Gustav

Well, we survived Gustav.  We were really concerned about getting water in our house, because our ditch in the front yard has been backing up/overflowing into our yard after just a big rain.  Fortunately, unknown to us at the time, some neighbors had done some digging in the major drainage ditch on our street, and water drained off quite nicely.  We had a shutter blow off the house, a few shingles gone, and a few of our neighbors' fences went down, but all in all, we were very fortunate.  We lost power around 1:10 on Monday afternoon, and it was restored Wednesday night around 9:00 or so. (Not positive when exactly, since we were at Trent's brother's with the generator and window a.c. units.)

I have really been in awe of the amount of damage Baton Rouge has sustained.  For us, this was so much worse than Katrina, yet the national media keeps reporting things to the effect of "Louisiana really dodged a bullet on this one..."  Sure, there were no major levee breaches, and not thousands of deaths due to Gustav, but it has definitely impacted our state and the city of Baton Rouge in dramatic ways.  I have never seen lines to get gas so long...  or so many trees down (and on top of houses).  I know it will take a while to "recover" from this.  My parents are still without power- and as of right now, have no estimate on when it will be restored.

But, God was faithful, and protected our family.  Even though some of my family members have pretty extensive roof damage, trees down, etc., noone in the family was hurt in any way.  Thank God for his protection.