Hurricane Ike Update

Sep 11, 2008
I was released early from work to start preparing for Hurricane Ike. I was glad that most of the preparation was done when Gustav came. Daniel came back from Calgary that night (I'm sure he would have rather stayed in that nice weather).

Sep 12, 2008
We waited at home all day for the storm to come. I've been telling the rest of the family that the hurricane is really coming this time. No drop of rain till 6pm. I think they were starting to doubt. The wind picked up speed in the afternoon, and tropical storm wind was felt in the late evenings. It rained all night. Daniel and I stayed up to watch the house. By 1am, we were tired and decided to go to bed. At 1:20am, the power went out. It was warm and humid inside the house. We did not get much sleep.

Sep 13, 2008
Got up as soon as it was daylight to check on the house. Everything is ok. Our neighbor has a really tall tree that bent in the wind and touched the roof and a street lamp 2 houses down the road. Luckily it didnt break or cause any damage. Everyone on the street was ok. Weather was unbearable inside the house with no power. Luckily for us we had water and a gas stove to cook. No phones working and cellphones couldn't get receptions. Stayed home and read all day.

Sep 14, 2008
We checked out the other neighborhoods. They had more trees, therefore more damages. Street lights and traffic lights not working. Most stores were not opened. Saw a few trucks selling generators on the street. Stood in line for 5 hours to get a generator for Sarah and Ezra. Got the generator but no gas. Luckily our neighbor has 50 gals of gas and spared us some. The weather was unusually cool after a hurricane. Can't complain.

Sep 15, 2008
Gathered at church to see who needed help. We visited one home where the tree destroyed the entire bedroom. A group of us helped removed parts of the tree. It needed crane. Visited a widow whose tree fell into the bedroom that she was in. Luckily she moved away fast. We are really counting our blessings.

Sep 16, 2008
Nice cool weather but starting to run out of gas in the generator. Looked for gas and found people staying in line for 4 hours for gas. Tried our luck at one location. Stood (not really standing, but in the car) in line for about 1 hour for gas. Filled the car and more importantly, filled the gas cans. We only had 2 gals gas cans (it was for our lawn mower) but that should last us another day of power.

Sep 17, 2008
Daniel's back to work. I was told to return to work only on Monday cos work does not have power or water. I spent most of the day cleaning the storage, which was filled since the day we moved in.

Sep 18, 2008
My birthday but still no power. My only wish this birthday is to have power in the house. The weather is starting to warm up and it's hard to sleep at night when all we hear are our neighbors' generators rumbling all night long. The 2 next to us, the one behind us and the one in front of us had generators. Daniel's at work while I spent the day at Target (the few stores that were open). I went looking for bigger gas cans. Home Depot didn't have any. Lowe's just sold the last one (they had 12 pallets) when I got there. But a kind employee gave me his so that I could have one and I found another one that was abandoned. Each car can only fill up 2 gas cans at the gas station, so there's no point buying too many. After 5 days of eating "hurricane" food, all I wanted was Chinese buffet, which was what I had for my birthday dinner. We have a nice dinner another day when things are back to normal. Slept early again but woke up in the middle of the night, noticing that none of the generators were running. Power has been restored!!! at 11:30pm... my birthday wish is actually fulfilled.

Life is back to normal, at least for us. I am actually really grateful for this experience. It makes me appreciate the things that I have in life - a home, electricity, water, very nice neighbors who we got to know better, friends. We are counting our blessings.

Mini-mini Vacation

We decided last minute to take a short vacation to San Antonio during this Labor Day long weekend. We couldn't help but stopped by the outlet mall and had to shop in Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel outlets. By the time we checked into the hotel at the Riverwalk, it was 7+. The streets were filled with people, smelly sticky people. We were looking for a place to eat while trying not to brush against anyone. All the restaurants had at least half hour wait. The French restaurant that we wanted to go to had 1.5 hour wait (it was already 8pm). So we settled for Saltgrass Steakhouse instead... still had good steak. So far so good... until we were woken up at 2am by the next door kids who had the TV blasting and were talking very loudly. At one point of time, they were singing "Sweet Caroline" at the top of their lungs (mostly girls). They could have picked a better song. We had to call front desk to make a complain. They had security and the cops knock on their door to get to be quiet. I think the next door kids weren't happy that the cops showed up. After that, our hotel room phone rang and no one spoke when we picked up. The door bell also rang and no one was there.

Pictures for Disney Trip

Orlando, FL trip

MAY the fun never end... part 2

After the short weekend trip, Daniel had long crazy working hours (36 hours non-stop) and I had to go to Galveston for a work meeting. When that was over, we were ready for our next trip... Orlando, Florida! It was our 2nd anniversary trip.

We left Houston on May 23rd to begin our 15 hour drive. We stopped at Pensacola, FL for the first night. Bad choice. We booked this 2 star motel that turned out to be very crappy. We had to put towels on the pillows to sleep. We left very early the next morning cos we were grossed out. So we drove another 7 hours before arriving in Orlando, FL and checked into our resort immediately. The resort was so comfortable. On Sunday, we had to attend timeshare presentation to get our tickets to Disney World. It took us a while to get out of there. We met with Tanya and Andy at Epcot Center. We had so much fun hanging out with them. We wanted to have a nice dinner together but those restaurants were booked months in advance. We did so much walking that we both had blisters.

On Monday, we met with Justin at Hollywood Studios. Thanks Justin for being such a gracious host. Hollywood Studios was our fav! On Tuesday, we covered both Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom. All 3 days were crowded. We realized that on Tuesday, it was mostly crowded with Europeans (British in particular). There was a lot of walking and waiting. On Wednesday and Thursday, we covered the 2 Universal Parks. Universal was nice, but not as impressive as Disney. The quality of the rides and cleaniness of the locations weren't as good as those in Disney. By Thursday, we were done with theme parks. On Friday, we watched Indiana Jones. I think because we have been to the theme parks, the movie did not seem exciting anymore. That was the gist of our vacation. Pictures to follow.

MAY the fun never end... part 1

May was a fun month for us. We started out the month by going to Washington DC for Kaylee and Joe's wedding. On the first day, we met up with Val, Andrew (who just returned from his mission), her dad and Pace. We had planned to meet up in Chinatown, so Daniel and I thought we were going to eat Chinese. It turned out to be a really hip bistro place that had awesome mini burgers and pizza. From the outside of the restaurant, you could tell that it used to be Chinese-owned. It had the words "Traditional" in Chinese on the top. The next day, Daniel and I toured the tourist memorials in DC. Even though Daniel served his mission there, there were some places that he had never been too. We wanted to see the places that was shown in National Treasure 2, so we had to visit the Library of Congress. Too bad we couldn't get into the library itself. (Daniel couldn't understand why we couldn't go in... since it's called a library...sorry honey) That night, we had the chance to meet up with all our friends (Kaylee, Joe, Yejin, Alex, Sunny, Jonathon). We had so much fun catching up. After dinner, we drove up to Baltimore for the night. On day 3, we left Baltimore in the morning to go to Philly. We wanted to go to the Independence Hall (again National Treasure) but the tickets were all gone. So we could only walk around the outside. Kaylee and Joe had their wedding reception in the Pennsylvannia Fine Arts Musuem that night. They had spent so much time and effort in decorating the place, it was so lovely. On Sunday, we made the trip back to DC to visit the Chinese branch that Daniel served while on his mission. It was fun to catch up with the members and to watch the funny video of him and his companions doing a skit for one of the Christmas parties. Meeting the members that he had taught was a great way to end the trip.

Springtime!

We have been avoiding the yard for as long as we could. Both of us don't know how to do yard work. Now that the weather is in the high 70s, our neighbors are starting to mow their lawns. We do not want to get complaints from our neighbors, so we are rising to the challenge. We bought a lawn mower, self-propelled and electric start of course. We also bought weed killer and fertilizer. I guess those are basics. I am so glad that they sold "SpeedyGreen" to dispense stuff. It is so much fun! We also bought a lot of insecticides cos we didnt know what might come in handy. It looked like our house will infiltrated by the insects. We did get rid of a fire ant hill. If anyone has a crash course on yard work, we would be delighted to learn.