We have had many hurricane threats before Rita. It was the Wednesday before Rita hit that I was running around my house taking pictures off the walls and packing everything into rubber maid containers. I talked with my husband a couple of times during the day and he was like we shall see what the news says when I get home. After working almost 12 hours my husband gets home and starts getting our yard picked up and securing the house. I have tried to keep my girls from knowing exactly how bad this could be, especially on the heels of hurricane Katrina. My husband finally goes to sleep around midnight but I was too wound up and wanted to finish packing what I could. As of 2a.m. thursday morning Rita was still going towards Mata Gorda Bay, I decide I need to get some sleep. I slept fitfully thinking about that darn hurricane. I woke up at 5a.m. and turned on the news and I was crushed when the weather guy on channel 6 news Greg Bostwick said it was coming at us around Sabine Pass or High Island. That is not too far from where we live in Groves. I run and wake my husband up because they had already issued the madatory evacuation for our area. He gets up and tells me to start waking the kids up. After I tell them what is going on I give them each a rubber maid container and tell them to pack anything they want in it and all their clothes that they didn\'t pack last night. My husband was loading everything I had packed into his boat while the girls were inside helping me move anything and everything up as high as we could put it. I was thinking this was the last time I would ever see my house again. We call our friend Mark and we tell him to hurry and get him and his dad packed up we would be there soon. We looked like a bunch of gypsies with our boat loaded down and the back of our truck loaded with the ice chests of the contents of my fridge and freezer. It was hard on one of our dogs Coco because she has never been in a kennel and she was not liking that. We finally made it on the road about 9:15 went to our friend Mark\'s house and hurried him and his dad up and told him to get any important papers that they might need and medicine. We finally get on the road around 10:15 and what a difference an hour makes because the traffic on Hwy 69 is at a stand still. We have 2 way radios so we can communicate since at the time we did not own cell phones. We do now thank you Rita. Our first stop was going to Rayburn to get Mark\'s travel trailer so we would have a place to stay. That trip normally takes an hour and a half this day it took us 14 LONG hours in a car with 2 cranky pre-teens and a 18 month old was no fun. I drove for most of the time so my husband could check on the dog since it was 100+ in the back of our truck. We hade cases of botteled water, we had food and it was a good thing all the kids had to do was run to the boat to fix themselves a sandwich. There was people every where and some people who thought the hurricane was coming at that moment because they were driving crazy off in the grass almost fighting. I had never seen anything like it in all of my life. We finally make it Rayburn around 12:30 a.m. and talk with a few people who are up there and callapse into bed with only brushing my teeth, we were to exhauseted to even change our clothes. After the day of listening to my pre-teens argue and my 18 month old crying and whinning because she didn\'t want to be in her car seat I wasn\'t worried about changing clothes. Mark\'s sister woke us up at 5a.m. it only took her 2 hours to get here from Beaumont...lucky her. We all get up and get everything packed up and hook up the travel trailer and are on the road again by 7. We wanted to top off our tank since we used up almost half a tank. The only station opened was charging $3.28 for gas..go figure you pay whatever when you need it. We get on the road and they are not bad it takes us another 8 hours to make it to Texarkana. We found a nice State Park who didn\'t charge us to stay since we were official evacuee\'s. The kids had some fun they got to swim and they could play outside since it was sooo pretty. At night was a challenge since we had 5 adults 5 kids and 5 dogs two inside and three outside. We stayed in that park from September 23rd until October 1st. I cried all te way home from the devestation was horrible I had never seen so much devestation so far up from a Hurricane. We filled up the tank every chance we got since we didn\'t know what would be open and if we could get gas at home. We finally made it home we went to Mark\'s house first and it was bad he had about a 6 inches or more of water and mold aready growing up the walls about 4 feet. They lost everything that wasn\'t taken with them except Mark\'s bed and some pictures. We finally venture to see for ourselves what our house looked like. Friends had told us our house was fine but until you see it with your own eyes you are not sure. We lost trees in our front yard and back our fence was down on both sides, shingles were off our roof all over it, our pool was black, vinyl siding was off and our neighbor who is sandford and son had a stupid saddle on his roof well it flew off during the hurricane and hit our garage door. I predicted it would do that or go through the window in my den. We are lucky that it just hit the garage door. The inside of the house was fine except the foul odor from the fridge. During the next storm (I am praying we never have to do this again) I will definately bad up and seal anything that I don\'t plan on taking. I left a 20 pound turkey and some packs of deer meat. Those things made the foulest odor that took me forever to rid my home of. We were lucky the inside of our house looked the exact same as I had left it. I called our insurance company and reported my claim and my adjuster was out in 3 days and we had a check with in a week of that. We were pretty lucky not much damage and our insurance came through for us soon. We didn\'t have electricty until the following weekend so we stayed with our friend Mark in the travel trailer. They must like us because they put up with a crying 18 month old on a nightly basis during this whole ordeal. There was not a night that she slept though she would wake up and scream for at least an hour every night until the night we got electricity and were able to sleep at our house and she was in here bed . She slept through the night for the first time in 3 weeks. I think this whole ordeal affected her more than it did us. When we would go any where she didn\'t want to sit in her car seat or if we had to wait in lines for the drive thru she would start crying. But now many months later she is ok. My other girls they are old enough to remember what hurricane Rita did. I just pray that another never comes our way. I just wish that FEMA and the Red Cross didn\'t have so much red tape for you to go through to get help. I had to fight tooth and nails for all of the help that both of those orginazations gave to us. I am very thankful for the help they did eventually give us. We were very lucky through this Hurricane we had good food and good times with good friends and I hope that we never have to experience anything like this again.