Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike came on Friday night - I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Basically, the winds - more like breezes - started on Thursday afternoon and went through Friday afternoon. By Friday evening, the winds picked up and were probably around 40-50 mph by 8 pm. By midnight, they had really picked up, and we started getting hurricane force winds around 2:30 am. It was pretty frightening, as our house was shaking - it felt like being on a train. The big 100 or so year old oak tree in our front yard came down at 4 am. It bounced off the front of the house, hit the porch (and took out our new copper gutters), and then hit two other trees out there. I heard it hit (who could sleep?) and knew it wasn't good. The high winds continued until about 8 am and even then we had heavy gusts and tropical storm force winds until the afternoon. So now we are dealing with the aftermath. We've cleaned up the majority of the tree stuff (thanks to MMG), and repairs to our house started yesterday. Ike says he's getting a complex and feeling very self-defensive with all the negative "Ike" coverage. We have power again and water (though we're still under a boil water order), so we are grateful (so many people still don't have power or water). We are very fortunate that we are all okay and no one was hurt - that tree could have fallen more on the house (which did happen to a few of our neighbors). I don't have the official wind speed for our area, but I know downtown was 100+ mph. Since we are within two miles of there, I'm guessing we were in that same range. Natalie, Owen, & Henry did very well, though they have definitely been stir crazy and suffering hurricane fatigue.