Back to the real world...

Well, we are back on line. We came back home on Monday morning and our power was restored late Monday night. We got cable, phones, and internet back today. I went to HEB and got milk, bread, chicken, and hamburger. We are back to normal. That is except for the huge pile of trash in front of our house. And Lucy is still out of school.

I am still glued to the continuous coverage out of Galveston, Bolivar, and Beaumont. It is amazing the devastation that is just a few miles away. This storm touched every single person in our area, but it is amazing the amount of good will people are passing on. Every place I have been, it seems people are happy. Maybe I am being overly optimistic, but even in the crazy crowded grocery store, people were talking to each other, smiling, even laughing... I know that we were not as hard hit as other areas of Houston, but maybe this is widespread.

One of the biggest hurdles we have had with our new house, is that we haven't felt like we had met many of our neighbors. Well, Ike took care of that. We are now fully introduced to all our neighbors. Monday night, we had a street wide cookout. We had lots of fish that needed to be cooked from our freezer. We invited anyone interested to bring anything they wanted to cook too and we would set up a big buffet. Before we knew it we had 30 people out in our driveway, enjoying the food and lots of fellowship. We made lots of friends and really feel that this is more like home.

It is amazing that even in the midst of such horrible tragedy, God has a plan. And that plan is great!