Thanks Ike!

We Survived!!! No worries...Lake Jackson is intact. I cannot say the same for our neighbors up the coast :( I talked to mama Hickl yesterday as the power came back on at our house. We suffered minor damage to the fence in the back yard and lost a rose bush, both minor concerns. As the power returned Mom had also just finished cooking the entire contents of the freezer before they went bad. I'm sure the Hickl house was a hopin place with air conditioning, running water and an entire freezer worth of food.

Now on to Surfside beach which was not so lucky. Several beach houses were down or had the dreaded 'X' marked for tear down. But do not fear! Several of our favorites are still intact! Kitty's purple cow survived...




and a very surprising performance was given by the Surfside water slides. I believe theses were closed down about 10 years ago, I always thought they would have collapsed even without hurricane force winds. But it out-performed some houses! Very impressive!




Surfside is not the same, but at least we have these few landmarks to hold onto. In times like this I ask myself why the ugly brown beach houses didn't get ruined instead of the pretty ones. Those ugly ones always outlast, and maybe their longevity is the source of their old ugliness. Who knows, at least Surfside can't get much worse and we can only go up from here.