Good News and Bad News

The good news is that our house was not damaged that much. We had some minor damage to our carport area with shingles and tar paper getting torn off. Thanks to my wonderful husband the rest of the house faired well. During Hurricane Dolly and a tropical storm we had about three weeks ago, the boys new room had taken on water twice. Mark surmised that it was the city water backing up under the toilet in their bathroom so he uncovered the manhole in our back yard and capped off that line, hoping to prevent another back up this time. Well, today when he went to check on the house, he spent last night at our church, he went out to pull off the cover of that manhole and the water was all the way up to the top, so had he not capped off our line the boys' room would most definitely have taken on a lot of water.

Beaumont did sustain a lot of damage. If you'd like to see some live footage and videos of our town you can go to www.kfdm.com and they have a lot of coverage. It's hard to imagine, knowing now exactly the streets they're traveling, many of them less than 2 minutes from our home. I'm very thankful that we heeded the evacuation orders and left town. Our energy provider has stated that the damage is catastrophic and worse than Rita, so we're not sure how long it will be before we get power again.

The kids and I are concerned obviously but could not be in a better place. Having my family so close is wonderful. My brother in law, that is a police officer, called me the day I got here and said, "you should go to a shelter, you'd get everything free," and I quickly said, "I'm pretty sure I'll get most things free exactly where I am." The comfort of a familiar home with cousins and sisters around is just fine by me.

Mark is determing if he'll try to head North tomorrow, since we'll be without power for a few days at least. We appreciate the prayers and will gladly take any more you'd offer up. I've missed a week of work as of right now and the kids are behind in school. Their teachers were so apologetic last week at Goal's Night, explaining that they have such rigid curriculum guidelines that they're so behind right now, and that was just with three days off for Gustav, so now with 2 more and likely this next week too, I'm sure we'll have a lot to catch up on.

But, God is good, our house is intact and my husband is safe. I'll keep this up date as much as possible during the next few days but again, if you'd like to see what's current in our town, check out www.kfdm.com.