Gustav

Well, we weathered Hurricane Gustav and I'm finally getting a chance to share a little about it and post some pictures from a crazy few days.  We decided to stay at our house for the hurricane.  Being from Baton Rouge, I haven't been through any storms here that felt especially threatening.  There have been occasions where we've done without electricity for a few days, but beyond some wind and rain, I couldn't remember a time where it felt dangerous to be in a hurricane.  Gustav definitely changed all of that for me!  The winds were pretty incredible.  I'm not sure if they know the sustained wind speeds in the heart of Baton Rouge though I've heard that there were sustained winds were at about 80 mph out at the airport, probably ten miles or so from our house.  I have no way of knowing how fast winds are, but there were times when we were sure there was a tornado close just because of how the trees were whipping around and swirling.  

Our neighborhood is full of lots of old trees, which is nice most of the time for shade and it makes for a pretty neighborhood.  That beauty is deadly in a storm with strong winds though and there were trees falling right and left on our street and throughout our neighborhood. Plenty of people had trees fall on their houses and we are very fortunate that we are not among their numbers.  We did lose a couple of trees in our yard and plenty of branches from larger trees, but nothing on our house or cars.  At about noon on Monday we lost electricity and wouldn't see it again until this past Saturday.  The first couple of days were bearable, but the heat and boredom got to us and in order to be good parents we had to leave on Thursday to go stay in Slidell for a couple of days.  

We came home Sunday to a house with an AC running and a stove that worked!  Baton Rouge is still not back to normal though, there are many, many neighborhoods without power and they are saying that it will likely be until September 24 until all of Baton Rouge has power again.  Consequently traffic lights are out and that makes for a long commute for those of us used to spending maybe 15 minutes or so in our cars on the way to and from work.  We have much to be thankful for though and all of this truly does put life in perspective and shows me how blessed we are to have all that we do, most especially our wonderful family and friends.  

Caroline handled it all remarkably well and as I said earlier, we really left Baton Rouge for Jeff and me, she was great through it all and found new games to play and was generally the bright spot to our days!  

I'll post some pictures that give you a visual on our week.  

This is the view from the street of our house after the storm.  

Another view of the house.  Pictures don't ever quite do something like this justice, but suffice it to say that there were trees or pieces of trees EVERYWHERE.  

Caroline and Jeff playing in her room while the storm raged on outside.  

We went to a little splash park in Slidell on Friday and Caroline had a blast.  

Our girl playing it cool in Papa's sunglasses and talking on his cell phone at lunch after our splash park outing.