Isaac

 Last Monday, after Clint got off of work, we packed up the car and headed up to Monroe to get out of Hurricane Isaac's way. We actually did a virtually identical evacuation 4 years ago right after Jacob was born so I had a recurring sense of deja vu the whole time.

 The drive, which is usually 4 1/2 hours long was more like 6 1/2 hours long due to traffic and road work. This is how Lydia made herself comfortable...

 The next morning one of the first things we did was run out to the lake to check out Grammy and Grandpa's new move-in alligator. Yep. They have an alligator in their lake. Her name is Ali. And they feed her bread. I think she thought Lydia's thighs looked tasty.

 

There she is. My camera doesn't have a great zoom so what you see is pretty much how close she was.

 Grammy held Lydia at a safe distance. Honestly, who wouldn't want to eat those thighs??

Here's a shot of the lovely lake with the McCready home way back there.

The rest of the week was spent playing outside on Grandpa's playground and walking around the Enchanted Forest.

While we were evacuating and taking it easy I decided to get my hair cut. So I went from this:

To this:

We also got to spend some quality time with Clint's grandparents Grandma and Grandpa B. They were particularly smitten with Lydia.

See what a great time we had??

 

 Finally on Saturday we decided it was time to head back to survey the damage. These are some pictures I took on the way into Metairie. You can see the railroad tracks submerged here.

 Most of the houses on the water were half underwater or caved in.

 Crews were already out trying to clean up.

When we got home this is what our thermostat read. Clint had turned off the AC when we left in case the storm messed up the power and blew out the unit. So first item of business was to turn back on the cool air. Thankfully, when we got home our house had power. After talking to some neighbors we found out that our area lost power late Tuesday night and didn't come back on until sometime on Thursday. The second item of business for me was to throw out most everything in the fridge/freezer.

Damage to the outside of the house wasn't too bad. Clint had boarded up the back windows when we left and we don't have any trees in our own yard to worry about. However, our next door neighbor has a huge oak which lost a very large branch. We found it laying right beside our car. It bounced off the neighbor's roof, messing up his gutters pretty severely, but didn't touch our car. None of us can figure out how it didn't land right on top of it. (Thank you, Heavenly Father!)

We also had this gate fall down and a portion of the fence at the back of the house which pulled away from the post. 

This is how the yard looked.

 

This is how a neighbor down the street fared...

Yes, that is his next door neighbor's tree on top of both of his trucks.

 The didn't get the tree off the trucks until yesterday, September 6th.  Here's what it looks like now.

 

 It seems like every time we get in the car to drive somewhere we see another tree that has crashed down...

Here's one close to our church.

And lately this is what the streets are looking like around here. Lots of yard work being done. Lots of trash bags and piles of brush.

 We had enough trash to line the whole front of our yard. The garbage men were so overwhelmed they didn't get around to our house until a day and a half after their usual pick up time.We were ALL excited to see the garbage man come but it was extra cool to see him with a new machine that picked up the whole yard full of garbage at once. That was pretty sweet.

Things are just now getting back to normal for the most part. School started up again on Thursday after a week and a half off. Last Sunday and apparently this next Sunday we only have an hour of church. Several stores are still closed, but most have opened up again and have taken down their window boards. Apparently Isaac was no trifling matter. I'm just glad we weren't here for it and that we didn't have severe damage from it!