Hurricane Rita

Well, luckily, Hurricane Rita turned and lost steam before hitting Houston.

We were infinitely prepared, however! After waffling back and forth as to whether or not we would try to brave the traffic and leave Houston, we finally decided to brave the storm from our problem-ridden home which would be sure to lose it's roof to the impending gales, at which point, we would run down to Rice University and huddle with the students in their shelters there.

But, talk about prepared! We had all three bathtubs full of water (to allow us to flush our toilets in case we lost water - you can just fill up the tank of the toilet with water and flush it), we filled every large pot we owned so that we would have water with which to cook, we filled up all other available containers with drinking water and bought a couple of other cases of water, and began making and saving ice on Wednesday, which we stored at a friend's house down the street because he's the ultimate bachelor and has literally nothing in his freezer. (really, NOTHING!)

On Thursday afternoon when it looked like Rita might turn and only side-swipe Houston, we decided we'd probably just stay and then Friday when we found that we almost certainly would be out of harm's way, we took the kids for a bike ride. It was starting to get windy, but it was still a good ride. :)

Turned out that we got quite a bit of wind, very little rain, and the only thing that happened was a bunch of tiny twigs and branches fell out of the trees and created a huge mess in our neighborhood. We never even lost power or cable (until last night for some odd reason) and were able to remove the tape from our windows and empty our tubs and pots on Saturday morning. We were really lucky.

What we've learned from this:
1. We're going to get some wood pre-cut to fit our front windows and figure out a way of attaching them to the windows so that we can easily and quickly get ready for the next hurricane.
2. Next time, we'll leave town - hopefully before the rush. We don't want to tempt fate again.
3. All kinds of people will call you (even my brother) to check up on you if there's a hurricane bearing down on you. :)
(actually my brother only called because he wanted to comment on my blog...)

So, all is well here in Houston. Again, we got really lucky!!