Bed Time and Damage Assessment

We just put the kids to bed, their darkened rooms occasionally lit by flashes of lightning, the walls shaking a bit with the rumbles of not too distant thunder as the storm continues outside. Mother Nature's fury doesn't seem to frighten our little ones for the most part (except, maybe, for those really loud cracks of thunder that make me jump too). We make a great game of watching rainstorms, and listening to the thunderclaps. And of course, we read (over and over and over again) Dr. Seuss' Mr. Brown Can Moo:

Boom boom boom, Mr. Brown is a wonder.
Boom boom boom, Mr. Brown makes thunder.
Mr. Brown makes lightning, splat, splat, splat.
And it's very, very hard to make a noise like that.

Apparently there was some damage in our area, but the tornados appear to have been mostly to the northwest and south of us.

As for the continuing saga of my vagabond in-laws, after fleeing their home in Florida just ahead of Hurricane Ivan, making a brief stop in the Civil War battlefield town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, they arrived safely last night at my brother-in-law's home outside of Dallas, Texas.

Today they finally managed to get through on the phone to some friends and neighbors back home in Florida. They learned that their home appears to have survived the hurricane relatively unscathed, the only significant damage being a shed in their yard which had its doors ripped off. Still, there is debris strewn across the area, some major roads remain closed, much of the area is still without electricity, people are being told to boil water, etc. They're anxious to hear how all their friends and neighbors fared, as well as the condition of their church.

They plan to head back as soon as possible, once they learn the roads are clear. They're going to load their van up with bottled water and other essentials, for themselves and their neighbors, as most of the stores in their area remain closed and officials have stated that it may take several weeks to get everything up and running again.

We continue to wish them, and all the storm's victims, all the best.