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I think the question we're most often asked is this: 'Why on earth did you stay in your house during Katrina?'

There is no simple answer to that one, but I will start with an obvious response:
We had no idea that Katrina would be coming in the way she did.

Yes, we knew were aware that a hurricane was heading somewhere toward New Orleans. Yes, we knew that
we would be feel some effects from a hurricane making a landfall west of us.
But we were well inland in a brick home built less than 10 years ago. Let's just say we felt safer here than we would at your average hurricane evacuation shelter.

In other words, we were not in a mobile home or a low-lying area and, therefore, did not fall under a mandatory evacuation order for those in mobile homes or low-lying areas.

Now, mind you, we did begin calling about hotel availability on the Thursday before the storm. Even by then hotels were booked throughout the
state of Mississippi and Alabama. But it was also too early to tell what the storm would do. The news on Friday & Saturday was all about the New Orleans doomsday scenario and we went to bed Saturday night quite sure the storm was heading west of New Orleans.

We had installed the hurricane shutters and gathered all of our provisions by Sunday morning. By then it had only been 16 days since I had given birth to our daughter Emily.
I was in no condition to travel all the way to Georgia (the nearest available room for the seven of us) crammed in a car with six other people, three days worth of food, water, and clothing for all seven of us, five cats, and a puppy.

By the time they issued a mandatory evacuation order for the low-lying areas of Jackson County on Sunday the news said they were also enforcing a curfew. Go figure that one out. Ah - but again - we weren't in a low-lying area. As a matter of fact our house stands on one of the highest points in the neighborhood. That morning all I was concerned about was the wind -- the house was relatively new and we couldn't be sure what sort of wind it could withstand... but as I told all of our concerned friends and relatives: "Hey it's the water that does the majority of the damage in a hurricane -- and we don't have to worry about that here."