Rita

School was cancelled thursday and friday in my district and we haven't returned. Tomorrow will be the first day back. Dirk and my sister Amy (along with sweet little Olivia) and I made our way wednesday evening to Longview to stay with Dirk's dad's family and out of the way of Rita. It took us 9 hours and it normally takes about 4. We finally got in around 5 am and crashed. We spent the next couple days worrying about Shale (amy's hubby) and Beth and Evie (my other sister). Shale had to work a half day on thursday so there was no way he would be able to get out of town--it was WAY too crowded. Beth, however left her house around 4 am and after about 14 hours, she finally had to turn around and head back to Kingwood. She'd travelled probably 30 miles and was tired, desparate and low on gas. I was sooooo upset about them trying to get home and I didnt wanyt to her to be left stranded on the side of some country road with no gas when Rita made landfall. Dirk found some awesome Texas Atlas(that was rank with cigarette smoke) that had every road in Texas listed in it and he and Amy were able to navigate her back home. Beth, Evie, Shale and my dad rode out the storm in our house and enjoyed the hot powerless home. They made good use of the gas grill and cooked up about every frozen piece of meat in the house and then feasted. WE (Amy, Dirk and I) decided on friday that since the storm was predicted to head straight up 59 to where we were, we would be better off heading west to Dirk's mom's house and camping out in Hamlin for a few days. We told Clif (Beth's hubby who was fortunate enough to make it up to Longview) about our plans and he joined us on our 7 hour trip to west Texas. We drove through the night again so Olivia could sleep so we were able to listen to Foxnews on the Radio report the storm hitting landfall. We made it about 3:30 and slept until Olivia had us all awake.

Of course being in Hamlin we ate WELL. So well that we all vowed that would not let the rest of the family know what we ate--we felt bad knowing they were without power and left with whatever food wouldnt spoil while we ate steaks and all kinds of awesome stuff. It was good to see family too. My mom and grandmother were in Austin with my aunt, so they werent hurting either. I felt really bad that little Evie had to suffer through the storm and the heat and the power outages--but she's a trooper.

We got home around 9 or so last night. We took our time and even stopped in College Station for some Taste of the Tropics (yummmmmmmm) and some Wings'nMore. It was so nice to be back in our own beds again too.

I am very thankful that the Lord protected us throughout all our driving and gave us wisdom about what to do. Even my car: we dropped it off wed morning and it needed $700 worth of repairs--repairs that if we didnt get fixed would have cost us thousands on the road out of town that evening; we had it out of the shop that afternoon and were able to take it on the road on our adventurous "Tour of Texas." The Lord sustained us the whole way and I am very thankful. he even allowed us to see some family and spend some time with people we hadnt seen in a while. What a blessing!

Tomorrow is school. Yay. Back to the grind.