***WARNING*** This is a long, pictureless post, but you will want to read the whole thing!
Well, I finally have some time to blog so I can update Y’ALL on the happenings on our crazy lives! It was so good to finally be with Ian again. He luckily got on an earlier flight on Friday so that was exciting. The “gang” came over to say goodbye to Ian (and our family) one last time. I am going to miss them so much. We really have shared a lot with each other and have had some fantastic times.
Saturday morning we said our sad goodbyes to my parents and were on the road by 5:00am. Let me just say this…Ian is my hero. We had planned to break up the 24-26 hour trip into two days. Luckily enough the truck did not have a governor on it so we could actually go 5 over the speed limit. Ian drove 99.5% of the time and got us here in 22 hours…driving straight through. We got to his sisters house at 3 Sunday morning. He totally kicked butt! Liam did better that I thought he would so that was a blessing. Sunday we just hung out relaxing before our big move.
Monday morning we met Ian’s dad at our new place to help move us in. He was such a big help so I didn’t have to do all the heavy lifting with Ian. Another blessing. It was my first time seeing our new place and Ian did such an awesome job. I love the layout, the kitchen appliances and it was super clean. Even though I was very tired, I was so excited to get unpacking and put everything in it’s place. We had some errands to get done that day as well and we had to come back to his sister’s house to get all of Ian’s belongings that he had accumulated over the 5 weeks. *SIDE NOTE* As our house warming gift to us, his sister had boughten us a ton of pantry items and some frozen things to get us started! Yet, another blessing! Monday night we did get most of the kitchen unpacked and a few things we needed the next day.
Tuesday rolls around and Ian has to go to work and so I get to work on more unpacking.
Yesterday more unpacking…
Our lack of sleep was catching up to us so we went to bed last night at 9:00 (which was early considering I haven’t gotten to bed before 1:00am for 6 weeks!)
It rained yesterday so I wasn’t surprised that it continued into the night. Whenever it rains during the night I can here it all night long in the background but can still sleep pretty well. Around 3:30am I heard a moment of nothingness…no rain, no thunder, no wind. To all of you who don’t know…that is a bad sign when just seconds before it is pouring cats and dogs. The room light up with a flash of lightning outside and that is what actually woke me up. It went pitch black because the power went out in the neighborhood and then our room light up again with more lightning. All of this in the dead of silence. I did hear a weird whooshing sound so I sat up and flipped over to Ian. All I could get out was, “IAN, TORNANDO!” The next word hadn’t even finished coming out of my mouth when I yelled, “LIAM” before Ian was down the hallway grabbing him. We met in our bathroom and just sat there trying to catch a breath. It started to howl and wail outside and the rain came pouring down again. Ian grabbed our blankets off our bed and we camped out in our walk-in closet. The wind had died down, but I just laid there in complete shock. Literally. I couldn’t even feel my own heartbeat. I kept my composure because I didn’t want to freak Liam out and Ian was very calm…I think for me more than Liam. We weren’t laying there but 5 minutes before we heard, “Drip, drip, drip.” Ian got up and found some candles and located a leak in Liam’s room. Once we got a bowl for it, we found three more drips in his room and 5 in our room. We thought we had our basis cover (and we were out of unpacked bowls) so we tried to lay back down. The drips in our room turned into a constant small stream so we got back up and moved our bed out into the living room. I thought we were pretty quick, but my side of the bed was already pretty soaked. Ian found a storage tote that he put under the small stream. Not knowing if we were safe from the tornado, we returned to our closet. This whole time Liam was smiling and playing quietly. Blessing #75! Ten minutes later (still trying to find my pulse the whole time) I decide it’s pretty safe so i go to check out Liam’s drips. Coming back to our makeshift bed, I hold the candle up to our ceiling and it looked like it had a pulse! It was bulging! I tell Ian that we need to do go to the living room and try to sleep because our roof was going to collapse at any moment. As soon as we move some more things out of the room and make camp by the couch…all we hear is “PLOP!” Instant skylight. We could see where all the drips where coming from. We had no roof and could see straight out to the sky. Needless to say we both pretty much were in and out of it until 7:00 when Liam decided to get up for the day.
It was light enough outside that we could see the damage of the tornado. Branches and trash everywhere. Our car didn’t have a thing on it so blessing #88! A car down the way had a whole tree on top of it. Our back roof was now in our front yard. I am so grateful that we are all okay.
We contacted our main office and they said they didn’t know when they would be able to come out and check it out. They offered for us to move into a small apartment because our place was unlivable for however long. We thought that was our only plan so I had to repack all of our stuff that I had just spent the last three days unpacking. They sent movers over right away so I know time to do even half of a great job. We had thrown away most of the boxes so I just started shoving things in bags and whatever I could fine. We even had neighbors come over and offer to help us as well. Half way through this complete caos, the insurance and management people came by to asses the whole thing and said the it would probably take 1-2 weeks to to get the rooms completely fixed. So now half of our things are between two apartments and we still have to clear out our room and Liam’s room so they could do the repairing. I held back the tears once more and just got to work. Ian was busy trying to keep me sane and was so comforting. Ben (our BIL) brought us over some lunch and lifted our spirits. Right after he left is when Liam’s roof caved in. I have taken pictures of both disasters, but will have to upload them later…as I don’t have a clue where the card reader is for our camera. We just spent the day trying to keep Liam out of everything and clearing out our rooms.
Let me just say…this has been one of the longest days of my entire life. And I apologize for my horrible writing…I have been up since 3am.
Now, you might be asking yourself one of two questions.
Why in the world is she blogging about this when she could be doing so many other things? or Why in the world did she move/or is still in Texas?
The first, I am on the verge of a tear-flowing breakdown and needed some cathartic therapy by writing this down.
The second, I actually asked myself that question as I was lying next to my shoes. I got the quiet, comforting answer from above that I am where I am supposed to be. And that I am not alone or forgotten. I really think this is one of the hardest things that I have had to endure. But I am so entirely grateful that so many people have helped us along the way. All day today, as people kept coming by to check to see if we were okay, I kept thinking about all of the people who have helped us recently. Whether my fantastic family or my wonderful friends…know that you were on my mind today. I am so grateful for all of you so keep up the good work of being great!
