Our House Looks Okay

Well, we're sitting here watching the Weather Channel again. (Yup, eating sopapilla cheesecake, too.) We did get to go eat dinner and watch a movie with Bret's sister, brother-in-law, and "Little Cheeto" (the neice/nephew that's coming) this evening. It was nice to get out and get our minds off of "stuff."

It looks like Gustav is finally down to a tropical storm. We are so thankful that this storm was not as bad as it could have been. We certainly are not out of the woods yet, but reports from our neighbors who stayed through the mandatory evacuations (!) say that from what they can see our house looks okay. The power is out and due to quite a few lines and trees down, it will probably be out for a little while. But hey, we can handle that -- especially when we're not there! The biggest loss there would be the fridge/freezer. We had just filled the deep freezer with meat from Mom and Dad -- nearly 40 pounds of ground beef, a bunch of steaks, and I think a few roasts...

This is the report issued by our parish president at about 9:00 tonight.

This afternoon, as soon as the winds allowed, I drove across St. Tammany Parish. I saw trees down, power lines down, and rising water along our coastline. This was a serious storm, with serious consequences, but nowhere near the level we experienced three years ago. For that, I am thankful. We will have a better assessment tomorrow, after daylight.

As I write this, there are still wind gusts of over 45 mph in our parish. I'm thinking it's still possible for some trees to fall. Looking at Louisiana Dept of Transportation's website, most of the roads in our parish remained closed. Many portions of I-10 remain closed due to fallen trees and power lines. The parish remains closed to re-entry at this point. Bret was hoping to go home tomorrow morning (the brothers and I will stay here until we get the "all clear" call from him), but it looks as though that would be rather foolish at this point. Maybe Wednesday morning...

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers.