Joy

.... has come to visit "Katrinaland" with some of her soccer team from PBU that she coached last season. They are here to help on their spring break. It's been fun to have yet another sister, Joy, in town since Katrina. Even though it would be really neat, I don't think all SIX siblings will make it in 2006 though. Three makes 50% -- that's amazing enough for me!

Doug was able to take them on a tour of some of the devastation on Sunday after church. I know it sounds weird to go sightseeing around here, but it definitely gives you a complete understanding of the vastness of our situation. You really just can't understand it until you drive through neighborhood after neighborhood for miles and miles of flooded homes (some untouched, some re-roofed, some raised, some gutted, some bulldozed ... each is in a different stage of the process of rebuilding ... whatever that means to the individual homeowner).

The boys and I went to see the girls play soccer against a local club team that afternoon while Doug had to go back to church to youth group. After the game, we enjoyed Louisiana Pizza Kitchen, then Cafe du Monde downtown. It was another late night for the boys, but we had fun nonetheless. They are real troopers!

We had the team over for dinner at our house on Tuesday night. Of course, we took them to "see the boats" on the Mississippi River levee right by our home. We're literally two houses away from the river road, which runs right next to the bank of the river. We love it here! FYI: we're next to an earthen levee (as opposed to the big tall cement wall kind) which means that there's less chance of it breaking, but more chance of it "topping" (going over).
Here's a couple of fun pics of Zach and Aunt Joy from their night at our house. The girls on the team were snapping lots of pictures while we were out, so hopefully I can get copies of those. I think they've enjoyed their time here in spite of the hard, nasty work they've done.