Dear Family and Friends, Thank you so very much for your prayers and the notes of encouragement. I am copying some of Alice's email from today. She just got on line at about 5:15 pm Fri. Here it is: Just a quick note.  I got back on line 10 minutes ago.  We are okay here. We lost utilities from Monday until yesterday.  The schools are not in yet because all the school buses were sequestered to drive the N.O. people to Houston and now to Dallas and San Antonio.  We are full up here.  The church gyms, LSU Assembly Center and Baton Rouge Assembly Center are all full up with people and local entities and the Red Cross are feeding them.  Most of them got separated and don't know where their relatives and/or children are. It is really pathetic. Our subdivision only has one entrance and then it is a square, so its a 5 street subdivision.  But the weather tore up the beautiful brick facade with the subdivisions name on it and all the plants and they did a number on quite a few trees, two right through the middle of two beautiful big houses.  No one was hurt that we know of.   They bought up 28 babies from New Orleans, some of them born during the storm.  A few are in the ICU and neonatal unit.  They have them here at two diff. hospitals.  Most of the time they and their mothers were separated but they are uniting them now.   The people here are trying to figure out how to get to their social security checks.  Most of these people do not have checking accounts so they get their checks and cash them. An added note by me. One of their grandsons is in the National Guard and spent his 21st birthday in Afganistan. He was called up for New Orleans this week and spent his 23rd birthday there in riot gear etc. That catches you up on the family in LA. Thanks again to everyone. Virginia Sanok Love is Silence when Words would Hurt. ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs