We’ve finally made it to our “great adventure” as my oldest has named it.  We are staying in Houston in a hotel with REALLY nice people.  I plan to “Vacation” as much as possible.  We are going to take the kids to fun places and enjoy ourselves as much as possible.  We are expecting our home to get a fairly head on collision with Gustav as about a cat 1.   I think if there are no tornadoes our house should at least still be there when we get home.  As for the roof, playground, shed, or tree well your guess is as good as mine. 

My parents FINALLY decided to come with us so we are waiting on their arrival.  They were staying until they realized that it was going to be bad!  So they are about an hour or two away from here fighting traffic.  Well off to feed my kiddos another snack.  Later!

Well I’m exhausted but we are mostly packed, loaded down and ready to go.  Church for tomorrow was cancelled as were most services around here.  We plan to leave around noon tomorrow.  We are going to be o.k. because we are getting away from it all.  Unfortunately not all of our family members are evacuating like we are.  Please also pray for them.  Many people think they need to stay and “protect” their homes although I’m not sure there would be any way to protect a house from a hurricane.  O.k. off to bed….

Today, after waiting almost a week to find out where this hurricane is going, we finally realized we’re out of time.  Gustav suddenly sped up and is going to hit us almost a day or even two sooner than we thought.  This means a few things – 1. our reservations are for the wrong days and we don’t have reservations for tomorrow night but now REALLY need them, and 2. we need to finish prepping NOW and get out. 

So we sped up our preparations from earlier.  I finished the pool today and it is put up til next year.  We took down the trampoline as well as the basketball goal and picked up all outdoor toys that fit in the shed today.  We boarded up the windows and packed our pictures as well as food that we could eat.  I now need to finish cleaning and throwing out all of the food in the fridge (have you ever smelled food after it’s been rotten for 2 weeks? yeah not fun so we throw it ahead of time) as well as packing all of our clothes and framed pictures from the walls.  I also need to load up our computers, laptops and dvd players. 

After finding out that we needed a room at a hotel for tomorrow I almost panicked.  I mean where in the world would I have to travel to have a place to stay???  And no shelters are not really my favorite option.  However, after looking for about 30 minutes I found a place near Shreveport!!  I was SOOOOO excited!!  So now we leave tomorrow morning instead of Monday morning.  Unfortunately this also means we will spend more money and that continues to worry me.  O.k. I have to get back to packing!!  Talk to you before bed.

As many of you know I live in the VERY southern parts of southwest Louisiana.  We are facing the imminent danger of Gustav.  I have decided to blog my thoughts as my hubby is tired of hearing them. 

Today I awoke early to get sandbags.  I think either no one is worried or no one else was awake (most likely the second) because I was the ONLY person there getting sandbags.  The limit was 6 sandbags but I think that’s enough to block my two exposed doors.  Then I had to go to Wal-Mart.  On my way to Wal-Mart, I passed most of the town’s gas stations.  Four of the six I passed were COMPLETELY out of gas while the other two had lines 8-10 cars long for each pump.  CRAZY!!  Wal-mart had about anything you wanted to cook but lacked a lot of those staple hurricane items.  The canned good aisle was EMPTY.  There were no bottled waters left just the gallons which is fine when you are desperate.  HOpe you didn’t wait this long for batteries or you are out of luck.  I grabbed some cold stuff (after all we have to eat until we leave Monday) and a few necessities for the road like chips and lil Debbie cakes for the kiddos as well as single size apple juices and I left.  It wasn’t as bad in there as I thought it would be.  The workers were actually very nice and helpful although a little overwhelmed. 

Today’s agenda is to finish scrubbing the pool, tear apart the trampoline, and bring in the outdoor toys/lawn stuff.  Tonight I am packing pictures, CDs (pictures), videos, important papers and LOADS of clothes as the last time we were gone for 11 days before our house was even accessible.  Tomorrow we will go to church. Then board up windows and pack the vehicles with plans to leave around Monday mid morning.  I don’t have reservations past WEdnesday night which concerns me but until then I will not worry about it.  More to come later…..