Pregnancy and Hurricanes don't mix

Hurricanes suck!  This was our first hurricane as homeowners.  As a kid, hurricanes were fun.  It included no school, a spontaneous vacation, a big slumber party with your sisters, parents and grandparents and usually A LOT of  junk food.  Before Katrina, I don't remember much damage occurring, just a really fun road trip.  As a parent and a homeowner, I'm learning that hurricanes are no walk in the park.

We decided to weather the storm at home.  After all, it was only a tropical storm until the last minute when it was upgraded to a category 1 storm.  Katrina was a category 3 when it hit landfall and the flooding occurred in Metairie mainly because the pumping stations were not staffed.  So, a category one should be no big deal, right?  I was wrong.   We lost power on Tuesday night around 7:30pm and the storm decided to sit on top of the area for 2 days.  We kept the house cool enough throughout the day on Tuesday to make it through the night relatively comfortable.  At 6am on Wednesday, I woke up sweating.  Greg called his mom (who lives about 2 minutes away) to check on her.  She never lost power throughout the entire ordeal.  It was decision time...  While is was likely not the safest decision in the world, a pregnant momma can only go so long in a very HOT house with a toddler who was bored out of his mind.  Poor Ty was sweating just sitting on the carpet playing with his toys.  We couldn't stay.  We packed a couple bags, waited for the wind and rain to slow (if there is such a thing during a hurricane) and high tailed it to Greg's mom's house.  Her house was cool, but the toilets were not working.  I guess you have to pick which is the lesser of the two evils.  I'll take air conditioning over plumbing any day!

Once the hurricane had passed, it took a week to get power back to our neighborhood.  Everything in the refrigerator is gone.  I tried to keep an ice chest to save some things, but after a week of having 150,000 fellow Jefferson Parish residents out of power, finding ice was near impossible.  It was more of a pain and a half day event to find ice.  We only had some minor damage to the house.  It was mostly due to our lack of hurricane experience and knowledge of what to do to prepare- thanks mom and dad for the heads up on what to do.  I should have paid more attention when I was a kid watching them prepare.  You live and learn and we won't make the same mistakes again.  First, silly me parked my car under the tree in the drive way (no, it wasn't directly under the tree, I'm not that stupid).  The wind broke a couple branches that fell on the roof and subsequently fell on the hood of my car.  No damage, we dodged that bullet.  The second rookie mistake was not defrosting the freezer.  After 2 days, the freezer started to leak on the wood floor of the kitchen.  We were at Greg's mother's house the majority of the time, with occasional bathroom breaks at our house.  Since the power was out and the refrigerator is not necessarily in the walking path to the bathroom, the water sat for a few days before we noticed.  So, we have a few boards to replace in the kitchen.  I consider ourselves lucky to only have a few small repairs and lots of clean up.  Some people in the area have not been so lucky.

So, like I said before, hurricanes suck.  Tyler sure seemed to enjoy the being spoiled by his "meme" and sleeping in the same bed with mom and dad.  I can't lie, while I did not get great sleep the entire week, I secretly liked sleeping next to Tyler, too.  Hopefully, getting back into our routine won't be too hard.

Here is a picture of my handy husband putting up the storm shutters.  Several curse words were used before and after this picture was taken.  Greg is so patient when it comes to this kind of stuff:)

 

In Emily news, her wardrobe and dresser have arrived from the furniture store. There is a little bit of damage that we are getting replaced. I will put pictures of that up once it is all pretty and fixed. Also, rather than buy a new baby bed for Emily (Tyler is still using his baby bed as a toddler bed), a friend of mine gave a baby bed. My dad and I sanded and painted it to match the rest of Emily's furniture. It was a lot of hard work, but it matches perfectly to the other pieces. Here we are working hard!

 

Here I am at 25 weeks pregnant.