we heard a great sound. Sprinklers! :) We had power! We didn't turn on the A/C for awhile, we didn't want to take a chance that we'd blow a fuse/transformer. We weren't expecting to get power until sometime after the following Monday (according to the power company's map), so it was a great surprise! We also kept hearing that people would get power, then lose it so we were worried that we'd lose it, but we didn't. We immediately invited my parents and my brother and his family over to stay with us, but they both declined. We did have them over for dinner the next day!

The next day we stocked our fridge with the basics. I was so happy just walking into Central Market again. Yep, I'm a foodie! ;) No more eating processed foods!

Then, my parents got their power on Sunday evening. Unfortunately, they have a power pole STILL leaning on their house. They have called every day and the power company still has not made their way out there to take care of it. It's ridiculous!

So you can say we were happy to see our house had little damage to our house after Ike.

Not having electricity for a few days made me realize how much time I spend watching television and on-line. I really enjoyed not having access to those two!

And check out my Ike ball! This is all of the duct tape from the windows. We have a small medicine ball now. ;)

Whoa, this was a long post! If you read it all, you get a lemon sandwich cookie! :D

Preparing for the Worst and Hoping for the Best

Update: We evacuated Houston early Friday morning, before Ike came through. Thank you all for your thoughts and :vibes:! I will update with more information soon.

Hurricane Ike is now headed our way.

We're expecting it to make landfall by late Friday night to early Saturday morning.

We've decided to shelter in place and prepare our house for what could be some strong winds and possible loss of electricity. We are expecting our street to flood, but the water will most likely not get high enough to enter our house. We have all of our supplies ready, including lots of water and enough food for a few days. The "kids" also have enough food and water for awhile. We are mainly concerned about the amount of windows in our house and if they are secure and safe enough with potential 100 mph winds. We can't board up our windows from the outside, but we've duct taped our windows from the inside for any possible breakage.

Luckily, we have a lot of good canned food and Earthquake water left from when we lived in SoCal--if nothing else it will be good showering water! We're hoping it doesn't come to that though. :)

This Just In...

Pic courtesy of Sprinkles Cupcakes

Sprinkles is coming to Houston in February 2009! That's all. :)

Chihuahua Berry Farms Update

I haven't done an update on our garden in a long time!

It's grown so much!

And thanks D, for getting me in the pic. :)

Check out the okra!

We've had 4 okra come from our plant.

Can you see all of the others coming out?

And our bell pepper! It still needs to turn yellow.

And look we FINALLY have cucumbers!

They are just popping up all over. It's amazing to see them grow!

This is one of the biggest ones right now.

This garden box is holding our carrots, beneficial wildflowers

and beets--yuck!

And here's our one lemon--we think.

D planted two trees, 1 lemon and 1 lime. It was clear before (based on the tag) which tree was which, but because this citrus isn't turning yellow we're not sure if it's a lime after all.

And this is the garden chart D made, it shows where every plant is.

Unfortunately, some plants died and had to be removed.

Note: Despite the name of our garden, we are currently not growing any berries. ;)

2 years ago today

It's hard to believe that 2 years ago, today, we arrived to our new house in Houston. What we didn't know was that the next 2 years would be a total nightmare, in regards to this house.

An update on the house situation:

Awhile back I had blogged about it here and here.

We've been in talks with lawyers for over a year, trying to get this whole situation resolved with the builder. In Texas you can't just sue the builder, you first have to take it to the TRCC (texas residential construction commission). An inspector comes out and determines if something is a defect or not. The builder then has the right to make the changes.

After the TRCC inspector reported and found that 35 out of the 39 items had to be repaired, we thought that would be it. However, the builder never made an effort to make these changes.

Our lawyer sent the builder and his lawyer a demand letter and they had 15 days to respond to our demands. They did not respond and the builder has made no further attempts to resolve this and will be served.

There have been other leaks that we discovered after Tropical Storm Edouard.

I hate that we're still involved in this whole mess and I just want it to be over.

The past 2 years have flown by and I miss California more and more each day.

A few pics from the day we left (August 23, 2006). My mom was in the passenger side of the moving truck, taking pics as we drove off.

Goodbye Cali...we'll be back soon!

Esopha what?

D had his scope procedure this afternoon. The name of the procedure is Esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD). Yeah say that 3 times, fast.

The doctor told D that he didn't see anything suspicious or any precancerous lesions caused by his acid reflux. That was great to hear! However, he did notice that D had a lot of fluid/acid in his stomach and said he thinks D's stomach may not be dissolving things properly, but didn't seem to think it was a big deal. He wants to see D in 2 weeks. I hope to find out more from that appointment.

Another trip to the ER

On Saturday, D was sitting on the couch and was getting up to go to the bathroom when he felt a pain in his chest. He went to the bathroom, came out and said he was feeling faint and he broke out in a cold sweat. He felt weak. He laid on the couch for a bit and then we decided to take him to the ER.

If you remember, the last time he went to the ER was in Jan and in June '07 he was admitted to the hospital. I've got to admit, this weekend I was thinking my husband was a hypochondriac.

In the ER, they did an EKG and did a chest x-ray and they both came out fine. His blood work came back good. They didn't know what had happened, but were going to release him. Then his blood pressure dropped really low (between sitting and standing) and they didn't want to risk sending him home. He also began feeling really faint and light-headed again.

They decided to keep him overnight for observations so they admitted him. They started an I.V. His blood pressure continued to vary quite a bit between sitting and standing or lying and sitting up. The cardiologist came by and they wanted to do an ultrasound on D, but the technician wasn't available until Monday.

The nurses came in every 4 hours to check his blood pressure and took his blood in the middle of the night. The reason they were taking so much blood was so they could rule out an embolism.

D doesn't do well when his blood is taken, he feels very faint and breaks into a cold sweat. As they're taking his blood, I'm thinking this can't be good for his blood pressure because of how he reacts to his blood being taken.

We hoped that his blood pressure would improve enough for us to go home Sunday morning and then come back for the ultrasound and possibly an echocardiogram.

His blood work from overnight looked fine. The doctor reported no sign of an embolism!

Another concern is scar tissue around his heart. Back in 2001, D had pericarditis (an inflammation of the pericardium (the fibrous sac surrounding the heart) that was brought on by an infection. We're hoping that with his cardiologist appointment in a few weeks will also rule this out!

On Sunday afternoon there was no drastic change in his blood pressure! The cardiologist decided he would release him from the hospital. He's thinking D's chest pain really scared D and then he freaked out (there is a medical term for this) and that may have been what brought on feeling faint, sweats and his blood pressure dropping.

Nurse Christy is thinking it could have been something with digestion. There is a digestive tube near the heart that often leads people to believe they are having a heart attack. And since we've been home, I've noticed D is burping a lot more frequently than he ever has before. We have a follow-up appointment with his primary care physician tomorrow. I hope we find an answer soon and I hope for no more hospital visits!

The happiest day of my life!

I'm so happy with the way our wedding pictures turned out! It really captures how beautiful our wedding day was and it takes me back to the happiest day of my life. I love our pictures! Much love to our photographer, Michele Pappalardo!

Here are just a few of my favorites. Below you will find a link to the rest of the pics.

My gorgeous bouquet. I was so happy I was able to have peonies!

D's cufflinks (with pics of Baby Dan and Sissy)

My handsome hubby!

Our rings, ring orb and D's vows

Rose petals being tossed

So much spinning, we were pretty dizzy!

Mmmm cappuccino!

Ah, the beautiful Amalfi Coast!

If you would like to see more fabulous pictures of our perfect wedding, go to this website.:)

3 months ago D and I were married!

UPDATE: We did receive our pictures today! The UPS man just delivered them. They look fabulous. I will post them soon! Yay-my frown has been turned upside down! :-)

And we still don't have any professional pictures. :-(

On the day that we shot our "day after pics" the photographer told us he would have them ready in 45 days.

A couple of weeks ago the photographer had finally responded to my email (after several emails from me asking where my pictures were) and said that he would be sending the pictures out on Monday, July 21st. Well, one week later and we still have no pictures.

These pictures better be his best work ever!

I'm so sad.

D's new toy

With some money we had left over on a Williams-Sonoma gift card, D bought the Kitchen Aid Food Grinder and the Sausage Stuffer Kit. He will now start grinding all of our meat.

Soon we will try to make sausage! Mmmm...I can't wait!

This ground pork was used to make hamburgers with apple, fennel and an apple glaze. They were so yummy!