Gratitude for No Damage

I have to say, we really lucked out with the Ike damage. Our cul de sac is pretty trashed. A few things that helped us out? Having a 1 story, being on the corner, the first owner taking out the pine trees in our yard....
When we were first telling people we were moving down here, we heard a lot of, oh it's so gross down there, it's always hot and muggy, it's always brown, there's nothing green, etc. I am not sure what part of Houston they were talking about, maybe Katy? But Tomball is pretty similar to the wooded areas in Portland. A lot of the people with severe tree damage would beg to differ on the lack of green and trees. That's what got us here. Several neighbors ended up with tree damage and a LOT of power lines were taken out by trees. One neighborhood, just to the north of us, really got it. It was gated and the entrance was blocked by a tree and the exit had the power line, the tree knocked down, right over it. I hope there was another way in and out for them.
Anyway, we lost power shortly after the storm really started. When everything was finally over, we had a muggy afternoon, so I heard, on Sunday. We missed that by heading out of town. That night there was a pretty serious cold front, for Houston in September. The nights were chilly and the days were amazing. I felt bad praying to have the power restored when it was so nice. We kept the windows open at night and it totally cooled down the house. I wore a sweatshirt (this is me though) when I stood in line at Walmart to get in, at 8am. The wonderful weather continued past Wednesday, when we got the power back on.
Then, I got greedy. It took Comcast (grr in general) another 5 days to get our phone, cable and internet going. Still, I think someone knew our family couldn't take another major trial.