Help from ALL OVER the U.S!

Just some ramblings:

Today is Tuesday, September TWENTY THIRD...still most of our neighborhood is without power, that means ELEVEN DAYS W/O POWER! THANK GOD we have it already. There are only about 14 people/homes out of 80 that are fortunate enough in our neighborhood to have it. We are the lucky ones. Today i also received an email that said Centerpoint energy marked our neighborhood as a HOT SPOT(which means we all had power), not the case. Paul said down the street he saw a sign outside a business that said "Center point energy: customers with broken/blown fuses"! I think we need to put a sign like that outside our neighborhood. They didn't even know we had wires down in our across the street neighbors backyard! WHAT????? OMG, how upsetting! I had our across the street neighbors over today. She has 2 little girls, adeline is 2 and Elizabeth is 6 months...it's got to be hard on them. We've invited them over a few times...she finally took me up on the offer...now if i could get them to come over and spend the night upstairs! No school as of yet. I check the website everyday. NO POWER...NO SCHOOL! WHAT A MESS! Paul saw on TV today, a news piece that said that if our school writes a note to the state they will exempt the kids from having to make up these days...sure hope the school does this, otherwise Hannah will just miss some school! I just wonder how people with kids are doing it if both parents are working and have already missed so much time?



Yesterday i drove to our normal grocery store(right by the girls school). They said they NEVER lost power. BUT, that entire neighborhood is without power.



It was funny, we were pulling in to Krogers and who do we see? Hannah's best friend Maddie with her Grandma! They wait for us, patiently(Maddies' Grandma and i have known each other since the girls were both 9 months). We gossip for a bit and then her lovely grandma takes the girls to look at the halloween stuff while i run through the store and grab some things. The girls had a blast playing together, even if only for a few minutes. When i went to go retrieve Hannah, i went down the Halloween isle, but no Hannah or Maddie in sight. I keep shopping b/c i wanted to get as much as i could done, before i had to fight 3 children in the grocery store. I was almost 3/4ths of the way done and i turn around to see two little girls running past my isle! LOL! I couldn't stop laughing, grab my purse, leave the girls(only long enough to run down the isle where my cart was and peek around the corner, still watching the girls in my cart that was PACKED full of groceries. Hannah and Mattie were giggling and her grandma looked like she was still faring well with two little 4 year olds in tow. It was pretty funny! Anyway, Hannah came back with me and we said our goodbyes and went on our way. We all miss school soo much. When we got in the car to leave poor Hannah said "Mommy, i miss Mattie so much already"! POOR GIRLS, the just don't understand why they aren't in school and have to stay home with her boring mommy everyday! I tried to explain it to her, but she's 4, how much can she really understand about the bad storm that came through and knocked out the power to her school?



Now, on to other things. the clean up in our neighborhood has begun. I will be the first to say, our mayor is doing a AWESOME job getting moving on the cleaning effort. He's contracted with companies from all over to come help clean up. Today, we watched as some nice young men from Missouri came to start cleaning up all the tree waste in our neighborhood. We sat out on the front driveway and watched as the big bulldozer and gigantic dump trucks with trailers came through to clean. The guys were so nice and waved to the girls and i as we sat outside and watched them clean. I talked to the guy with the dump truck and he said he was from Missouri and pretty much follows storms around to clean up the mess. The guy said he'll be here for a few months cleaning up...YIKES! That's a LONG time to clean up...but i'm sure he is going from neighborhood to neighborhood and from city to city. We are very lucky they are cleaning up already. Underneath all the tree waste, the grass was already dying. Plus the mosquitos are horrible from the debris and water and yucky wet/dead grass, a great place to live and produce more mosquitos!



Please keep praying for our city. It's looking better, but still very weird w/o power and stop lights. The gas situation has been conquered and we all have gas now...but lights are out...there are IKE recovery vehicles all over the city. It's very weird.

Here are a few random pics from the week:

S & S on Hannah's barbie Jeep!

Hannah playing in the sand and water table!
I gave the girls a hair cut this weekend! They did really well! Sarah with clippies in her hair!
Sarah still getting her hair cut, while Sam was watching.

On to the clean up process...this is looking down our street! Both side of the street are filled with tree waste!

The fence that is no longer seperating our yard from our neighbors!
Watching from inside the house!
Cleaning the house...AHH....I love a clean house!
Nice Saturday Picnic lunch! Trying to get back some normalcy!

BIG TRUCKS W/Trailers that picked up the tree waste...these guys were from Missouri! A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE who dropped everything to come down and help get our city back to normal!

More tree waste!
Moving the tree waste over to one side of the street for easier clean up!
Watching the guy clean...but a little apprehensive of the bulldozer!
The guy using a claw to pick up the tree waste!

I'll have more pics soon!

BTW, Paul is on the mend and feeling much better. He did go back to the dr. yesterday to have his liver enzymes checked to make sure the levels were on the way down. We should get the results back friday! Please pray they are down and we are on the mend! It's really been one H-of a month...or better yet, one H-of a year! Sheesh, i'm ready for some good luck and good health!

Our House - A HOTEL!

We HAVE POWER! THANK GOODNESS! It was a VERY VERY NICE SURPRISE! FOOD, another story! BUT, the sad part is that others in our neighborhood DON'T have power. I feel SOO BAD! SO, we've invited two of our really good friends(amy & brian AND Stacey & rob) over to stay upstairs as long as they'd like. I almost feel guilty since we already had a generator...but what can i do? Anyway, hopefully some will take us up on the offer...and stay up in the two spare rooms upstairs and they'll have lights and a shower and water!

Please keep praying for our city. I took another drive today b/c i wanted to try to get some laundry done...it's a ghost town. NOTHING is up and running yet. Last night we saw companies having meetings in the parking lot with tables from inside the restaurants and candle lights...it was crazy! FEMA is finally starting to get things done. The mayor is NOT happy with them...he makes it known in EVERYWAY.

More later...now that we have power. I'm so excited to have A/C and lights. Poor Hannah...it was so hard for her to understand why we the lights wouldn't work. It's hard to explain these things to a 4 year old.

I called the insurance people today..they were really nice. Very concerned...and helpful.

THANK YOU soo much for all your thoughts and prayers during this tough time. I know we live close to the coast so that's just part of life. BUT, this hasn't happened since i was SEVEN years old. I've learned a lot from this. It's hard..but i think you just go into survival mode and do what you can. We were very lucky with the entire house generator but we didn't want to push our luck and blow it up. Now it's time to get back to the daily grind...and get Pauls belly fixed. We are very low on food...but we can survive on canned soup and beans for weeks. The lines at the stores are LONG...so i'm going to pass until we don't have a choice.