Yeah, power is back on!

Hello everyone,

In case you have not heard, our power is finally back on here in Houston. After about 2 days, we can finally have air conditioning again.

Our food seems to have survived fine in the refridgerator, although I am personally a little afraid of some of the dairy products! But I usually am anyways!

Our family is holding up fine. It is nice to learn the lesson about emergency preparedness, and not so nice to learn that we take modern conveniences such as water and electricity for granted. We really do rely a lot on electricity. Hopefully, we won't run into any situations with gas like many of our neibors have.

D.J. and I have no school again on Monday and Tuesday. I guess the thinking is that most people left and it will take some time to get people back in town.

We love you all, and appreciate the prayers and calls.

Rick and Deanne

Pic of the boys!

Thanks for this picture, AJ!

Hurrican Rita Update

To dispell any and all rumors that are going around the nation about Houston and Harris County, Texas, regarding Hurricane Rita, I wanted to give you the actual information as of right now. First, however, let me give you a little geography lesson about Harris County itself.

Almost three-quarters of the Harris County in 1990 was covered by the city of Houston and thirty smaller communities; only 27 percent (310,000 acres or 485 square miles) of the county was rural. The county comprises 1,778 square miles (1,729 in land) and is the largest Texas county east of the Nueces River. Its southern half is level coastal prairie, and the northern half touches the rolling East Texas timberlands. Central Harris County is fifty-five feet above sea level. The land rises gradually to more than 200 feet on the northern borders, while the smallish bluffs around upper Galveston Bay descend to sea level. In 1930, when residents numbered 359,328, Harris County surpassed its rivals, Dallas and Bexar counties, by more than 100,000 people. It remained the most populous county in Texas. In 1960 it had more than a million residents. In 1990 it reached a population of 2,818,199. ONLY ABOUT 700,000 OF THESE PEOPLE IN HARRIS COUNTY WERE GIVEN ANY EVACUATION ORDERS, MANDATORY OR VOLUNTARY OR OTHERWISE. ALL OTHERS WERE TOLD TO USE JUDGMENT BASED ON THEIR INDIVIDUAL SITUATIONS.

* For comparison purposes, here is a bit about Salt Lake County, Utah. Salt Lake County occupies 737 square miles in the central part of the state of Utah, where almost 900,000 people live, or nearly half of the population of the state.

At 3:37 p.m. on September 22, certain parts of Harris County and the surrounding Galveston, Trinity, Wharton, and Brazoria Counties were given mandatory evacuation orders. These 200,000 - 250,000 people live in the areas most likely to experience floods. Note that they are coastal or floodplain areas. Other areas in the perimeter of the mandatory evacuation zones were given voluntary evacuation orders, while still others, such as in Spring, where we live, were given no orders, but some are still leaving. Given that we are in no imminent danger, and given that there are gasoline shortages along any route we would take for evacuation, and since many people are taking up to 24 hours to travel from Houston to Dallas (normally a 3-4 hour drive), and since people are not being allowed to exit the freeway once they get on, we have decided to ride out the storm here at home.

As long as the power is on, I intend on updating friends and family via this Blog. You can also read about my brother's experience in trying to evacuate from downtown Houston at ajericksen.blogspot.com.

We appreciate your concern, but we will be safe. Just keep praying.

This is it!

We know, our previous attempt to use our old blog was an utter failure, but this time, we hope things will be different. With the boys growing up and our little girl on the way, we hope to add cute things and stories about our family quite often. We hope this will serve as a journal of sorts. Life is good.