From Hurricane to Whirlwind!!

It was quite the experience to go through a hurricane... not one I would like to have again! Curt tells this story better but I will do my best. Curt and I discussed several times about this Hurricane Ike that was forecasted to hit us... We talked about whether we should stay or go, if we were prepared enough, and Curt had to calm my fears several times. Curt has gone through one before when his family lived in Hawaii that one was called Iniki. So Curt thought he knew what he was doing so I, being a good wife, trusted him. (Don't worry I still do!) So we made our preparations with food and water and flashlights and parked ourselves in front of the TV to watch as Ike approached us. We were actually starting to get excited to see something like this. So the night the storm hit we were sitting in our house and before anything got going with the storm... bam.... our power went out!!! It was only about 8:30 p.m. We knew from then on it was going to be a long night. So we watched a movie on our ipod in bed with the blinds open waiting to see any sign of the storm. It wasn't raining or even very windy at this point. So we waited with anticipation and at about midnight that night it hit us... a lot harder than we were expecting. It was the scariest thing I have ever seen and felt. The trees out side were bent over sideways and the rain looked like it was going from the ground up and the wind... oh the awful wind... We were sure all of our windows would shatter into peices. We sat there listening to the madness outside wishing we could open our window to escape from the heat that was building up inside our house, but we were too terrified to move. We wanted to hold each other and I wanted the comfort of Curt's arm to soothe me but it was way too hot... we couldn't touch each other. Every once in a while Curt would reach over and touch my hand or give me a quick hug but it was too miserable to do anything else. To make things even more exciting at about 2:00 a.m. our fire alarms started going off. We jumped up and searched the house for a fire and there was nothing so then we tried taking the batteries out of the alarms so that loud blaring would stop so we could think, and do you think that worked?... NO! The siren screeching noise would not stop! We went to the front door and peeked our heads out to see if the rest of our apartment complex was OK and to make sure there really wasn't a fire. The whole apartment building did have alarms going off but thankfully there was no actual fire. The down side is is that the alarms didn't stop until 9:30 a.m. that morning! It was an awful and sleepless night! But when the sun arose and the storm stopped we were so excited to go out and see what had happened. So as soon as we could we went outside to check it out. Here are some photos to show you!! TO BE CONTINUED. . .