Hurricane Isaac Evacuation

Hurricane season is upon us.  Living in southern Louisiana we know that the threat is always real.  On Saturday night our house was alive and filled with family and laughter.  The next day I loaded up the kids to evacuate to higher ground.  It happens just like that.  I evacuated with Griffin for hurricane Gustave when he was about 6 months old.  This is Roman and Cohen's first evacuation.  Due to Kenton's job he always stays behind.  Leaving without him never gets easier...

Here we are pulling out of the drive as we say good-bye to Daddy.

I left on Sunday with the boys.  The meteorologists were still very uncertain of the path of the storm.  It was moving very slow and the course was very hard to predict.  I left early to avoid traffic.  We were not exactly sure where we would end up.  We had options to go to Baton Rouge or Jackson.  MiMi and Pop's cabin was our first stop until we decided what to do next.  For a day or so they just enjoyed a little country living!

See our nice and pretty car?  During quiet time Griff went outside to find the case of DVDs and locked the door.  With the keys inside.  Awesome.  What do you do when a hurricane is heading your way, you are in the middle of nowhere USA,  your vehicle is of no use and your 3 car seats are locked inside of the car?  After a mini-melt down (mine not the kids) I called OnStar.  Only problem we don't subscribe to OnStar.  They connected to me to Chevy Roadside assistance.  I was informed that our assistance expired in July.  (I need it in August so of course it did)  They were able to send someone out to help.

$77.00 later this guy showed up.  Thank you Mr. I'm so glad that you are not a criminal because you could steal my car guy.  Very important lesson was illustrated to boys.  THIS is why you don't just press buttons.

Griffin buttering me up after key incident.

Cohen did a lot of this.
Snoozing on his Momma.

 As the storm got closer we decided to stay in town but head out to a friend's instead.  The cabin is surrounded by trees.  Ms. Dee was kind enough to take all of us in.  She lived a few streets over in a big house that was NOT surrounded by trees.  We thought we would spend the night and head home the next day.  As I said earlier this was a very slow moving storm.  Isaac basically arrived and parked it over southern Louisiana for 48 hours.  The winds started Tuesday night around midnight and continued through Thursday morning.  I was a bit nervous to take my traveling show into the nice and quiet house of a widow.  God answered my prayers.  The boys were great!  The power went out Wednesday night.  Poppa quickly turned on the generator.  We had power and more importantly a/c again.  

Big boys quietly playing evacuation on the floor.
Gotta love Louisiana babies...

After the scene seemed safe enough we headed back to the cabin on Thursday morning.  We turned off the news which we were bombarded with since Sunday evening.  Time to decompress a bit.  As soon as I sat down my phone started blowing up with text messages.  Friends and neighbors knew where we evacuated to.  I was told to turn on the news again.  Apparently one of the local rivers was about to bust the dam.  The news gave us 90 minutes to evacuate and 20 minutes had already expired.  Here we go again!  I was ready to get back home, but not exactly under these conditions.  The typical options to get back home were few.  Only 1 way to be exact.  The other options were under water and not yet safe to drive yet.  I quickly loaded up the boys again and headed out.  The storm was still lingering.  I drove home through lots of wind and rain.  Thankfully the boys were well behaved and quiet (for the most part) in the back seat.

Bridge to our house.

For the grand finale of our evacuation adventure once home I was greeted with a stomach virus.  This would be the same virus that Satch had been suffering with on his own throughout the entire storm. (Roman also had a touch of it)  Awesome...

Once I felt a little better I gave us 24 hours to make sure the house was decontaminated.  I had a case of "survivors guilt."  We were back home with power.  Many of our friends were not so lucky.  The majority of the city was still without power.  We welcomed friends into our house so they could soak up a little air conditioning.

Satching reading bedtime stories to the kids minus 2.

Life is beginning to get back to normal around here for us.  We are very blessed and fortunate.  The big boys went back to school this week and in another week I will be returning to work.  Many others were not so lucky and it will be much longer until they return to their "normal."  Until then we do what we can to help...

Thanks to MiMi and Big Poppa for taking us in again.  We are very lucky to have someone to help us out in times of uncertainty and crisis.  We love you.