We Survived Hurricane Ike (and a brief update of our life)

Life has definantly been crazy the last couple of months. For those of you who don't know we have recently moved. Dan has been working in Houston, TX since the end of June for Hydril (a GE oil and gas company). It wasn't a move I was really enthusiastic about making since I loved my house in Tyler and the people there too! I had lived in that house for less than 9 months and it was the house of my dreams for this stage in my life (granite countertops, custom kitchen, all brick fireplace, crown molding - it wasn't very large but it was beautiful). I also wasn't very excited about selling another house and moving again in less than one years time. But alas life sometimes presents (or thrusts upon us) interesting opportunities that must be made the most of. So, in short, Dan moved to Houston, I stayed behind for a month to sell a house, when that became unbearable I moved to Houston too, and the house sold three weeks later. The house closed on Aug. 25th and since that time we are officially homeless (we are living at my parent's in Houston while we determine where and what we want to buy - thank goodness we have family here to help us out). I never want to move again - only problem is that I am not sure I want to live in Houston for the rest of my life. I guess I might have one or two more moves in me, but they will have to be years apart from eachother! On August 30th we flew out to Utah with our whole family to attend Ben's (Dan's brother) wedding and to let Dan's family meet Weston for the first time. I will post pictures and write more about this in another post. Upon coming home I was to begin househunting only to be sidetracked by mother nature. Those of you who have never lived through a Hurricane I do not recommend the experience. We were not in a mandatory evacuation zone so we were told to shelter in place. My dad boarded up their closet window and that is where we slept the night the storm hit. Really the only way to discribe our experience is that it was loud and very windy. Luckily my parent's house came through the storm relatively unscathed but many others were not so lucky. Trees are down everywhere (on houses, fences, power lines and across roadways), lots of flooding occurred, and power was out for a long time (and still is for many people even two weeks later). Really the worst part was living without power for four days after the storm. Luckily the Lord blessed this area with unseasonably cool weather during that time period or it would have been utterly miserable. Dan and my dad braved the aftermath of the storm and immediately started helping ward members get trees of of their houses, tarps over holes in roofs, and unblocking driveways. Dan was having the time of his life. He even got two days off of work because of Ike. Now that things are sort of returning to normal I have begun looking at houses again. Only problem is I am discovering a lack of homes that meet my criteria. All the ones I thought would be cute and in my price range got damaged in the hurricane and have been taken off the market. I can probably get a much bigger house here than my last one but without all the upgrades : ( There just isn't a four bedroom, one story, approximately 2200 square foot home here with all the features my last house had. I wish I could just sit and wait for the perfect house to come on the market but I think my parent's would like their house back to themselves sometime soon. Wish me luck as I search these next couple of weeks!