6 years ago today, our house was hit by a tornado. I originally posted this 3 years ago, recounting my memories of that day. Today I sit at home with 2 boys who are getting over a stomach virus. It's hard to believe all of this happened before either of these boys were here.
Beware, this is going to be really long, it's just a way for me to share what I'm feeling about today. I never really thought that I would write a blog, but a few thoughts have been running through my head today that I thought I would share with the few of you who might actually read this. 3 years ago today our house was hit by a tornado. I can't believe it's actually been 3 years, it seems like yesterday in some ways. I can vividly remember so many details about that day, even before coming home to find my house in shambles from the tornado.
I'm a teacher and I was at school that day like I would be any Thursday (yes, it happened on a Thursday and I can remember that without looking it up). I remember looking on a weather website and seeing a line of strong storms moving through the Fort Worth area early that afternoon. By the time school was letting out, those storms began to pound our area. The principal made an announcement that we were dismissing a little early and teachers who did not have afternoon duties were allowed to leave. Most of the teachers decided to stick it out there, but I just couldn't bring myself to voluntarily stay in the school when I could be heading home. Looking back, that was a dumb idea, but what did I know? I remember it was raining and blowing so hard I could barely get my truck door open and there was absolutely no using an umbrella because it would have been demolished in a matter of seconds. I got out on the road and could barely see in front of me. I ended up behind a long line of traffic virtually stopped, about a mile from my school. We inched along and I eventually came upon the reason for our slow travel, an old barn-type building had blown into the road and everyone was having to make their way around it. After driving another mile, I came upon the interstate and found a spot to park underneath it along with a school bus and a few other vehicles until the storm finally passed. It actually didn't take that long, maybe 15 minutes of sitting, and we were able to move. From there until I came to my neighborhood, I saw relatively minor damage from the storm, a few limbs blown down, maybe the occasional sign, nothing to be concerned about.
I remember driving down the road leading to our housing addition and catching a glimpse of our neighbor's house. Our neighbors have a house that appears to be a 2 story, but in reality is only a one story, and the 2nd "story" on their house was completely gone, roof and everything. I was in total shock, for a moment I couldn't even see our house and just knew that it was completely gone. Finally there was a break in the trees and I was able to see our house for a moment and saw it still standing and looking to be in one piece. I pulled onto our road and had a good view of the side of our house closest to the neighbor's destroyed house. Our bedroom windows appeared to be broken and there was debris all over and around our house. I pulled into the driveway and of course we had no electricity so I couldn't park in the garage, I came in through the front door instead. At the time, Keith and I had only lived here for a year so we were very picky about taking our shoes off before walking on the carpet. I took mine off out of habit and made my way to our bedroom, before I even walked into the door, I could already see glass all over the carpet in the hallway. (Remember, I'm only wearing socks on my feet!) I walked into our bedroom and it was completely destroyed. Both of our windows were broken, glass was everywhere, embedded in the sheetrock, all over the carpet, our bed, etc. Our blinds were completely ruined, the glass on our TV screen was actually chipped from something hitting it. We also had shingles and 2x4's from our neighbor's house, all over our bedroom. Upon seeing our bedroom in such chaos, I called Keith immediately. Of course he didn't answer his cell phone, so I left him a message. At the time I didn't know it, but later that evening when we actually listened to this voice mail, I sounded out of control and very frantic. I called him a second time and he answered and I remember telling him to come home immediately, our house had been hit by a tornado. I told him the state of our neighbor's house and what I had seen so far of our's and he said he was on his way. I then made my way around the rest of the house to check for any more damage. The master bathroom actually had a 2x4 that came through the roof and then through the wall of the bathroom, leaving a hole atleast 18 inches big. Our guest bathroom had about 2 inches of water standing in the floor. Other than glass being everywhere, there wasn't any other damage to the inside of the house. I went to put my shoes on to go outside and check things out and realized the bottoms of my socks were covered in glass and of course soaking wet. Thankfully I wasn't cut. Our neighbors from across the street were standing in my yard when I went outside and they asked if everything was ok and had I been home when it hit. She had been home, but thankfully had made it to a closet with her son before the storm hit. Plus, their house only suffered very minor damage, thank goodness. Her husband went to the neighbor's house to see if anyone there was home because obviously their house was in very bad shape and if someone had been in there, they could have been seriously hurt. Thankfully, they were both still at work. We then examined my house and discovered several spots on the roof where 2x4's and other boards had "stabbed" through the roof leaving holes. There was a 10 foot long board "stabbed" into the ground about 20 feet from our house. Who knows what kind of damage that would have done had it actually hit the house.
The emergency crews began arriving at this point. They broke down the neighbor's door to check and see if anyone was home and needed assistance (no one was), they checked with me to see how we were, and then made their rounds to the other houses with damage. By this time, Keith had made it home, but it took him awhile to actually get to our house because of all the traffic beginning to accumulate from gawkers along with emergency workers. He took the tour of the damage to the house and then climbed on to the roof with a friend of our's who had come to help. They assessed the damage, were given some makeshift materials, and started covering up the holes in the roof to keep out any future rain. Our home builder came by after I called to see what he could do to help us get our house back in order. Not that it was his responsibility at all, but he is such a nice man, that I knew he would help where he could. He brought plywood and with that and some tarps from our neighbor we were able to board up our bedroom windows. He also gave us a list of the people who originally built our house for us to call and get them to come out and fix things. He even pulled some strings and had the window guy out to our house the very next day to replace our broken windows. That was totally awesome and so helpful. He's a wonderful guy.
At this point, you would not believe the traffic winding through our small neighborhood. The police eventually had to block off the roads because people were clogging up our streets terribly. Our neighbors whose house was demolished had made it home by now and you could see the devastation on their faces. They had moved into their house more recently than we had and now it was unliveable. A news crew showed up and interviewed them and later that night a moving/restoration company had also showed up and were salvaging what they could and taking it for storage. By this time, we had the holes in our roof temporarily covered and tarps covering our windows, so we were doing ok. Our neighbors from across the street went out and picked us all up some pizza and we sat around our kitchen eating in the candlelight. Once everyone was home for the evening, Keith and I spent several hours calling our family to let them know what happened. Our mattress was soaked and cut with glass from our windows, so we had to sleep on the full sized guest bed. 2 people sleeping on a full sized bed isn't all that comfortable to begin with, but when one of those people is 6'5", it is pretty much impossible. We ended up putting the mattress on the floor in the living room and slept half on the bed, half on the floor. At about 5 am, the electricity came back on, we weren't sleeping much anyway, so we got up and turned on the news. We saw the funniest thing that morning, we still talk about this to this day. A Fox 4 News reporter was in our neighborhood talking about the tornado and the damage it had done. He was standing next to a pile of bricks that was once a mailbox and talking about how this tornado had even taken down this brick mailbox. Keith and I died laughing, that mailbox had been a pile of bricks since before we had moved out there, so it definitely wasn't caused by the tornado. Too funny! Once it was daylight, we drove around our neighborhood surveying the damage. One house had their chimney completely broken off and it was laying in their yard, another's front porch columns had been blown down, several small storage buildings were completely destroyed, multiple houses had been stripped of their shingles, one house had 2 RVs and they had both blown over and into each other, and there was countless debris everywhere. We learned that day that a man had falled off the roof of a neighbor's house and broken his back the night before. He had to be airlifted to a Dallas hospital. One neighbor just trying to help an elderly neighbor out by patching his roof. Another neighbor told us about their back porch grill being blown into their son's bedroom window and totally destroyed his room due to all the glass and water damage. Thankfully no one was in there at the time.
It took the entire day on Friday to just pick up the debris in our yard. We still to this day find the occasional shingle or scrap of wood in the yard. The insurance adjuster along with the window man also came that day. I know a lot of people have a lot of problems with their insurance companies and we definitely have some gripes about the process it took to eventually get the check to cover all of the damage, and we were thankful we had enough in savings to cover alot of this upfront before finally getting the check. Our insurance adjustor was very nice and helpful. He was very thorough and more than fair with everything. We ended up having a claim for close to $20,000 in damages. We had to get an entire new roof, a new central heating and air conditioner unit, a new bed, new carpet in our bedroom, new blinds for the new windows, new sheetrock in the bedroom and bathroom, of course everything had to be repainted. We were not completely moved back in to our bedroom until June, 3 months later! I am so thankful that we did not have a baby during that time. It was very challenging and frustrating. I am so thankful that God helped us through it and keeps us from constantly worrying that something like this will happen again. And if it does, I know that He will still be there for us. Thanks for letting me get this "out there".
Showing posts with label house. Show all posts
Showing posts with label house. Show all posts
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Just call me the maid
Due to the fact that I attribute blogging about my weight loss attempts to staying motivated, I'm going to try this with another area that I'm currently trying to change in my life. My household cleaning schedule. My goal has always been to have a different chore for each day of the week so I don't get overwhelmed with cleaning the whole house in one day. Obviously if I wasn't a stay at home mom, this would be different, and it was when I was a working mom. I did the majority of my house cleaning and laundry on the weekends. But since I am home the majority of my days during the week, I may as well use them to my benefit.
Here's where you come in. I'm going to post my tentative daily cleaning schedule, which I will start this week, and then I'll report in next Monday as to whether or not I was able to stick with this schedule and if I had to change the days around any. I may not post on this one every week like I've been doing with my weightloss recap because, well frankly, there's only so much one can say about house cleaning, but I'm atleast going to post this and a follow up or two. We'll go from there.
So here's the schedule I've put together. We'll see how it goes.
Monday: grocery shopping and *organizing
Tuesday: laundry
Wednesday: vacuum most of the rooms in the house
Thursday: mop and dust
Friday: bathrooms
*By organizing, I mostly mean decluttering. Picking up stray items that get misplaced, doing a quick runthrough of the boys rooms and my bedroom and just general clean-up. This gets done many days of the week, but maybe giving myself one day to definitely do it will mean that my room won't get overlooked. That's the room that typically goes without a lot of the cleaning because it's the room that can be closed off if people stop by.
We tend to do laundry over the weekends too, so we'll see if I actually do much laundry on Tuesdays, but I feel as if I need to give the laundry a day. If nothing else, that will be my day to wash all of our bedding.
If any of you have a cleaning schedule of any kind, even if you do all of your household cleaning in one day, let me know how yours works and what seems to go best for you. I know you would think I would already have something like this down, if for no other reason than I've been a stay at home mom for almost 4 years now, but I just haven't found anything that has worked consistently. I'm just hoping by posting this out in the open, it will be just the motivation I need to stick with it.
Here's where you come in. I'm going to post my tentative daily cleaning schedule, which I will start this week, and then I'll report in next Monday as to whether or not I was able to stick with this schedule and if I had to change the days around any. I may not post on this one every week like I've been doing with my weightloss recap because, well frankly, there's only so much one can say about house cleaning, but I'm atleast going to post this and a follow up or two. We'll go from there.
So here's the schedule I've put together. We'll see how it goes.
Monday: grocery shopping and *organizing
Tuesday: laundry
Wednesday: vacuum most of the rooms in the house
Thursday: mop and dust
Friday: bathrooms
*By organizing, I mostly mean decluttering. Picking up stray items that get misplaced, doing a quick runthrough of the boys rooms and my bedroom and just general clean-up. This gets done many days of the week, but maybe giving myself one day to definitely do it will mean that my room won't get overlooked. That's the room that typically goes without a lot of the cleaning because it's the room that can be closed off if people stop by.
We tend to do laundry over the weekends too, so we'll see if I actually do much laundry on Tuesdays, but I feel as if I need to give the laundry a day. If nothing else, that will be my day to wash all of our bedding.
If any of you have a cleaning schedule of any kind, even if you do all of your household cleaning in one day, let me know how yours works and what seems to go best for you. I know you would think I would already have something like this down, if for no other reason than I've been a stay at home mom for almost 4 years now, but I just haven't found anything that has worked consistently. I'm just hoping by posting this out in the open, it will be just the motivation I need to stick with it.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Things I can't live without: Household Edition
Quite awhile back, I did a post on different household items that I couldn't live without. It has shifted a bit so I thought I would write an updated list.
1. The Shark 2 in 1 Hand and Stick Vacuum
I just got this for Christmas and I am LOVING it. As most of you know, at least half of our house floors are either ceramic tile or hardwood. And this little battery operated vacuum does a great job keeping them swept and looking nice. Especially with a 4 year old who manages to trail crumbs throughout the house (even though he's not allowed to eat all over the place, this still happens) and a 7 month old who makes a gigantic mess around the floor of his highchair. It has 2 suction powers and the high one does a great job vacuuming my area rug in the living room too. Plus, it breaks down into a handheld vacuum for jobs where this is needed. The negative is that breaking it down to use this part is kind of a pain, so I've only used the handheld vacuum once.
2. The Shark Steam Mop
I know I've mentioned this mop before but it's still applicable that it's a much needed and used appliance in our house. (Are mops appliances? I'm not sure. It does plug into the wall in case that's a requirement for getting the "appliance" label...) This mop literally makes our floors squeaky clean. A couple of years ago, our refrigerator went on the fritz, so Keith pulled it into the middle of the kitchen to see if he could figure out what was wrong. There was a bunch of sticky juice underneath from a juice spill awhile before this. I got out the steam mop and after a few swipes with it, the juice was gone and the floor was spotless. It only uses water so you don't have to worry about putting chemicals into your house. I'm not necessarily anti-chemical because I rely heavily on bleach wipes to do a lot of my cleaning, but it's nice to know that Cooper isn't (eventually...) crawling around on a bunch of cleaning chemicals. (I'm not paid by Shark to promote their products by the way, but I do love the ones that I own. We also have a Shark Iron which is great, but not really an appliance I use often so it doesn't make this list. I hate ironing whether I have a great iron or not.)
3. Kenmore 7 qt Crockpot
I do ALOT of cooking in my crockpot right now. It's just the easiest method for me considering that between 5pm-7pm Cooper turns into a pumpkin and rarely cooperates long enough for me to make anything. This crockpot is nice because it's really big, it has a timer on it (which I've never had one with that feature before so bear with me) and it's fairly easy to clean. The insert does come out but its size makes it hard to either fit in the dishwasher or find the space to try and hand wash it (and I rarely hand wash anything. Just being honest.) So I love using those crockpot liners that you can find on the ziplock baggie aisle. Makes clean-up super easy.
4. Chi Flat Iron
Once Rachel on Friends started the hair straightening phase ("My hair is straight! Straight, straight, straight, straight, straight!" Name that episode!), I've owned several hair straighteners in order to attempt to flatten out my wavy, frizzy, doesn't-know-what-to-do-with-itself hair. Once I asked my hair tamer/friend Mistie what the brand of hair straightener was that she used on my hair, I immediately ordered a Chi and it's been the BEST hair straightener ever. I've had it for at least 2 years and use it several times a week (yes, I know that's not good for your hair. I don't care.) I love how smooth my hair is and it lasts that way until I wash it again.
5. iPod Classic
I've had this iPod for 2 years now and I still love it. It's only recently started developing a few little quirks, but it still works great. It holds a good majority of my music collection, along with a few videos for Garrett. I could not walk one step on the treadmill without this. I have not owned another brand of mp3 player, so I can't attest to whether or not the iPod is a better brand. And I am NOT a Mac enthusiast, but I do love this and iTunes is very easy to manuever. The drawback to the iPod is that it was almost impossible for me to get my music off of it when our computer hard drive crashed and I had nothing backed up. The iPod was not meant to function where you can download everything off of it, but I finally figured it out.
6. Canon Powershot Digital Camera
A few weeks before Cooper was born, our camera died. It was a quick and relatively painless death, but a death nonetheless. It had lived a relatively long life of 4 years when it just started taking pictures of black nothingness, even though the lens was completely clean and appeared to be functioning properly. Because we had a great time with that Canon camera, we decided to stick with the brand and bought the one I linked to above to replace it. It's a great camera, takes great pictures and video as well. When Keith and I were engaged, he bought me the Canon Rebel 35 mm camera and we both LOVED it. It still works great, but unfortunately we live in a digital age and it's virtually been rendered obsolete. We still use it every once in a while, but for pictures of kids digital is the way to go. I would love to own the digital version of the Rebel, but sadly it's quite a bit too expensive for my tastes. But maybe someday...
7. Nintendo Wii
I know this is probably a strange choice, but Keith bought this for me for Mother's Day when I was pregnant with Cooper. It has been awesome because it has kept Garrett entertained on days when I was pregnant and could barely function, on days with a newborn when I could barely function, and on cold days when we can't get out. He doesn't play it all day, but when he does play, it's great for his hand eye coordination and it keeps him active where computer games and other video games don't. I also love it for myself as a fun outlet for playing games. For Christmas, Keith bought me the Wii Fit which has been a fun edition to my attempts to lose weight and get in shape this year.
Most of the other items that are coming to mind right now are baby things, so I'll probably post a Baby Equipment Edition the next chance I get to blog.
1. The Shark 2 in 1 Hand and Stick Vacuum
I just got this for Christmas and I am LOVING it. As most of you know, at least half of our house floors are either ceramic tile or hardwood. And this little battery operated vacuum does a great job keeping them swept and looking nice. Especially with a 4 year old who manages to trail crumbs throughout the house (even though he's not allowed to eat all over the place, this still happens) and a 7 month old who makes a gigantic mess around the floor of his highchair. It has 2 suction powers and the high one does a great job vacuuming my area rug in the living room too. Plus, it breaks down into a handheld vacuum for jobs where this is needed. The negative is that breaking it down to use this part is kind of a pain, so I've only used the handheld vacuum once.
2. The Shark Steam Mop
I know I've mentioned this mop before but it's still applicable that it's a much needed and used appliance in our house. (Are mops appliances? I'm not sure. It does plug into the wall in case that's a requirement for getting the "appliance" label...) This mop literally makes our floors squeaky clean. A couple of years ago, our refrigerator went on the fritz, so Keith pulled it into the middle of the kitchen to see if he could figure out what was wrong. There was a bunch of sticky juice underneath from a juice spill awhile before this. I got out the steam mop and after a few swipes with it, the juice was gone and the floor was spotless. It only uses water so you don't have to worry about putting chemicals into your house. I'm not necessarily anti-chemical because I rely heavily on bleach wipes to do a lot of my cleaning, but it's nice to know that Cooper isn't (eventually...) crawling around on a bunch of cleaning chemicals. (I'm not paid by Shark to promote their products by the way, but I do love the ones that I own. We also have a Shark Iron which is great, but not really an appliance I use often so it doesn't make this list. I hate ironing whether I have a great iron or not.)
3. Kenmore 7 qt Crockpot
I do ALOT of cooking in my crockpot right now. It's just the easiest method for me considering that between 5pm-7pm Cooper turns into a pumpkin and rarely cooperates long enough for me to make anything. This crockpot is nice because it's really big, it has a timer on it (which I've never had one with that feature before so bear with me) and it's fairly easy to clean. The insert does come out but its size makes it hard to either fit in the dishwasher or find the space to try and hand wash it (and I rarely hand wash anything. Just being honest.) So I love using those crockpot liners that you can find on the ziplock baggie aisle. Makes clean-up super easy.
4. Chi Flat Iron
Once Rachel on Friends started the hair straightening phase ("My hair is straight! Straight, straight, straight, straight, straight!" Name that episode!), I've owned several hair straighteners in order to attempt to flatten out my wavy, frizzy, doesn't-know-what-to-do-with-itself hair. Once I asked my hair tamer/friend Mistie what the brand of hair straightener was that she used on my hair, I immediately ordered a Chi and it's been the BEST hair straightener ever. I've had it for at least 2 years and use it several times a week (yes, I know that's not good for your hair. I don't care.) I love how smooth my hair is and it lasts that way until I wash it again.
5. iPod Classic
I've had this iPod for 2 years now and I still love it. It's only recently started developing a few little quirks, but it still works great. It holds a good majority of my music collection, along with a few videos for Garrett. I could not walk one step on the treadmill without this. I have not owned another brand of mp3 player, so I can't attest to whether or not the iPod is a better brand. And I am NOT a Mac enthusiast, but I do love this and iTunes is very easy to manuever. The drawback to the iPod is that it was almost impossible for me to get my music off of it when our computer hard drive crashed and I had nothing backed up. The iPod was not meant to function where you can download everything off of it, but I finally figured it out.
6. Canon Powershot Digital Camera
A few weeks before Cooper was born, our camera died. It was a quick and relatively painless death, but a death nonetheless. It had lived a relatively long life of 4 years when it just started taking pictures of black nothingness, even though the lens was completely clean and appeared to be functioning properly. Because we had a great time with that Canon camera, we decided to stick with the brand and bought the one I linked to above to replace it. It's a great camera, takes great pictures and video as well. When Keith and I were engaged, he bought me the Canon Rebel 35 mm camera and we both LOVED it. It still works great, but unfortunately we live in a digital age and it's virtually been rendered obsolete. We still use it every once in a while, but for pictures of kids digital is the way to go. I would love to own the digital version of the Rebel, but sadly it's quite a bit too expensive for my tastes. But maybe someday...
7. Nintendo Wii
I know this is probably a strange choice, but Keith bought this for me for Mother's Day when I was pregnant with Cooper. It has been awesome because it has kept Garrett entertained on days when I was pregnant and could barely function, on days with a newborn when I could barely function, and on cold days when we can't get out. He doesn't play it all day, but when he does play, it's great for his hand eye coordination and it keeps him active where computer games and other video games don't. I also love it for myself as a fun outlet for playing games. For Christmas, Keith bought me the Wii Fit which has been a fun edition to my attempts to lose weight and get in shape this year.
Most of the other items that are coming to mind right now are baby things, so I'll probably post a Baby Equipment Edition the next chance I get to blog.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Cooper's Room
As I mentioned earlier, we still plan on painting the letters that spell his name and hanging them on the wall, but that probably isn't going to happen before he's born at this point. But I don't really care either way. When they do get hung, they will go to the right of the window. As you can see in this first picture, that wall is blank. I think I explained before, but we never bought a changing table when we had Garrett because his nursery (which was the room you're currently looking at) had a full size bed in it so we just changed him on the bed. But now that bed is where Garrett sleeps. However, I have a hard time paying money for something we won't use for very long, so I hauled out the Pack N Play which really doesn't get used much, and set up the diaper changer in there. Hopefully this will serve as a nice substitute for a changing table. The mobile on it came with the Pack N Play, so I figured I would go ahead and put it out in hopes that maybe it will hold Cooper's attention while he's getting changed. I hung the blanket that goes with our crib bedding on the outside of the Pack N Play in order to hide our stash of diapers. FYI, the bottom of that Pack N Play is almost full of diapers!! For some reason, the lighting in this picture is off.
The lighting here is much better. In the corner behind the crib is where I currently have the baby swing, bouncer seat, activity mat, and diaper pail. On the side of the crib that you can see, is actually an exersaucer and bouncer seat that some friends of ours loaned to us before we were given brand new ones. I need to take them back to their house, but haven't gotten around to it. So, those are not ours and will not be staying there. We also have some baby equipment under the crib. I'm trying to utilize every inch of space in his room. And you can see Garrett talking into the baby monitor like it's a walkie talkie. I'm sure that won't be the last time we see that.
In case I haven't already said so, the nursery theme for Cooper is the same as Garrett's. Barnyard animals and John Deere tractors. The "Texaco" sign is one that was given to Keith when he was little. It doesn't exactly fit the theme, but I thought it would be cute to hang.
The lighting here is much better. In the corner behind the crib is where I currently have the baby swing, bouncer seat, activity mat, and diaper pail. On the side of the crib that you can see, is actually an exersaucer and bouncer seat that some friends of ours loaned to us before we were given brand new ones. I need to take them back to their house, but haven't gotten around to it. So, those are not ours and will not be staying there. We also have some baby equipment under the crib. I'm trying to utilize every inch of space in his room. And you can see Garrett talking into the baby monitor like it's a walkie talkie. I'm sure that won't be the last time we see that.
In case I haven't already said so, the nursery theme for Cooper is the same as Garrett's. Barnyard animals and John Deere tractors. The "Texaco" sign is one that was given to Keith when he was little. It doesn't exactly fit the theme, but I thought it would be cute to hang.
The lamp on this shelf was made for me by my sister Christie when she was in junior high woodshop class. The baskets in the shelf have baby toys in them and other miscellaneous things that Garrett has outgrown. Like his Tickle Me Elmo and a Bouncing Tigger. Of course now that everything is out and organized, he's more interested in playing with these toys again. Funny how that works.
Right by the door, is our stack of things that will be accompanying us to the hospital when the time comes. Cooper's room seemed like the best place for them. I would keep them in my SUV, but one of the bags has snacks and bottles of water in it and I don't want anything to ruin. The bag on top is our new diaper bag with Cooper's name monogrammed on it. I found when I had Garrett that having my Boppy pillow at the hospital was a big help, so I've put it with our stack to be sure I have it. The chair in the corner was mine from when I was in college. We have a set of 3 that float around the house as needed. I realized that Cooper's room wasn't going to have anywhere to sit down. We have a rocking chair, but it's in the living room and I have no plans of doing any rocking in the middle of the night, so I just stuck that chair in there in case we need a place to sit at some point.
This just gives you an idea of how full his closet is. Of course when you don't have a dresser or chest of drawers in a bedroom, that adds more things that need to be kept in the closet. My current method of organization is as follows: the top basket has an assortment of things in it, mostly things we'll need in a few months time, that are also small and needed a place to hang for the time being. The second basket has crib sheets and waterproof pads. The bottom basket has blankets. You can also see that I have blankets stuffed next to each basket as well as a stack on the bottom shelf. Garrett was given a TON of blankets when he was born. The organizer next to the shelves has hats, socks, onesies, bibs, burp rags, sleepers, and more receiving blankets. The clothes hanging on the left are 0-3 month outfits and on the right are an assortment of outfits ranging from 6 months to 12 months. I also have onesies stacked on the top shelf that are in bigger sizes. And I won't begin to list out all the other baby equipment hanging around up there, waiting until they're needed. While it's nice to have most everything you need when baby #2 comes around, it's hard finding places to store all the equipment until the baby grows into it.
The elephant with the mirror on it and the bear in the corner of the crib were both Garrett's. The elephant has a handle that the baby pulls and makes a mouse run around on the mirror and it plays music and lights up. The bear is actually strapped onto the crib and has a sound machine inside its stomach that plays heartbeat sounds. That is supposed to be soothing for newborns and Garrett loved it when he was a baby. Draped over the side of the crib is a "lovey" that my friend Kelli gave to Cooper.
And finally, the diaper changer/Pack N Play. I've already got a waterproof pad down just waiting to be peed and/or pooped on. The pillow will get moved I'm sure, but it was one that was handmade with Cooper's name embroidered on it by someone that Keith works with.
And that's it. I applaud you if you read through all of this. Since I've been asked this question a few times, I will say that, while most of the furniture and decorations are from Garrett's nursery, everything is hung in a different spot, the crib sits in a different spot, etc. I did attempt to do things differently so they won't one day be looking at pictures of their nursery and have a hard time figuring out whose room was whose.
Right by the door, is our stack of things that will be accompanying us to the hospital when the time comes. Cooper's room seemed like the best place for them. I would keep them in my SUV, but one of the bags has snacks and bottles of water in it and I don't want anything to ruin. The bag on top is our new diaper bag with Cooper's name monogrammed on it. I found when I had Garrett that having my Boppy pillow at the hospital was a big help, so I've put it with our stack to be sure I have it. The chair in the corner was mine from when I was in college. We have a set of 3 that float around the house as needed. I realized that Cooper's room wasn't going to have anywhere to sit down. We have a rocking chair, but it's in the living room and I have no plans of doing any rocking in the middle of the night, so I just stuck that chair in there in case we need a place to sit at some point.
This just gives you an idea of how full his closet is. Of course when you don't have a dresser or chest of drawers in a bedroom, that adds more things that need to be kept in the closet. My current method of organization is as follows: the top basket has an assortment of things in it, mostly things we'll need in a few months time, that are also small and needed a place to hang for the time being. The second basket has crib sheets and waterproof pads. The bottom basket has blankets. You can also see that I have blankets stuffed next to each basket as well as a stack on the bottom shelf. Garrett was given a TON of blankets when he was born. The organizer next to the shelves has hats, socks, onesies, bibs, burp rags, sleepers, and more receiving blankets. The clothes hanging on the left are 0-3 month outfits and on the right are an assortment of outfits ranging from 6 months to 12 months. I also have onesies stacked on the top shelf that are in bigger sizes. And I won't begin to list out all the other baby equipment hanging around up there, waiting until they're needed. While it's nice to have most everything you need when baby #2 comes around, it's hard finding places to store all the equipment until the baby grows into it.
The elephant with the mirror on it and the bear in the corner of the crib were both Garrett's. The elephant has a handle that the baby pulls and makes a mouse run around on the mirror and it plays music and lights up. The bear is actually strapped onto the crib and has a sound machine inside its stomach that plays heartbeat sounds. That is supposed to be soothing for newborns and Garrett loved it when he was a baby. Draped over the side of the crib is a "lovey" that my friend Kelli gave to Cooper.
And finally, the diaper changer/Pack N Play. I've already got a waterproof pad down just waiting to be peed and/or pooped on. The pillow will get moved I'm sure, but it was one that was handmade with Cooper's name embroidered on it by someone that Keith works with.
And that's it. I applaud you if you read through all of this. Since I've been asked this question a few times, I will say that, while most of the furniture and decorations are from Garrett's nursery, everything is hung in a different spot, the crib sits in a different spot, etc. I did attempt to do things differently so they won't one day be looking at pictures of their nursery and have a hard time figuring out whose room was whose. So that's it! Hard to believe that in less than 2 weeks, the inhabitant of this room will be here.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Weekend Recap
This weekend has felt busy, but for the life of me, I can't really put my finger on what we've done exactly. Our bathroom shower had the unfortunate timing of totally springing a leak, throwing mold on our sheetrock and baseboards (it's been there for a long while, we just didn't know it until Keith tore into the wall) and breaking a couple of floor tiles. So we spent the day on Saturday running all over to get all the supplies needed to fix this project once and for all. Then Keith ran many experiments trying to pinpoint where the leak was coming from. I think we finally found it this afternoon. We now have 2 holes in the sheetrock next to the shower, 2 tiles that have been pulled up, and baseboards missing. I told Keith that as long as our shower is useable once Cooper is born, that's all I care about. I can overlook missing floor tiles and holes in the sheetrock. I just don't want to be kicked out of my bathroom shower at that time. I'm not enjoying using Garrett's bathroom for shower purposes at the moment, but hopefully that time has come to an end. When Garrett first saw the holes in the wall, he asked Keith what happened and Keith said "Momma did it." haha So Garrett took that ball and ran with it. He immediately came up with the following scenario: "Momma got mad and she punched a hole in the wall." Wow, what does that say about me? Thankfully when Keith's mom was here this week to watch Garrett for me while I worked at the church, he told her that "Daddy did it", when he showed her the holes in the wall. So at least he spared me from sharing his story with everyone else.
This morning we went to church. The sermon was awesome! Then we went to Sunday school. It turns out that my group had planned a little surprise party for me as it was my last day to teach SS in our preteen department. Since I'm due in a couple of weeks, they've told me they want me to go ahead and enjoy sitting in on an adult class while I can do so without a newborn accompanying me. After enjoying a cupcake, I was promptly kicked out and told to go join my husband for the remainder of the SS hour. (And sent with a dozen cupcakes too!)
This afternoon was spent helping Keith to determine the shower leak's origination, along with finishing up some laundry. Then we went to Home Depot to get a few more supplies (it feels like we live there sometimes) and ate supper at Spaghetti Warehouse. Once we got home, Keith and Garrett played ball in the backyard, which was a lot of fun for both of them. Now Garrett's in the tub, Keith's taking a break from shower repair, and I'm sitting here on the computer. I'm really looking forward to my doctor's appointment tomorrow. I've had quite a few sporadic contractions over the past several days, with several more today.
I will leave you with a couple of pregnancy profile shots. The first one was from last month and I'm finally getting around to posting it. The second one was taken this afternoon. Just to give my family an idea of what I'm currently looking like in my final days of pregnancy. Not the most flattering of pictures, but I know I'll be glad we took these many years from now.
8 months pregnant
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Coffee Cups
For the past several years I've been following this blog that I somehow stumbled upon. The author is a really funny writer and about the same age as me so I enjoy reading her blogs. They aren't always clean which is why I'm not putting her link here because I just know that my mom will check it out and then be horrified by what she's read, so I'm going to avoid that scenerio. :) A few months ago this girl made a shift to her blog and instead of it being focused on her life raising two kids and working from home as a free-lance writer, she's switched the focus over to simple living. At first I had no clue what that was exactly but after she's taken the time to explain it I found it interesting. Part of it is living "green", which is basically being eco-friendly with recycling, driving less, basically doing everything possible for the environment. I am not a tree-hugger, so most of that aspect isn't something I'm going to apply.
Side note: if my area provided recycling bins similar to our trash bins, I would totally recycle without any hesitation, but honestly, I'm not going to go out of my way to sort through anything that might be recycleable and then try to find some place that will take them. And don't even think about asking me to give up my SUV, it ain't happenin'.
OK, I'm getting way off course. The other part of living simply is basically living within your means, avoiding debt wherever possible, cutting down on "things" and when you do get rid of your excess don't just toss them in a landfill, but donate them or resale them so that you are, in a way, also recycling. I am on board with this. First of all, I'm married to an accountant who is pretty budget conscious which means that we definitely live within our means and the only "extras" that we have as far as monthly bills that really aren't necessary are cell phones, internet, and a monthly subscription to Blockbuster online. We also don't buy things that we can't afford (not including our house or our SUV-however we do limit ourselves to only having one car payment at a time, meaning atleast one car is always paid for). Our credit cards are paid in full every month (if you don't buy what you can't afford, then you should have the money to pay that bill each month) and we've limited ourselves to one credit card each (that was a lot of phone calls that I had to make intially because I signed up for every card that gave me a discount when I was in college, not a smart thing to do). So I am now implementing the part of cutting down on the "things". I've spent the past several weeks going through my kitchen cabinets when I get a chance, and thinning things out. For those of you who attended our wedding showers you know that we were given a TON of stuff when we got married. I kept it all because I had no idea what we would and would not need. Well, we've been married for almost 6 years now and I have yet to use probably half of the stuff in my kitchen cabinets, so it's time for it to all go to someone who needs it and will use it. I'm not completely done yet, but I just have to share some of the things that I have discovered while doing this project.
First off, we are a family of 3 and don't have any plans of being more than a family of 4 at some point in the future (let's all pray that God doesn't decide to have a good laugh at me and give me multiples when I get pregnant the next time). So what does a family of 4 need with 42 coffee cups? 42! Can you believe it? They took up a shelf and a half in my cabinets, and that's with several stacked on top of each other. The sad part is I can only bring myself to cull 7 out of those 42. Of the remaining 35 mugs, they either go with my china pattern, so I can't get rid of them, or they say "Dad" or "Sweet Sixteen" (someone gave me a Precious Moments coffee cup on my 16th birthday and I still have it). I just can't get rid of anything that might have sentimental value. In fact I'm having a hard time with 4 out of the 7 that I am getting rid of because they're part of my very first set of dishes that my mom gave me when I was still in highschool (I was a weird teenager and insisted on getting "hopechest" items very early on for my birthdays and Christmases, I had a full kitchen of stuff when I went off to college). Oh, I probably should mention the fact that KEITH AND I DON'T EVEN DRINK COFFEE!!! Why in the world do we even need 5 coffee cups let alone 35? Of course both of our dads, plus my mom, drink coffee, though they're only at our house a few times a year. I do occasionally drink a cup of hot chocolate during the winter, but I think I might have had maybe one cup last year. Of course I do grab a mug and drink water out of it every once in a while just so they'll feel useful, but I have to rinse it out first because they get dusty. If anybody has any other uses for coffee cups beyond the standard "drinking", please feel free to pass those on.
A few other random things that I've discovered in the kitchen cabinets, I have 10 cutting boards (5 of them are those flexible plastic kind so they don't take up much space, but still...), 7 sets of measuring cups and spoons (Garrett plays with many of these so some are scattered around the house), a countless number of mixing bowls which I'm having a hard time reducing because some are glass and some are stainless steel, who knows if I might need both at some point in the future! (This is truly a sickness.) I have 3 dip trays and I don't think I've even used one yet. I haven't begun to count the number of serving spoons and spatulas but I definitely need to get rid of some of those. I'm sure there are more ridiculous numbers I could share, but at this point what are you thinking of me. I don't want for you to think I'm a hoarder like those people you see on Oprah who live with rooms in their houses stuff full of things they can't get rid of. I promise you it isn't like that! I am really looking forward to actually having room in my cabinets though. I have a few small appliances (ie a blender that's never been used but I might need someday, so there's no way I'm parting with it!) that I would like to put away rather than having them out on the counter getting dusty. So the plan for all the stuff I'm getting rid of is as follows: I will take pictures of all the items and email them to my mom and my youngest sister Christie (if any of my other siblings are reading this and are interested, let me know). My parents are building a new house and my mom is wanting to replace some of her stuff that she's had for 30+ years (I can guarantee that the majority of the stuff I'm getting rid of has been used less than 10 times, and some have never been used) so she is interested in possibly replacing some of her stuff with some of mine for free. Christie has shown no interest in taking any of my stuff but she doesn't have anything saved for when the day comes that she moves out or gets married (she isn't weird like I was and would much prefer a gift card or a good book as a gift rather than silverware.) But she might have some interest in taking some of my stuff and storing it for when that day comes. Whatever I don't give to my family will be donated to Goodwill. I abhor garage sales (I like going to them, but have not one ounce of desire to have one myself) so I'm not going to attempt to make a quarter and sell whatever my family doesn't want.
Next up, Garrett's room. Do you think he'll be mad if I simplify his number of toys? Yeah, I think so too.
Side note: if my area provided recycling bins similar to our trash bins, I would totally recycle without any hesitation, but honestly, I'm not going to go out of my way to sort through anything that might be recycleable and then try to find some place that will take them. And don't even think about asking me to give up my SUV, it ain't happenin'.
OK, I'm getting way off course. The other part of living simply is basically living within your means, avoiding debt wherever possible, cutting down on "things" and when you do get rid of your excess don't just toss them in a landfill, but donate them or resale them so that you are, in a way, also recycling. I am on board with this. First of all, I'm married to an accountant who is pretty budget conscious which means that we definitely live within our means and the only "extras" that we have as far as monthly bills that really aren't necessary are cell phones, internet, and a monthly subscription to Blockbuster online. We also don't buy things that we can't afford (not including our house or our SUV-however we do limit ourselves to only having one car payment at a time, meaning atleast one car is always paid for). Our credit cards are paid in full every month (if you don't buy what you can't afford, then you should have the money to pay that bill each month) and we've limited ourselves to one credit card each (that was a lot of phone calls that I had to make intially because I signed up for every card that gave me a discount when I was in college, not a smart thing to do). So I am now implementing the part of cutting down on the "things". I've spent the past several weeks going through my kitchen cabinets when I get a chance, and thinning things out. For those of you who attended our wedding showers you know that we were given a TON of stuff when we got married. I kept it all because I had no idea what we would and would not need. Well, we've been married for almost 6 years now and I have yet to use probably half of the stuff in my kitchen cabinets, so it's time for it to all go to someone who needs it and will use it. I'm not completely done yet, but I just have to share some of the things that I have discovered while doing this project.
First off, we are a family of 3 and don't have any plans of being more than a family of 4 at some point in the future (let's all pray that God doesn't decide to have a good laugh at me and give me multiples when I get pregnant the next time). So what does a family of 4 need with 42 coffee cups? 42! Can you believe it? They took up a shelf and a half in my cabinets, and that's with several stacked on top of each other. The sad part is I can only bring myself to cull 7 out of those 42. Of the remaining 35 mugs, they either go with my china pattern, so I can't get rid of them, or they say "Dad" or "Sweet Sixteen" (someone gave me a Precious Moments coffee cup on my 16th birthday and I still have it). I just can't get rid of anything that might have sentimental value. In fact I'm having a hard time with 4 out of the 7 that I am getting rid of because they're part of my very first set of dishes that my mom gave me when I was still in highschool (I was a weird teenager and insisted on getting "hopechest" items very early on for my birthdays and Christmases, I had a full kitchen of stuff when I went off to college). Oh, I probably should mention the fact that KEITH AND I DON'T EVEN DRINK COFFEE!!! Why in the world do we even need 5 coffee cups let alone 35? Of course both of our dads, plus my mom, drink coffee, though they're only at our house a few times a year. I do occasionally drink a cup of hot chocolate during the winter, but I think I might have had maybe one cup last year. Of course I do grab a mug and drink water out of it every once in a while just so they'll feel useful, but I have to rinse it out first because they get dusty. If anybody has any other uses for coffee cups beyond the standard "drinking", please feel free to pass those on.
A few other random things that I've discovered in the kitchen cabinets, I have 10 cutting boards (5 of them are those flexible plastic kind so they don't take up much space, but still...), 7 sets of measuring cups and spoons (Garrett plays with many of these so some are scattered around the house), a countless number of mixing bowls which I'm having a hard time reducing because some are glass and some are stainless steel, who knows if I might need both at some point in the future! (This is truly a sickness.) I have 3 dip trays and I don't think I've even used one yet. I haven't begun to count the number of serving spoons and spatulas but I definitely need to get rid of some of those. I'm sure there are more ridiculous numbers I could share, but at this point what are you thinking of me. I don't want for you to think I'm a hoarder like those people you see on Oprah who live with rooms in their houses stuff full of things they can't get rid of. I promise you it isn't like that! I am really looking forward to actually having room in my cabinets though. I have a few small appliances (ie a blender that's never been used but I might need someday, so there's no way I'm parting with it!) that I would like to put away rather than having them out on the counter getting dusty. So the plan for all the stuff I'm getting rid of is as follows: I will take pictures of all the items and email them to my mom and my youngest sister Christie (if any of my other siblings are reading this and are interested, let me know). My parents are building a new house and my mom is wanting to replace some of her stuff that she's had for 30+ years (I can guarantee that the majority of the stuff I'm getting rid of has been used less than 10 times, and some have never been used) so she is interested in possibly replacing some of her stuff with some of mine for free. Christie has shown no interest in taking any of my stuff but she doesn't have anything saved for when the day comes that she moves out or gets married (she isn't weird like I was and would much prefer a gift card or a good book as a gift rather than silverware.) But she might have some interest in taking some of my stuff and storing it for when that day comes. Whatever I don't give to my family will be donated to Goodwill. I abhor garage sales (I like going to them, but have not one ounce of desire to have one myself) so I'm not going to attempt to make a quarter and sell whatever my family doesn't want.
Next up, Garrett's room. Do you think he'll be mad if I simplify his number of toys? Yeah, I think so too.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Shower Woes
Wow, it’s been almost 2 weeks since I last blogged, that’s gotta be a record for me. You’d think that having a 2 and a half year old (a BOY, at that) would afford lots of blogging material, but lately things have been pretty calm, so I’m thankful.
The most exciting (well, more likely frustrating and expensive) thing that has happened lately is that we’ve discovered a leak in our shower. The master bath’s shower is tiled with ceramic tile and over the past 5 years that we’ve lived here, we’ve had a few issues with the grout cracking and finding water that has seeped it’s way under the shower and into our bathroom. As soon as it was discovered, we would seal up the crack and everything would be fine. Until this weekend.
Keith was on a cleaning spree (he does that sometimes, so do I, but never at the same time for some reason) and was scrubbing down our bathroom. I have to admit that I haven’t mopped in there in a while, and the last time that I did mop in there, I don’t think I moved the bathmats. Well, Keith moved the bathmats and discovered under the one by our shower, that a tile on the floor had cracked. After doing some investigating he realized that water from the shower had been seeping out again, but this time it was going under our floor tile instead of on top like last time. So, long story short, we have about 4 or 5 tiles in that area of our bathroom that are loose and "squishy" sounding, the baseboard that runs along the wall separating the shower from our bathroom cabinet looks a little questionable, parts of the sheetrock are "mushy" and the cabinet itself has a water line going up about 2 inches from the floor on one side.
I’m sure some of you are wondering how we managed to miss seeing all of this until this point, and trust me, we’re wondering the same thing! I will say that the cabinet has been stuffed full of my things (mostly an overwhelming supply of lotion and shower gel that I was given over my 4 years of teaching that haven’t ever been used), so all of this stuff was hiding the water marks on the wall. We now have the cabinet opened and empty, the bathmats have been washed and moved temporarily, and the shower hasn’t been used since Sunday. We’re still up in the air as to exactly how we’re going to fix this. We go from one extreme (paying several thousands of dollars to completely redo that bathroom, mostly because we’re tired of having this issue with that shower and if we’re going to redo the shower we have to, at the very least, redo the rest of the bathroom tile because currently the floor and the shower have the same tile) to the other (let everything dry out, seal up all the cracks and the grout in the shower and just keep a closer eye on things). I will say that the first extreme is a tough one right now. For heavens sake, we just spent a good bulk of our savings on a new TV and everything that goes with it! We should have known something like this would come up, that’s how it goes, right?
For now we’re in limbo as to what will happen with our shower, but I will say this, I miss using that bathroom! It’s hard going back to a standard sized shower after the majority of my showers over the past 5 years, have been taken in a nice, big shower with a glass door. I’ve gone from having plenty of room, to tripping over Garrett’s bathtoys as I try to be sure and keep the shower curtain where it belongs so water doesn’t go everywhere. And while Keith is showering in there, he’s contemplating all the ways to redo THAT bathroom too. I’m scared to think of what our bathroom future holds for us.
Let’s just hope we don’t have to set up a port-a-potty in the backyard.
The most exciting (well, more likely frustrating and expensive) thing that has happened lately is that we’ve discovered a leak in our shower. The master bath’s shower is tiled with ceramic tile and over the past 5 years that we’ve lived here, we’ve had a few issues with the grout cracking and finding water that has seeped it’s way under the shower and into our bathroom. As soon as it was discovered, we would seal up the crack and everything would be fine. Until this weekend.
Keith was on a cleaning spree (he does that sometimes, so do I, but never at the same time for some reason) and was scrubbing down our bathroom. I have to admit that I haven’t mopped in there in a while, and the last time that I did mop in there, I don’t think I moved the bathmats. Well, Keith moved the bathmats and discovered under the one by our shower, that a tile on the floor had cracked. After doing some investigating he realized that water from the shower had been seeping out again, but this time it was going under our floor tile instead of on top like last time. So, long story short, we have about 4 or 5 tiles in that area of our bathroom that are loose and "squishy" sounding, the baseboard that runs along the wall separating the shower from our bathroom cabinet looks a little questionable, parts of the sheetrock are "mushy" and the cabinet itself has a water line going up about 2 inches from the floor on one side.
I’m sure some of you are wondering how we managed to miss seeing all of this until this point, and trust me, we’re wondering the same thing! I will say that the cabinet has been stuffed full of my things (mostly an overwhelming supply of lotion and shower gel that I was given over my 4 years of teaching that haven’t ever been used), so all of this stuff was hiding the water marks on the wall. We now have the cabinet opened and empty, the bathmats have been washed and moved temporarily, and the shower hasn’t been used since Sunday. We’re still up in the air as to exactly how we’re going to fix this. We go from one extreme (paying several thousands of dollars to completely redo that bathroom, mostly because we’re tired of having this issue with that shower and if we’re going to redo the shower we have to, at the very least, redo the rest of the bathroom tile because currently the floor and the shower have the same tile) to the other (let everything dry out, seal up all the cracks and the grout in the shower and just keep a closer eye on things). I will say that the first extreme is a tough one right now. For heavens sake, we just spent a good bulk of our savings on a new TV and everything that goes with it! We should have known something like this would come up, that’s how it goes, right?
For now we’re in limbo as to what will happen with our shower, but I will say this, I miss using that bathroom! It’s hard going back to a standard sized shower after the majority of my showers over the past 5 years, have been taken in a nice, big shower with a glass door. I’ve gone from having plenty of room, to tripping over Garrett’s bathtoys as I try to be sure and keep the shower curtain where it belongs so water doesn’t go everywhere. And while Keith is showering in there, he’s contemplating all the ways to redo THAT bathroom too. I’m scared to think of what our bathroom future holds for us.
Let’s just hope we don’t have to set up a port-a-potty in the backyard.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
My First (and maybe last?) Blog
Beware, this is going to be really long, it's just a way for me to share what I'm feeling about today. I never really thought that I would write a blog, but a few thoughts have been running through my head today that I thought I would share with the few of you who might actually read this. 3 years ago today our house was hit by a tornado. I can't believe it's actually been 3 years, it seems like yesterday in some ways. I can vividly remember so many details about that day, even before coming home to find my house in shambles from the tornado.
I'm a teacher and I was at school that day like I would be any Thursday (yes, it happened on a Thursday and I can remember that without looking it up). I remember looking on a weather website and seeing a line of strong storms moving through the Fort Worth area early that afternoon. By the time school was letting out, those storms began to pound our area. The principal made an announcement that we were dismissing a little early and teachers who did not have afternoon duties were allowed to leave. Most of the teachers decided to stick it out there, but I just couldn't bring myself to voluntarily stay in the school when I could be heading home. Looking back, that was a dumb idea, but what did I know? I remember it was raining and blowing so hard I could barely get my truck door open and there was absolutely no using an umbrella because it would have been demolished in a matter of seconds. I got out on the road and could barely see in front of me. I ended up behind a long line of traffic virtually stopped, about a mile from my school. We inched along and I eventually came upon the reason for our slow travel, an old barn-type building had blown into the road and everyone was having to make their way around it. After driving another mile, I came upon the interstate and found a spot to park underneath it along with a school bus and a few other vehicles until the storm finally passed. It actually didn't take that long, maybe 15 minutes of sitting, and we were able to move. From there until I came to my neighborhood, I saw relatively minor damage from the storm, a few limbs blown down, maybe the occasional sign, nothing to be concerned about.
I remember driving down the road leading to our housing addition and catching a glimpse of our neighbor's house. Our neighbors have a house that appears to be a 2 story, but in reality is only a one story, and the 2nd "story" on their house was completely gone, roof and everything. I was in total shock, for a moment I couldn't even see our house and just knew that it was completely gone. Finally there was a break in the trees and I was able to see our house for a moment and saw it still standing and looking to be in one piece. I pulled onto our road and had a good view of the side of our house closest to the neighbor's destroyed house. Our bedroom windows appeared to be broken and there was debris all over and around our house. I pulled into the driveway and of course we had no electricity so I couldn't park in the garage, I came in through the front door instead. At the time, Keith and I had only lived here for a year so we were very picky about taking our shoes off before walking on the carpet. I took mine off out of habit and made my way to our bedroom, before I even walked into the door, I could already see glass all over the carpet in the hallway. (Remember, I'm only wearing socks on my feet!) I walked into our bedroom and it was completely destroyed. Both of our windows were broken, glass was everywhere, embedded in the sheetrock, all over the carpet, our bed, etc. Our blinds were completely ruined, the glass on our TV screen was actually chipped from something hitting it. We also had shingles and 2x4's from our neighbor's house, all over our bedroom. Upon seeing our bedroom in such chaos, I called Keith immediately. Of course he didn't answer his cell phone, so I left him a message. At the time I didn't know it, but later that evening when we actually listened to this voice mail, I sounded out of control and very frantic. I called him a second time and he answered and I remember telling him to come home immediately, our house had been hit by a tornado. I told him the state of our neighbor's house and what I had seen so far of our's and he said he was on his way. I then made my way around the rest of the house to check for any more damage. The master bathroom actually had a 2x4 that came through the roof and then through the wall of the bathroom, leaving a hole atleast 18 inches big. Our guest bathroom had about 2 inches of water standing in the floor. Other than glass being everywhere, there wasn't any other damage to the inside of the house. I went to put my shoes on to go outside and check things out and realized the bottoms of my socks were covered in glass and of course soaking wet. Thankfully I wasn't cut. Our neighbors from across the street were standing in my yard when I went outside and they asked if everything was ok and had I been home when it hit. She had been home, but thankfully had made it to a closet with her son before the storm hit. Plus, their house only suffered very minor damage, thank goodness. Her husband went to the neighbor's house to see if anyone there was home because obviously their house was in very bad shape and if someone had been in there, they could have been seriously hurt. Thankfully, they were both still at work. We then examined my house and discovered several spots on the roof where 2x4's and other boards had "stabbed" through the roof leaving holes. There was a 10 foot long board "stabbed" into the ground about 20 feet from our house. Who knows what kind of damage that would have done had it actually hit the house.
The emergency crews began arriving at this point. They broke down the neighbor's door to check and see if anyone was home and needed assistance (no one was), they checked with me to see how we were, and then made their rounds to the other houses with damage. By this time, Keith had made it home, but it took him awhile to actually get to our house because of all the traffic beginning to accumulate from gawkers along with emergency workers. He took the tour of the damage to the house and then climbed on to the roof with a friend of our's who had come to help. They assessed the damage, were given some makeshift materials, and started covering up the holes in the roof to keep out any future rain. Our home builder came by after I called to see what he could do to help us get our house back in order. Not that it was his responsibility at all, but he is such a nice man, that I knew he would help where he could. He brought plywood and with that and some tarps from our neighbor we were able to board up our bedroom windows. He also gave us a list of the people who originally built our house for us to call and get them to come out and fix things. He even pulled some strings and had the window guy out to our house the very next day to replace our broken windows. That was totally awesome and so helpful. He's a wonderful guy.
At this point, you would not believe the traffic winding through our small neighborhood. The police eventually had to block off the roads because people were clogging up our streets terribly. Our neighbors whose house was demolished had made it home by now and you could see the devastation on their faces. They had moved into their house more recently than we had and now it was unliveable. A news crew showed up and interviewed them and later that night a moving/restoration company had also showed up and were salvaging what they could and taking it for storage. By this time, we had the holes in our roof temporarily covered and tarps covering our windows, so we were doing ok. Our neighbors from across the street went out and picked us all up some pizza and we sat around our kitchen eating in the candlelight. Once everyone was home for the evening, Keith and I spent several hours calling our family to let them know what happened. Our mattress was soaked and cut with glass from our windows, so we had to sleep on the full sized guest bed. 2 people sleeping on a full sized bed isn't all that comfortable to begin with, but when one of those people is 6'5", it is pretty much impossible. We ended up putting the mattress on the floor in the living room and slept half on the bed, half on the floor. At about 5 am, the electricity came back on, we weren't sleeping much anyway, so we got up and turned on the news. We saw the funniest thing that morning, we still talk about this to this day. A Fox 4 News reporter was in our neighborhood talking about the tornado and the damage it had done. He was standing next to a pile of bricks that was once a mailbox and talking about how this tornado had even taken down this brick mailbox. Keith and I died laughing, that mailbox had been a pile of bricks since before we had moved out there, so it definitely wasn't caused by the tornado. Too funny! Once it was daylight, we drove around our neighborhood surveying the damage. One house had their chimney completely broken off and it was laying in their yard, another's front porch columns had been blown down, several small storage buildings were completely destroyed, multiple houses had been stripped of their shingles, one house had 2 RVs and they had both blown over and into each other, and there was countless debris everywhere. We learned that day that a man had falled off the roof of a neighbor's house and broken his back the night before. He had to be airlifted to a Dallas hospital. One neighbor just trying to help an elderly neighbor out by patching his roof. Another neighbor told us about their back porch grill being blown into their son's bedroom window and totally destroyed his room due to all the glass and water damage. Thankfully no one was in there at the time.
It took the entire day on Friday to just pick up the debris in our yard. We still to this day find the occasional shingle or scrap of wood in the yard. The insurance adjuster along with the window man also came that day. I know a lot of people have a lot of problems with their insurance companies and we definitely have some gripes about the process it took to eventually get the check to cover all of the damage, and we were thankful we had enough in savings to cover alot of this upfront before finally getting the check. Our insurance adjustor was very nice and helpful. He was very thorough and more than fair with everything. We ended up having a claim for close to $20,000 in damages. We had to get an entire new roof, a new central heating and air conditioner unit, a new bed, new carpet in our bedroom, new blinds for the new windows, new sheetrock in the bedroom and bathroom, of course everything had to be repainted. We were not completely moved back in to our bedroom until June, 3 months later! I am so thankful that we did not have a baby during that time. It was very challenging and frustrating. I am so thankful that God helped us through it and keeps us from constantly worrying that something like this will happen again. And if it does, I know that He will still be there for us. Thanks for letting me get this "out there".
I'm a teacher and I was at school that day like I would be any Thursday (yes, it happened on a Thursday and I can remember that without looking it up). I remember looking on a weather website and seeing a line of strong storms moving through the Fort Worth area early that afternoon. By the time school was letting out, those storms began to pound our area. The principal made an announcement that we were dismissing a little early and teachers who did not have afternoon duties were allowed to leave. Most of the teachers decided to stick it out there, but I just couldn't bring myself to voluntarily stay in the school when I could be heading home. Looking back, that was a dumb idea, but what did I know? I remember it was raining and blowing so hard I could barely get my truck door open and there was absolutely no using an umbrella because it would have been demolished in a matter of seconds. I got out on the road and could barely see in front of me. I ended up behind a long line of traffic virtually stopped, about a mile from my school. We inched along and I eventually came upon the reason for our slow travel, an old barn-type building had blown into the road and everyone was having to make their way around it. After driving another mile, I came upon the interstate and found a spot to park underneath it along with a school bus and a few other vehicles until the storm finally passed. It actually didn't take that long, maybe 15 minutes of sitting, and we were able to move. From there until I came to my neighborhood, I saw relatively minor damage from the storm, a few limbs blown down, maybe the occasional sign, nothing to be concerned about.
I remember driving down the road leading to our housing addition and catching a glimpse of our neighbor's house. Our neighbors have a house that appears to be a 2 story, but in reality is only a one story, and the 2nd "story" on their house was completely gone, roof and everything. I was in total shock, for a moment I couldn't even see our house and just knew that it was completely gone. Finally there was a break in the trees and I was able to see our house for a moment and saw it still standing and looking to be in one piece. I pulled onto our road and had a good view of the side of our house closest to the neighbor's destroyed house. Our bedroom windows appeared to be broken and there was debris all over and around our house. I pulled into the driveway and of course we had no electricity so I couldn't park in the garage, I came in through the front door instead. At the time, Keith and I had only lived here for a year so we were very picky about taking our shoes off before walking on the carpet. I took mine off out of habit and made my way to our bedroom, before I even walked into the door, I could already see glass all over the carpet in the hallway. (Remember, I'm only wearing socks on my feet!) I walked into our bedroom and it was completely destroyed. Both of our windows were broken, glass was everywhere, embedded in the sheetrock, all over the carpet, our bed, etc. Our blinds were completely ruined, the glass on our TV screen was actually chipped from something hitting it. We also had shingles and 2x4's from our neighbor's house, all over our bedroom. Upon seeing our bedroom in such chaos, I called Keith immediately. Of course he didn't answer his cell phone, so I left him a message. At the time I didn't know it, but later that evening when we actually listened to this voice mail, I sounded out of control and very frantic. I called him a second time and he answered and I remember telling him to come home immediately, our house had been hit by a tornado. I told him the state of our neighbor's house and what I had seen so far of our's and he said he was on his way. I then made my way around the rest of the house to check for any more damage. The master bathroom actually had a 2x4 that came through the roof and then through the wall of the bathroom, leaving a hole atleast 18 inches big. Our guest bathroom had about 2 inches of water standing in the floor. Other than glass being everywhere, there wasn't any other damage to the inside of the house. I went to put my shoes on to go outside and check things out and realized the bottoms of my socks were covered in glass and of course soaking wet. Thankfully I wasn't cut. Our neighbors from across the street were standing in my yard when I went outside and they asked if everything was ok and had I been home when it hit. She had been home, but thankfully had made it to a closet with her son before the storm hit. Plus, their house only suffered very minor damage, thank goodness. Her husband went to the neighbor's house to see if anyone there was home because obviously their house was in very bad shape and if someone had been in there, they could have been seriously hurt. Thankfully, they were both still at work. We then examined my house and discovered several spots on the roof where 2x4's and other boards had "stabbed" through the roof leaving holes. There was a 10 foot long board "stabbed" into the ground about 20 feet from our house. Who knows what kind of damage that would have done had it actually hit the house.
The emergency crews began arriving at this point. They broke down the neighbor's door to check and see if anyone was home and needed assistance (no one was), they checked with me to see how we were, and then made their rounds to the other houses with damage. By this time, Keith had made it home, but it took him awhile to actually get to our house because of all the traffic beginning to accumulate from gawkers along with emergency workers. He took the tour of the damage to the house and then climbed on to the roof with a friend of our's who had come to help. They assessed the damage, were given some makeshift materials, and started covering up the holes in the roof to keep out any future rain. Our home builder came by after I called to see what he could do to help us get our house back in order. Not that it was his responsibility at all, but he is such a nice man, that I knew he would help where he could. He brought plywood and with that and some tarps from our neighbor we were able to board up our bedroom windows. He also gave us a list of the people who originally built our house for us to call and get them to come out and fix things. He even pulled some strings and had the window guy out to our house the very next day to replace our broken windows. That was totally awesome and so helpful. He's a wonderful guy.
At this point, you would not believe the traffic winding through our small neighborhood. The police eventually had to block off the roads because people were clogging up our streets terribly. Our neighbors whose house was demolished had made it home by now and you could see the devastation on their faces. They had moved into their house more recently than we had and now it was unliveable. A news crew showed up and interviewed them and later that night a moving/restoration company had also showed up and were salvaging what they could and taking it for storage. By this time, we had the holes in our roof temporarily covered and tarps covering our windows, so we were doing ok. Our neighbors from across the street went out and picked us all up some pizza and we sat around our kitchen eating in the candlelight. Once everyone was home for the evening, Keith and I spent several hours calling our family to let them know what happened. Our mattress was soaked and cut with glass from our windows, so we had to sleep on the full sized guest bed. 2 people sleeping on a full sized bed isn't all that comfortable to begin with, but when one of those people is 6'5", it is pretty much impossible. We ended up putting the mattress on the floor in the living room and slept half on the bed, half on the floor. At about 5 am, the electricity came back on, we weren't sleeping much anyway, so we got up and turned on the news. We saw the funniest thing that morning, we still talk about this to this day. A Fox 4 News reporter was in our neighborhood talking about the tornado and the damage it had done. He was standing next to a pile of bricks that was once a mailbox and talking about how this tornado had even taken down this brick mailbox. Keith and I died laughing, that mailbox had been a pile of bricks since before we had moved out there, so it definitely wasn't caused by the tornado. Too funny! Once it was daylight, we drove around our neighborhood surveying the damage. One house had their chimney completely broken off and it was laying in their yard, another's front porch columns had been blown down, several small storage buildings were completely destroyed, multiple houses had been stripped of their shingles, one house had 2 RVs and they had both blown over and into each other, and there was countless debris everywhere. We learned that day that a man had falled off the roof of a neighbor's house and broken his back the night before. He had to be airlifted to a Dallas hospital. One neighbor just trying to help an elderly neighbor out by patching his roof. Another neighbor told us about their back porch grill being blown into their son's bedroom window and totally destroyed his room due to all the glass and water damage. Thankfully no one was in there at the time.
It took the entire day on Friday to just pick up the debris in our yard. We still to this day find the occasional shingle or scrap of wood in the yard. The insurance adjuster along with the window man also came that day. I know a lot of people have a lot of problems with their insurance companies and we definitely have some gripes about the process it took to eventually get the check to cover all of the damage, and we were thankful we had enough in savings to cover alot of this upfront before finally getting the check. Our insurance adjustor was very nice and helpful. He was very thorough and more than fair with everything. We ended up having a claim for close to $20,000 in damages. We had to get an entire new roof, a new central heating and air conditioner unit, a new bed, new carpet in our bedroom, new blinds for the new windows, new sheetrock in the bedroom and bathroom, of course everything had to be repainted. We were not completely moved back in to our bedroom until June, 3 months later! I am so thankful that we did not have a baby during that time. It was very challenging and frustrating. I am so thankful that God helped us through it and keeps us from constantly worrying that something like this will happen again. And if it does, I know that He will still be there for us. Thanks for letting me get this "out there".
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