Houston, We Have A Problem

Not a very original idea for the title, I know, but appropriate! As Houston - and Sarah, Winston and Luke - prepare for Hurricane Ike, Ailey and I are cooling our heals and UNpacking. Well, at least if I'd had anything packed I would now be unpacking. I'm not a pre-packer. I figure I don't want to be living out of my suitcase until we're ready to actually leave, so instead I make a list of items I need to pack when the time comes. Anyway, at 9:30 pm tonight I am on my way to bed instead of packing up everything on my list.

Hurricane Ike is suppose to be a doozy - Winston and Sarah have taped up their windows, ice is made, bread is stocked, Luke's pack-n-play, the cell and the laptop are all in the walk-in closet ready for a camp-out. Schools are closed in their area, though they aren't evacuating. Today the airlines finally responded as well, cancelling flights into and out of Houston for both Friday and Saturday. Including our flight, of course. In rescheduling our trip, the best we could get sometime in the near future was the second week of October. So we are now going to meet a 7-week-old Luke instead of a 3-week-old Luke.

Both Ailey and I are bummed. I didn't care so much when it was just going to delay us by a day, but now I'm mad at Ike. When I told Ailey we weren't going to Houston tomorrow because of a big storm, the poor girl actually cried. We've been talking about this for months. She knew we were going "after the Lighthouse Festival parade". Then she knew it was the day after her first day of preschool. I could tell she was really excited about it. As soon as I assured her that we were going to Houston, just later, she was mollified a bit. Then she said "And Aunt Sarah is going to have corn on the cob for us!" Totally random. No, you didn't miss anything. No, I have no idea where that came from. Maybe, because of her love of corn on the cob, she was comforting herself in some way. Whatever made her say that, I immediately notified Sarah that she now needs to stock corn on the cob for our visit in October. Oh, how fascinating it would be to live in the mind of a 3-year-old for just a day! No, I take that back. It would probably be frighteningly confusing!