Here are some Ike-related pictures. I know it's probably old news to most of you, but we're still living with it. The clean up is on-going and seems to be never-ending. Galveston will never be the same. Along the Sea Wall, there is no beach. The gulf waters come right up to the wall.
Last year, the first part of September, Chris and I celebrated our 20th down in Galveston. We stayed at an old Victorian house that had been turned into a bed-and-breakfast. http://www.coppersmithinn.com It was built in the late 1800s and survived the Great Storm of 1900. The next day, we chartered a fishing boat out of Crystal Beach and spent the day tanning and catching sand trout. We had the boat to ourselves except for our pilot/guide. Our guide baited the hooks for us and even cast them out. There's nothing left of Crystal Beach. There's not even a ferry to get you to the peninsula now.
The night of the storm we all slept (or tried to) in the family room. We watched the news until the signal went out and then Shrek and then Napoleon Dynamite until the power went out. 
This picture is taken right around the corner from our house. One house lost 6 trees and the one next door lost 3. It looked like pick-up-sticks. A mini-tornado (there were lots of those all around that night) touched down here. Their front yard now looks like a war zone--holes and mud.
The kids wanted to try walking across this. What kid wouldn't?
Big trees = big mess. Lots of trees actually got tangled up in live wires which is one reason why it took so long for the electric to come back on.
Torn right out of the ground. You still see lots of this around the neighborhood. People are trying to get the stumps taken care of so they can put their yards back together.
Our messy front yard (and neighborhood).
Our debris pile out at the street. It was picked up a week before our power was on. Notice the pines are still standing, which is good because the one on the left is about 5 stories tall (the one on the right is actually an oak).
Chicken Foot game #427. Don't ask me why, but we didn't get tired of this particular game for over a week. We set up a table outside and ate and played out there a lot. The mosquitoes didn't move in until about day 10 after the storm.
Puzzle #1 of 3. Stef is protective of them--she did most of the work on all 3.
What the kids do when they get stir crazy.
One of the houses that Mormon Helping Hands helped clean up.
Chris said that in Galveston, boats were everywhere.
