Ike's Aftermath...The Continuing Saga

Praise the Lord! We are home and we have power!!! It's truly a miracle that we do. Our cul-de-sac is the only one in our neighborhood with power, and it's only on our side of the street. Probably no more than 10-12 houses around us. Soooo incredibly thankful that we are one of them. I know it's an answer to vigilant prayer...never underestimate God's power. He is bigger than Ike and it's aftermath! We have distributed all of our power-outage survival gear to friends who still aren't restored and put up a new mailbox. Still have to clean up the pieces of trees in the yard and get some new door mats.

We cleaned out our refrigerator in anticipation of having no power, so we found ourselves with no groceries...and no way to get any! The stores around here are not up and running at full speed yet and the ones that are open don't have much. Especially not cold stuff. So I called my Stepmom yesterday and told her we needed help getting groceries. She took my list and she & my Daddy went shopping for us in Greenville, loaded everything up in coolers, and drove it down to us last night. It was such a sweet thing to do, it brought me to tears.

Life is getting relatively "back to normal" in our household, sometimes I have to remind myself that it's still a disaster area out there. Yesterday I found myself feeling guilty that we have power and so many others don't. But I got over that pretty quickly. I heard an Entergy spokesperson say on the news that The Woodlands should have power restored in most areas over the next couple of days. There have even been some people who got it back yesterday. So it's looking promising...patience and prayer is what it takes.

I have been watching the footage of Galveston Island and other coastal cities...the devastation is unbelievable. I still plan to post pictures of our neighborhood the day after the storm so those of you who haven't seen it can gain a little understanding as to how severe the situation was even this far north/inland. To see a few pictures of The Woodlands before and after Ike, go here. I haven't gotten my own pictures up because we had another minor tragedy strike last night.

Yesterday Nick returned to work (yeah...don't get me started on that one!) and I spent the day doing laundry, unpacking and trying to get things in order around the house. Dalton was having a great day playing with his toys and so happy to be home! I tried to get him to eat a few times, but he absolutely refused any food...even gummies! I thought it was odd, but he was acting like he felt okay...just seemed too busy to eat. He kept spraying his juice, really spitting it, all over the place, so I took it away from him and he never asked for it back. Odd. Then he fell asleep for a nap and slept for almost 4 hours! He probably would have slept on through the night, but Daddy wanted to wake him up after work. It was then that I noticed something had to be really wrong with Dalton. Sure enough, about an hour later he started screaming and crying saying he had a bite on his belly and wanted me to kiss it. I leaned down to where he was laying and kissed his little belly. Then he sat up and threw up all over the place. I immediately picked him up and ran into the bathroom with him. Just tried to comfort him as he continued to vomit up everything he had in his stomach, which wasn't much. Before long he was dry heaving. He was totally pale and his lips were blue, his eyes were rolling back...I was terrified, but tried my best to stay calm for his sake. This continued on throughout the night. It is now 7 AM and we have gone about 2 and a half hours with no more vomiting, but I don't think any of us slept more than 3 hours (in 30 minute increments) all night. We are all exhausted and covered in the products of Dalton's illness. As long as his heart behaves and the dehydration doesn't send him into SVT, then I think we're in the clear. We're just going to watch him carefully today and pray pray pray that he continues to improve!

So thankful that we have power at a time like this...and that Nick just happened to stock up on Gatorade before the storm. Good call, honey! So that's the latest. I promise to get pictures of the neighborhood up ASAP!