Catching Up....At Some Point

So, my plan was to catch up on the blog this week. I have been WAY too busy with hurricane preperations! Also, I was trying to get the corporate house cleaned and keys turned in. We officially only have TWO houses now, instead of THREE!!

Hurricane preperations are much more time consuming (and financially consuming for the first one) than I EVER would have anticipated. And I never thought I would spend our long Labor Day weekend preparing for a hurricane. But, this is our life now, right?

I went to a gas station this morning just up the road from the house. I pulled in and there were cars everywhere, but the pumps had bags over them and signs that said they were out of gas. I walked in and the cashier was looking out the window and nodding her head. There was a gas truck out pumping gas into the ground. I asked if all of those people were waiting for gas. She said they all followed the gas truck in and they were all sitting there waiting. Paul went back later for some goodies for all of us. There were no cars getting gas, but a maintanance truck that had some stuff pulled out of the ground. The attendent told Paul that right after the truck filled their tanks their pumps went out. So, although they HAVE gas, they can't PUMP gas.

LSU had their first game of the year...HERE! They moved it up to this morning instead of this evening, but still...we have evacuations going on. I-10 is bad enough with just day to day traffic. You throw in a big game (which they won BIGTIME) and some major evacuations, and, well, we chose to stay in today!!

The storm is already much stronger than they anticipated. They were anticipating a 2 or 3 at this point and it is at a 4 working up to a 5. We are on the edge of who is getting evacuated and noone in our neighborhood has left - which makes us feel better about staying. We spent the day getting EVERYTHING that was in our "garage" into our little storage room off the garage. It is stuffed with everything from tools to bikes/scooter/wagons to gasoline, to trash, to generators. The smell...NASTY!!

At this point I feel as though we are as prepared as we can possibly be. I am ready to get it over with. For some unknown reason, Isaac's teacher is letting the kids watch the news about the hurricane. I am very mixed on this. As of Friday, Isaac knew as much about the storm as we did. All of the boys are talking about it a lot. After all of the tornados and flooding this spring, they definently take it serious now, but don't seem overly apprehensive about it. Tomorrow may begin another story. I think we are supposed to start getting some wind and rain tomorrow afternoon/evening but the worst is supposed to be late Monday into Tuesday.

Caleb's biggest concern is school Tuesday. His principal announced to the kids that school was open Tuesday. I keep explaining that if the hurricane is here, there will NOT be school. And, if for some idiotic reason there is school, he would NOT be going!! Most of the colleges and universities have already announced they will be closed - along with coastal schools - but places further north won't announce until probably Monday evening.

Mom is getting a good laugh (although she is worried crazy) about the fact that I was her child that was deathly afraid of thunderstorms and here I am about to sit out a hurricane. While I have "outgrown" the fear of thunderstorms, and actually grown to enjoy them (and even sat out some tornados in our bathroom alone with the four boys), I - at this point - am not overly nervous (although frequently second guessing if this is the right thing to do). We are glued to the television and the Jeep is gassed up if we need to run. We plan to take it because it can go through higher water! Part of why we chose to buy here (other than the schools) was because it got us further away from the coast and the river. Hopefully that will all work in our favor.

If I have internet during the storm, I will try to blog through it. It helped calm the boys when I did that with the tornadoes because they sat and watched the computer instead of concentrating on what was happening outside.

I will keep you all updated as we go through this journey!!