Hurricane Ike and Rattled Nerves!

So, here comes Hurricane Ike.

It is not heading directly towards Louisiana, but we are under a tropical storm warning and are feeling the winds already. It's strange how we know it isn't making a direct hit here, but we are scared none the less.

My nerves are just about shot. My friend Summer blogged about how the people here in South Louisiana are feeling right now. She somehow put my feelings into words. We are all a bit on edge around here today and tonight.

Tonight, I will pray for the people of Texas and southwest Louisiana. I pray that the storm weakens at landfall, and that there are no more lives lost to that monster of a storm. May God keep everyone safe.

Pictures from our house... post Gustav!

Anyone for a round of "dot-to-dot" is welcome to come over and play on our roof!
And here is our roof modeling the latest in fashion roofing wear... a beautiful tarp!

This is a leaf on a banana tree. My mom loves to garden and the patio between our houses looks like... or LOOKED like... a small piece of a tropical island. This is what a banana leaf should look like if it doesn't have to withstand 90 mph winds with higher gusts. Notice how large this one leaf is and how it is all in one piece.

This is what our banana trees and their leaves look like now. Notice how the look like they have been run through an industrial sized shredder!!! Yikes!!

Here we have.... shingles. Uggghhhhhhhhh torn up shingles that were strewn all over our yard during Hurrican Gustav. My friend Polly who lives two houses down said she saw shingles from our house flying all the way to her house. Crazy!!! This is just one of the many, many piles of shingles we collected the day after Gustav.

Back to School Post Gustav... and... IKE

Well, today most of the kids in our parish are heading back to school. Lane wasn't excited, lol! It will be their first day at school since Hurricane Gustav blew through our state, leaving a path of destruction behind it.

I'm not sure if things at school will be normal for the kids today or not. Based on our school board's website, I have a couple of concerns. Nothing major, but for example, it seems that lunches provided by the school system (that we PAY for) in the cafeteria will be a bit strange for a while. From the website, "There will be no breakfast available all week and meals ready to eat and water have been ordered for lunch. Parents of students on any type of special diet (i.e. diabetic, milk allergy, nut allergy, etc.) are asked to send lunch with your student to school until further notice." I called school yesterday to try to find out what exactly was meant by 'meals ready to eat' meant. I am wondering if they are referring to the MRE's that are being distributed by that National Guard. I truly believe that our school system is doing the best it can right now. But, is it just me, or does that seem like an odd thing to feed school children for lunch?? However, given all we have had to deal with this past week, that is minor. Guess it's just another part of the adventure that we have been on for over a week now :-)

Anyway, the person that I talked to at school wasn't sure either...so to be on the safe side, I sent Lane's lunch with him to school today until we can find out what is going on. He was happy about that! He brought a ham sandwich, cool ranch doritos, peanut butter cookies and a gatorade... Lane is a happy boy :-)

By the grace of God, it appears that Louisiana is being spared from Hurricane Ike. We've been watching it for days now, and according to all of the information I can find, it seems that Ike will be heading to either Texas or Northern Mexico. It was hard to know what to pray for regarding Ike. Given the destruction and suffering we have endured here in Louisiana, I wanted to pray that Ike didn't come here. At the same time though, it wasn't fair of me to pray for it to go somewhere else causing pain and suffering for people elsewhere. What I came up with was this: pray for it to dissipate and just go away all together. Crazy sounding, I know. But, I truly believe that there is nothing to big for God to handle :-) Now, my prayers are for the people of where ever this storm goes. Still keeping an eye on it though, just in case ;-)

Anyway, it looks like Louisiana dodged the bullet (Ike) this time. These are stressful months for people who live in the southern parts of southern states or right on the coastlines. This year's hurricane season can not end soon enough!!!

Pictures from Hurricane Gustav

Mike and my brother in law adding a new accessory to our house... a tarp!!! We had some pretty bad roof damage. The insurance accessor came out yesterday and said we will need a whole new roof. Just great.

This is a huge tree that USED to be at the end of my sister's street. Thank God it fell backwards and not frontwards onto the house at the end of the street. Although, that white SUV was in it's path and got crushed. My sister and her family moved to a new house two days before Gustav made landfall.

This is the one that really breaks my heart. That house belongs to some friends of ours. A gigantic tree fell through their house and basically cut it in half. This is about 2 miles from our house. Our friends had a lot of their family from Houma staying with them at the time. A couple of them were injured, but their injuries will heal. Unfortunately, our friends lost EVERYTHING. They worked hard their whole lives and now all that they worked so hard for is gome. My heart breaks for them. Please keep them in your prayers. Thank God they are alive.
This is a convenient store close to our house. The huge covering from the gas pumps was literally blown off in one whole piece. Just look what 90 mile an hour wind can do. We had gusts way higher than that though. Scary!!
After 4 days of no electricity and heat that was almost unbearable, we heard that a Smoothie King nearby had somehow opened for business. I think they were operating off of a massive generator. Of course, we loaded up in the car and headed over there immediately! I swear, this was without a doubt the BEST smoothie I have ever had in my life. Ice cold and so refreshing! THANK YOU SMOOTHIE KING for a brief reprieve from the parched feeling :-)

Now, on a more serious note.... thank you to everyone for your prayers. They helped more than you know. We are still in the recovery phase and so many people are STILL without power, even today, a week after the storm made landfall. The people of this area are amazing... their sheer determination and concern for others is amazing to see.

Dear God,

Please... do not let Hurricane Ike head towards Louisiana. We can not handle another hurricane right now. Please.

Post Gustav ...

We made it through Hurricane Gustav, and it was nothing nice.

I'll post more about it later, it's been a really long, hard week and I am just exhausted. We are ok... the power at our house came back on (by the grace of God) late Thursday night. However, we are the minority in our parish and in most surrounding parishes.

Our house has some damage but again, THANK GOD, we didn't end up with a tree IN our house like so many people did.

Thank you everyone for your prayers... it means the world to me. I'll post more tomorrow. Be Blessed...