Well, the Waddills weathered Hurricane Ike and aren't too much worse for the wear. Unfortunately, for the Houston area, that is an uncommon story. Seeing and hearing of lines for gas, food, and water everywhere around is really humbling. Because the storm hit Galveston and headed north, we were on the "clean" side of the storm. Stories of neighborhoods less than 20 miles more towards the east were so much worse. We were literally spared by a few miles. And the night was horrible. I can't imagine those closer in. It was very scary. Lots of downed trees and fences, but our neighborhood has power and is doing well. The grocery stores have limited resources and we can't find milk, etc, but otherwise, we are fine. Since Doug is working in Brenham, he was able to get gas today and will hopefully get milk after work.
Anyway, Wednesday was Doug's 32nd birthday and Friday was Briley's 6th birthday.
We had scheduled her party for Saturday but Ike made us postpone. However, since we had no school that day, we celebrated at home with donuts for breakfast and presents and cupcakes after lunch. 
That evening we let the kids "camp out" in the closet under the stairs and after Braden climbed in, he said, "You know what would make this really like a camp out? A fire and those white things!" Well, since we were not about to "roast" marshmellows in the closet, we opted to let them eat them room temperature in bed while they read books by flashlight (we had lost power by 9pm).
They finally went to sleep and Doug and I listened all night to howling winds and sheets of rain pound our house. It was crazy. The pictures you see of the sunset are of the sky in front of our house that evening as the sun was going down. At this point it was already windy but the sky was eerily beautiful. A sign of what was to come. 
Sunday we had some neighborhood friends who had been without power over for dinner and Blake snuck up on their plates while they were playing. . .
Busted!!!
Yeah, I did it, so what?!!
