After 11 days in a hotel room, we finally came home this past Monday night. It feels great to be home and more importantly, it feels great to be in a home with electricity. Daniel came back 5 days before me to help other Priesthood leaders with clean up efforts. He slept in a hot house (poor guy). I will say there are many benefits to having a government job. To list a few specifically for this evacuation: 1) The New Orleans office sent fellow CPB and Border Patrol officers to inspect the homes of all the agents in this area. We were called by these agents the day Daniel had planned to go home. Because of them, we received word before most people. 2) When Daniel returned home he was given a generator for temporary use as well as water and quite a few MRE's, 3) these same officers helped Daniel clean up most of our yard which was nice because Daniel was pretty busy with church efforts.
Okay, so we were told that power would be fully restored by Sept. 29th. I had a hotel reservation until this past Friday (yesterday). However, when the mandatory evacuation was lifted and we no longer had to boil our water, Daniel was ready for us to come home. I personally was born in these latter days to enjoy the sweet blessings of air conditioning. I was not looking forward to a hot house but my love for Daniel overruled and so I packed up the boys and animals and headed home. Heavenly Father truly blessed me because our power turned on about 30 minutes after I returned home. Little Daniel thinks that daddy had a generator so that mommy could watch the season premiere of Dancing with the Stars. That is not the case but I was happy to watch it after the boys went to bed.
Ike was quite the storm and though it hit here, it also hit my home in Kentucky. Most of my family went without power for many days and a new roof is being issued to my mom and brothers home. I feel very sad at all of the devastation. I have no idea how long it will take for some of these towns to recover. I will say that I love to see so many people help in the relief efforts. The world can be scary but there is still good and there are still good people.
Thank you to all of our family and friends that e-mailed and called to let us know that you were thinking about us. We are well. Here are a few photos of our home. We were blessed to have minimal damage. We lost quite a bit of our Oak tree in the front yard, which you can see on one of the pictures how bare it is. We lost part of our privacy fence in the back, gutter damage and a porch light broke. With all of that said, we have a home, no roof damage, no broken windows, we are all alive, well and safe.
Side note: Here is a link to the video that I mentioned, in a previous blog, of our neighborhood after Ike.
