Surviving Gustav

Eli has now been through his first hurricane, vicariously through me, but I guess it still counts. Josh and I had been following Ol' Gustav since last week. We wanted to make sure that we were prepared whenever Gustav decided to make landfall. Last Saturday we went to the store to load up on things we needed. All the weather forecasters were saying that Gustav wouldn't get to us until sometime last Tuesday, so we thought that it would be okay to buy some perishables-milk, juice, cheese, butter, etc. Yeah, they were wrong. Gustav decided he wanted to speed up his trek across Louisiana, so by Monday morning the Wilson's were already without power. Josh and I were in utter disbelief because we had not had ANY bad weather in our area yet, just a little bit of wind and rain. We had been enjoying our coffee and breakfast while watching Fox News when all of a sudden everything went out.

Right before this happened, Josh got a craving for his homemade chili and we had called his mom, who was already out and about, to pick up the remaining ingredients we didn't have. She got here right as the power decided to go out. For those of you that didn't know this, it's kind of hard to make chili when all of your kitchen appliances are electric. Therefore, the chili making process got off to a late start. Josh and I were optimistic that the electricity would come back on soon, so Sue and I settled down to play some games. 

Growing up the in the country, I have been through my fair share of power outages-some for a week or more at a time! To pass the time, my family and I always played board games together since there wasn't much else we could do without electricity. Because of this, I am a huge lover of any kind of board game. Unfortunately, no one in Josh's family likes board games, including Josh. Josh's mom likes a few games like Scrabble and Yahtzee so we played Yahtzee in front of our front door while waiting for the power to come back on. I guess our excitement over whether or not we would get a Yahtzee became contagious, because pretty soon Josh had made his way over to us. He became our official roller, a very good one at that! He'd be great to take to Vegas! 

Sue ended up winning, thanks to some very lucky rolls by Josh, and a few minutes after that our power came back on! Yes! It was time to start cooking the chili. Josh and Sue got started on the chili before the power decided to go out again while I cleaned and straightened up the house. Sue left to go back to her house and not too long after that our power went out again, for good this time. Josh and I called Sue, who still had power, and we took the pot of chili and some board games over to her house for the night. The Glenn's and Josh's uncle Tommy came over around 5:00 to eat chili and in the middle of our supper the weather got REALLY bad. The wind picked up and we could hear tree limbs beating against the house. The rain was pouring down! The men received word that some church members had some limbs down at their house, so they left to go help. The rest of us settled down to wait out the storm. At this point, Sue hadn't lost power, but that didn't last long at all. 

Around 7:00 her power went out as well, so we had to resort to entertaining ourselves. Jonah, Nicki's little boy, was so good the entire time the power was out. Jonah and I sat by the front door for a few minutes and watched the wind and rain. He's so cute! Every time a strong gust of wind would blow through, he'd say, "I hear da win!" And every time the rain would get really heavy, he'd say, "I hear da wain!" Sue had some huge ferns that she had put in her house so they wouldn't get beat up by the wind, and apparently, a little cricket had decided to make one of the ferns his home. All night long we heard him chirping. Jonah let us know every time he heard the cricket, "I hear dat kwicket!" Pretty soon, we were all tired of that cricket! Jonah and I went cricket hunting but to no avail. "Dat kwicket" was a really good hider! 

The hurricane party stayed at Sue's until everyone started to get hot, sweaty and tired. By this time, Nicki and I were on her tile floor trying to cool off. Normally, I'm a cold-natured person, but since I got pregnant I have become VERY hot-natured. That tile floor felt wonderful!! I was not looking forward to spending the night without air conditioning or a fan, but knew that we would make the best of it. Josh and I went home and got ready for bed. Neither one of us wanted to sleep in our bed since we didn't have air conditioning, so we camped out in the living room. I made Josh a pallet on the floor right in front of the couch where I was going to sleep. I would have slept on the floor with him, but since I'm sleeping on my side now, my hip bone digs into the floor and I would have been so uncomfortable! 

We made it through the night and woke up sticky and hot, but alive! Our house and yard had made it through the storm with no major damage. Even Maggie, our neurotic but lovable golden retriever, went through the storm without freaking out on us like she normally does! We woke up Tuesday morning to the sound of generators all around us-something we didn't have, but were thinking now that one might have been a good idea. We knew that most of our food was okay since we hadn't opened the refrigerator or freezer since the power had gone out, but when I woke up all I could think about was food. I was starving!! I wanted a bowl of cereal, but I had forgotten that Josh had put both gallons (Yes, gallons! We go through milk now like crazy!) in the deep freeze to preserve them longer. You can't really have cereal with frozen milk, so I abandoned that plan for some yogurt, grapes, blueberries, and strawberries. How's that for a healthy breakfast? Josh knew he didn't have work because everything at the bank needs electricity, so we got ready and headed over to his grandmother's house for some coffee. My poor husband had been eating dark chocolate all morning to try to get his caffeine fix but it wasn't working. As soon as he heard that Tommy had found his old boy scout coffee maker we practically ran over to his grandmother's house. 

On the drive over, we surveyed the damage caused by Gustav. Thankfully, no one in our neighborhood had any major damage; we mostly saw broken limbs and branches in all the yards. Everyone in our city had lost power, but there weren't any reports of injuries. We were all very thankful to have made it through this storm. 

We spent the rest of the day at his grandmother's house hanging out with them. At one point, Josh and his grandfather went and bought a generator because his grandfather was worried about losing all their food in the freezers. I'm so glad they bought one, because I was scared that we were going to lose all the food in ours. We had the equivalent of two deer in our freezer and we didn't want to lose all that meat. Everyone in the family brought over all the food they were scared of losing and put it in Josh's grandparents freezers and refrigerators. It was wonderful having that peace of mind because at this point we had no idea when the power was going to come back on. All the reports we had heard on the radio said it was going to be DAYS before the city had power again. 

Thankfully, that wasn't the case for our city. Josh and I had just settled down to brave another hot and sticky night last night when all of a sudden the lights in our house came back on! We couldn't believe it! We both looked at each other and gasped. How wonderful to have power again! Being without power for two days really showed me how much I take for granted sometimes. Electricity is a wonderful blessing that most of us don't even think about until it's taken away from us. I can say this, because this was me! I am so thankful that our whole family made it through the storm without any major damage. I know a lot of people were praying for the families in Louisiana. Thank you very much!

Our yard after Gustav. No major damage at all!

Thankfully, all we lost were a few limbs from this crepe myrtle tree.