Two months later...

It's hard to believe it's been two months (and four days) since the tornado. Most days it seems like it was six months ago. I think over time we've become somewhat desensitized to the situation. Perhaps we've had to be. Perhaps it's a recognition and acceptance of where we're at. I don't know.

Last weekend we celebrated Katherine's third birthday. It was a fantastic weekend. Lots of fun with our little princess. We kicked off the birthday weekend with pizza for dinner on Friday night. One of K's favorites. On my top 5 list too!! On Saturday she had a couple of her bestest friends over for a little celebration. A little swimming in the backyard, some cake, pinata in the backyard and presents made for a perfect birthday celebration. There was no shortage of smiles that weekend. It was pretty awesome!!! I think she's played with every single thing she received and they've all been huge hits. She's making sandwiches, singing songs with her microphone, playing with Tink and sitting in her chair playing with her Melissa and Doug dolls... or taking the dolls outside to the porch to sit at her Dora table with umbrella. Her purple beach chair as a secondary umbrella just in case the first umbrella lets in a ray of sun. =) Thanks to everyone for the fabulous new things!! She's one happy lil thing!

Some pictures from our celebration

A scrapbooking design by Smilebox

Prior to our weekend festivities (Friday) the tornado repairs continued with siding repairs beginning. We needed three sides of siding replaced and pieces from the three sides taken to repair the back of the house. I can happily say that the siding repairs are complete. WOOT!!! We did learn however that the banging of siding repairs is greater than the banging of roof repairs. Hard to imagine. I know. But alas, things I didn't think about removing/storing, etc. came to visit the surrounding floors. I also learned where various 2X4s are in the house. I learned this as there are quite a few nail pops going straight down the walls of the studs. I also learned that these same nail pops can make quite a mess of drywall and paint. The coating of white over a number of items made for a good time cleaning this weekend. Speaking of cleaning... I'm not sure why I cleaned. :)

This week (tomorrow in fact), we anticipate getting fabulous new windows installed. I'm not sure I'm prepared for this!! For the first month after the tornado I'd walk from our bathroom into the bedroom and each time I'd have an "oh crap" moment that the blinds weren't down. Then I'd realize 1: I don't have blinds. They blew away. Then 2: there's a ginormous blue tarp covering the side of the house. There's no need for blinds. Two months and four days later, siding repaired and blue tarps gone... We need blinds. Well actually I think our neighbors would say, YOU NEED BLINDS!!! I might be blinding them. ;) Starting tomorrow we'll have clean windows and no blinds. Will we be implementing the sheet look? Um. Yes. Perhaps. I want to keep a good relationship with my neighbors. Not scar them for life. ;)

Progress is happening. Each week we're able to check something else off of the list. I feel so very fortunate to be able to say that. Some of our neighbors continue to wait for money from the insurance company so that they can start their repairs. One house hasn't been touched since the tornado as it's either in foreclosure or just prior to foreclosure happening. It's a mess. It's labeled an "unsafe building" by the city. Unfortunately that doesn't stop mischievous kids from wanting to investigate or hide out in the garage where half the door is up. Hopefully we'll see some progress there soon. And for our neighbors who are struggling with their insurance companies.

As for our lovely insurance provider: We continue our "discussions" with them. Right now they're saying they've paid out all of the claim however the checks they've sent and the amount of the claim are two different numbers. We can't figure out how they arrived at their number and send reconciliation after reconciliation only to be passed off to another person. Pretty soon I'm going to unleash some family members on the insurance company. I have one in mind who I'm pretty certain will get some action relatively quickly. =) She's quite the go-getter!

We'd like to thank Stephen's sister & family's church in NJ for the gift cards to Target/Restaurants. We appreciate it very much. We appreciate the kindness of the parishioners.

As I close this blog I ask you to continue to keep the people of Joplin and Tuscaloosa in your prayers. Late last week I was talking with a co-worker. I inquired as to the status of another Raleigh co-worker who had been affected by the tornados. I'd asked how he was doing and whether he was back in his house yet. The individual replied, "you know, I don't know." They went on to say how as time passes after the event the interest has decreased. This made me very sad. Sad because as time goes on is when folks need encouragement. Perhaps not back labor or physically "doing" something, but more of the emotional support. I can only speak for how I felt, but initially you're so overwhelmed by the situation that you keep your chin up and take one step at a time forward. You work to clean up as best as you can waiting. Waiting for when you can repair, rebuild, etc. When you get to month one and no damages are repaired and you look around and still see the damage outside of every window you look - keeping your chin up gets a little more difficult. When you get to month two and you realize the speed at which repairs take (not for lack of effort by contractors or home owners) you realize that it's going to take longer than you thought... You take another deep breathe. Still grateful... but frustration grows to some extent.

Tuscaloosa, AL was hit with an E4 tornado on April 26, 2011. These folks are just about two months after the devastating tornado occurred. The tornado affected the infrastructure of the city. City trash trucks and the emergency response building were destroyed. Trash trucks are what helped carry away some of the yard debris... Personal vehicles were destroyed for miles around. Moving debris becomes harder. Power lines destroyed. Homes flattened. Belongings thrown all over the city.

Joplin, TN was hit with a EF5 on May 22nd. We're not yet a month later. In Raleigh our infrastructure wasn't affected and one month later we had not a single repair made. We were still without HVAC. We still had debris clean up we were doing... These folks are no where near restoring normal. The whole town was affected. One co-worker of ours lost her father in the tornado. His memorial service will be nearly one month after the event. It will take a long time for this town to restore some semblance of "normal".

Please keep these cities and the families affected in your prayers.

Love to all,
Darlene

43 Roofers Arrive!!!

Alright. So *maybe* there weren't 43 roofers. Maybe there were only 7. But I tell you, as I was laying in bed on Saturday morning I could have sworn there was far more than 7 people up there! And they were at a track meet: Complete with Sprints, Playing Javlin with shovels, and discus with hammers. Okay. Perhaps a *slight* exaggeration. Perhaps. ;)

On Friday our friends at Carolina Restoration asked if they could work on the roof on Saturday. Um, let me think about it - SURE!!! By the time we arrived home last night we had a drive way full of roofing and a giant dumpster. We knew, based on experience with some of the other houses on the street, the crew would arrive early. It's hot, so better to start the work early and get some of it done before the ridiculous heat gets too, well, ridiculous.

By around 7:30am we had gents on the roof preparing for their Track Meet. ;) As they were removing the tarps and old roofing we saw that there was more damage on the roof than we thought. Good news is, it's all fixed though! :) K was VERY excited that some of the blue band-aids were being removed. "Yayyy Mommy! They're making our house all better!!!" And they were.

When we decided to go out at around 4 it didn't seem as if the roof would be done in one day. Not to worry though, we had been told it would take 2-3 days to finish. When we arrived home at around 7:15 it was all done!!! Beautiful!!! Of course the pretty new roof did make us realize how much damage our siding has to it. One thing fixed makes another unfixed thing stand out. No worries though, that'll be fixed in time too! :)

While we were out we picked up some paint cards. We are debating whether to go with repainting the same colors in the dining room and Livingroom or whether to change. We have to paint our bedroom and the office too - and they've never been painted so we have some work to do. The last time we picked colors for the house was about 5 years ago and S had just had l@six. Seriously - about 3 hours before. It made choosing colors REALLY easy. :) This time we have a little more discussion taking place. He can see, and he's not drugged up from surgery. I'm thinking I want to go a little different... (okay painting one room partially green maybe more than a little different) and while he's not totally bought in, the good news is he hasn't totally vetoed it either. :)

In other news: For all of our friends & family out there: Apparently some smoke detectors are only designed to last 7 - 10 years. I had no idea. We got that news flash at 1:58am Saturday/Sunday. I swear I've never jumped out of bed so fast in my entire life. Might not ever do it again. We both went tearing through the house - Me yelling that I was getting K and S running to see where said fire might be. I yanked our sleeping child from her bed after turning the light on (not sure why I needed to do that?) and we ran down the steps to the door - where we waited to see if it was time to run out of the house OR whether all was well. My heart was racing, poor K was confused and by now the alarm had stopped. WTC? S finishes checking out the house and everything appeared to be fine. We all head back to bed... Well, first I stopped in the rest room. I'll admit, I *might* have *almost* peed myself in fear. Don't judge. :) On a side note, realizing that the clothes on our backs might have been the only things we had left made me realize that perhaps we should invest in some new PJs. Just sayin'.

We are back in bed by 2:06am. By 2:24 we receive our next "wake up call". This proceeds every 15-20 minutes until 4:00am. At 4am we get a reprieve until around 6:30 when the last call of the morning occurs. It's now 1:27pm on Sunday and we haven't had one since. Thankfully. During these un-restful hours K and I perfected our ability to be scared out of our wits and fall back to sleep. S on the other hand... did not. Our Knight stayed awake to watch over or us (or because he couldn't go back to sleep - we're going with the former because it sounds more chivalrous). By 9:00am he said, "I'm now an expert on smoke detectors." Okey dokey... So what's our issue? He explained that smoke detectors last, based on his research, about 7-10 years. On June 29th we will have been in our house 7 years. They were made in '03. (For those not so hot with math - that would mean they're 8 years old ;)) Super. So we have to replace them? Maybe. If so, we'll likely need to replace the whole thing because they don't make the model we have anymore. Awe-some. Okay, what else can be wrong with them? Bugs? Mmmmhhhmm. Bug stuck up inside and causing it to go off. This is a reason for them to be going off at night, so the web says, because of bugs being more active at night than during the day. Awesome. Another not hot prospect, but I have an exterminator. I'll call my friend Chris. He'll come take care of bugs for me. What else ya got? Third possibility: dust. Dust in the little pieces causing it to go off randomly. Another reasonable option given the volume of hammering and such that went on yesterday. Loosened some dust, no doubt. I did spend the whole day cleaning the house, but I didn't clean the insides of the smoke detectors. I know. Slacker, right?!

So today's activity (at least prior to bed) will be to clean the insides of the smoke detectors. Good times. And here I thought our drama for June was over when I had to go to urgent care last week. S'pose not.

While I don't have pictures of our dramatic 2am fire drill scene (trust me you should be grateful!!!) I do have pictures of our roof repair. Enjoy. Really. It's really titillating viewing. ;)

Another free photo slideshow by Smilebox

Cool Runnings...

That would be the Jamaican Bobsled team on top of our super cool Carrier HVAC units. mmhhhmmm *wink wink* I am VERY happy to report after 46 days we have a wonderful new HVAC system. They're pretty. No really. They are. I look at them compared to what we had before and they're runway gorgeous I tell ya.

This was our first repair, post tornado, completed. I'm pretty sure the owner of the HVAC company is quite finished with us. Edit. Not us: Stephen. I usually get the rap for being the PIA however in this instance... Not me. ;) SA might have completed his HVAC apprentice hours after how much time he spent asking questions. I'm just glad it wasn't me.

As for other progress, last week we had another adjuster from our lovely insurance company and my new BFF from Carolina Restoration and one of his BFFs come over for a family meeting. We needed to resolve the 40k difference between the first adjusters estimate and CR. We thought we were going to be in for trouble because the latest adjuster was not what we would have described as Mr Friendly on the phone. In the end though he was a pretty nice guy. At least I think he will be once he sends us the additional 40k check.

As a result of our family meeting we learned that we will be getting a a whole new roof (not just half). WHEW and YAYY! Mr Friendly said the estimate made sense and was okay. He used phrases like "remove the minimums" and "depreciation adjustments" that would be resolved later (which he later told me to forget he ever explained... good thing too because I nodded and pretended I understood and planned to Google it later!) and other such phrases that fortunately the CR gents understood. I tried to stay quiet and listen. You all know how hard that was for me. ;) I'm the one used to being in the fray fixing things and mediating. This time I needed to count on someone else to do that for me. The guys at Carolina did us proud and again confirmed our decision to contract with them.

On Friday one of the subs from CR came to measure the windows so that they could be ordered. He said he'd be the one doing the roof, windows and siding. Another super nice guy. More progress!!! Now that we have HVAC, I can be a little more patient with outdoor repairs.

This weekend I think we are going to go "window shopping" for some new living room furniture. I don't think we're going to replace it until we have the new windows installed and the bulk of the interior repairs are completed. (i.e. painting, carpeting, etc.) It'll be a test of my patience if we do see something we like, but I'll try to be tough. ;) Maybe we'll do a little more window shopping for a new grill too. :) SA's looking at an infrared grill. Apparently it's "cool". ;)

I hope all of you had a great Memorial Day. I'm proud to have so many members of our family serve in the various branches of the US Military. My Dad in the Navy; Stephen's Dad in the Army; My sisters Nikki & Sofi in the Army and our nephew Justin in the Army. We're proud of you and all that you do to protect our freedom!! xoxo

To celebrate the holiday we took refuge in Myrtle Beach with my cousin Cheryl and her fiance Jay. It was a great weekend with lots of fun. We went to the Memorial Day parade on Saturday. K was sooooo excited that they threw candy. She even scored a small flag from one of the Shriner floats when she blew them kisses. Stephen was excited by the Ocean W@ter Sports float. Multiple girls in bikinis. 'Nuff said. I liked the men in uniform. oohhweee!!! :) *was that out loud?* ;) The parade was followed by a walk then lunch on the boardwalk and a trip to Broadway on the Beach. Frozen beverages at both.

Sunday we went to the beach for several hours. The water was surprisingly very nice. K enjoyed jumping the waves and confirmed that this year she will be trouble in the water. The girl is FEAR-LESS!!! She was sitting in the water and a wave came and splashed her face, twice, and she thought it was the funniest thing. Last year water in the face would have meant she was done. This year... AGAIN AGAIN. Yeesh.

As I close this update 46 days into our journey, I ask that you please keep the victims of the Missouri and Alabama tornados in your prayers. While our relief is happening, theirs is no doubt is moving at a very slow pace.

Love,
Dar, SA & KK
xo