Our Gustav party

As I mentioned earlier, we had quite a crew evacuate to our house from Slidell and Metairie for Hurricane Gustav. We all did our best to make the most of our time together, even though it felt like our house was awfully small with all the extra human and canine inhabitants.

Obviously, from my Emily's perspective, the best part about the evacuation was that so many free babysitters friends arrived to play. Emily took full advantage of all the extra hands to help her build towers, castles, bridges, and forts.


My mom also introduced a fabulous concept: painting the fence with magic paint that is clear in the bucket and brown on the fence. (The chemical makeup of magic paint is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.)

Painting entertained Emily for the majority of one morning. Awesome.

Later, Emily got punished. Just kidding; she climbed into Dixie's cage of her own volition.


Robert, my dad, my brother, and I took advantage of all the help and went to see Tropic Thunder one afternoon. The girls figured out the Baby Bjorn and Abby appears to have enjoyed the ride.

I had some help eating my delicious birthday cake.
And Emily had lots of friends to read her stories.
All in all, Gustav wasn't that bad: none of my family sustained any damage in the storm, and we had a lot of laughs at my house.

But I really hope Ike doesn't give us a reason for another hurricane party.