Share My World: One Month Later

A month ago today, my little family and I were in a hotel room in Shreveport, LA flipping between all of the national news stations and The Weather Channel. We watched Hurricane Ike roll through and attentively watched for any reports of what kind of damage had been left behind, especially in our own neighborhood. We had evacuated to Shreveport two days earlier because we knew we wanted to leave if it was coming straight for us (which it did!) and we did not need a repeat of our Hurricane Rita evacuation experience!

We stayed in Shreveport for two more days after the storm and enjoyed the absolutely gorgeous weather. We played outside at the park even.

It’s almost like it was fall or something in Shreveport. Fall is something that just does not exist in Southeast Texas!

I was in absolutely no hurry to come home but, my husband was and so we came home to power poles snapped in half and laying across the road, blocking our normal access to our neighborhood. Once we finally made it to our house, we were relieved to see that we were merely missing a few shingles off of our roof, which thankfully managed not to leak. As we pulled into the driveway, Jayla said, “Look mama! God saved our house!” Indeed, He did.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, we got our power back about a week later but, the damage had been done to my semester. The schoolwork apparently did not stop just because I had no access to the computer or gas to drive to school and the university says that students who were affected by Hurricane Ike could have excused absences from class that week. None of that mattered and I fell behind quite a bit.

Then we went and had to go out of town two weekends in a row. They were awesome trips but, served to stress me out more about the whole schoolwork thing. First, we went to Detroit for the weekend. My grandparents had a party for their 50th wedding anniversary ON their 50th wedding anniversary! So, my whole family made the trip and it was nice to experience a little fall once more.

Then last weekend, we took my dad to San Antonio to celebrate his 60th birthday. It was a lot of fun and he declared it to be the best birthday he’s ever had, which may or may not have offended my mom who took him on a surprise trip to New York City for his 50th birthday.