Flood Update: Part 8

~Tuesday (February 8)~

Today marks one month since our house flood. I don’t think I ever could have imagined the chaos that would have ensued as a result of a “tiny” leak.



This, my friends, is the root of all our problems. Can you even see the hole in it? You could not even stick the point of a pencil into the hole. That’s how small it is. There will be a post in the future about the spiritual parallels of such a small hole causing such huge problems!



At 8:30 a.m., Mom and all of the kids leave to take the dog and cats to the kennel. Both of the cats are throwing a fit in their cages while the dog is jumping with excitement. That’s the difference between dogs and cats!

At 9:45 a.m., Mr. J and Mr. C arrive to begin work. They start by moving the kitchen furniture into the living room. It is very crowded in there! I have no idea how they are going to fit all of the dining room, hallway, and bathroom furniture/fixtures in there as well. But I’ll leave that up to them!



Our living filling up with furniture.



“Look Mom! Someone put our kitchen in the living room.”



They work on putting in the remaining wood flooring. They seemed a little surprised that we were leaving today, but I don’t see how it would work if we stayed. We have no refrigerator or stove, and no use of our furniture. It would not be very fun!



Mr. J and Mr. C hard at work in our kitchen



Our new kitchen flooring, before staining.



We work on packing everything up and moving things up to Mom’s room so that the furniture can be moved without fear of anything being broken. In the meanwhile, I actually manage to finish my Biology lesson.

At 12:00 p.m., Daddy arrives home to help us pack up and go to the hotel. Ben and I work on loading up the car. By 1:00 p.m., we leave home and head for our hotel. We arrive and Dad checks in. The rest of us unload the cars because he has to take a conference call.



The kitchen in our hotel room.



I’m already missing home. L You never realize how much you love your house, your bed, and your stuff until you can’t have it anymore. At least we will be back in just a couple of days. At 5:00 p.m., Mom, Rubia, Roma, Josiah, and I leave for worship dance. It’s so nice to only have to drive 2 minutes to dance class for a change! While we’re at dance, the boys eat and leave for Boy Scouts.

At 6:00 p.m., we arrive back at the hotel and decide to check out the dinner they offer in the lobby. Tonight they are having Sloppy Joe, Baked Beans, and Chips with Salsa. We grab a few chips and Mom and I get on the computers to check blogs for awhile. About a half-an-hour later, we go back to the room to enjoy our homemade dinner of Yummy Casserole and Green Beans. It is a blessing that we can still cook despite having to live in a hotel!

We turn the TV on and the Duggars (“19 Kids and Counting”) are on! We enjoyed watching some of the newer shows since all we have are DVD’s of older seasons.

After that we showered and cozied up for bed. I have a cot to sleep on. We’ll see how that goes. I have a metal bar across my rib cage which makes it rather uncomfortable.

~Wednesday (February 9)~

Well, I didn’t sleep well last night. I woke up every couple of hours, partly because my back was stiff from the cot and because the ice maker kept making noises. I enjoyed about half an hour of luxurious sleep in my Mom and Dad’s queen-sized bed after they were awake. Around 8:30 a.m., we get dressed and go downstairs to breakfast. They have a very nice spread, so I’m sure we won’t get tired of the “same old” stuff every morning. We eat and check blogs and then go back to the room to start school work.

Around 1:00 p.m., we eat a quick lunch and then leave for errands. Roma and I go to piano lessons. It’s nice to have a very quiet setting to study and read in for an hour. Mom picks us up at 3:00 p.m., and we stop by the Post Office and then run by our church to change the sign. We then return to our hotel only to find ourselves locked out of our room! Our key seems to be rather touchy, so we can’t stick it near ANY electronics or it doesn’t work! After finally getting into our room, we settle in to finish school work.

Around 5:30 p.m., Daddy arrives “home” after stopping by the house to talk with Mr. A. He brings good and bad news. First of all, the workers broke about 30 feet of baseboards because the builder nailed the corners together instead of just nailing them straight into the wall. All of those will need to be replaced. They are still on schedule with the work though, which is good. But we will probably want to stay in the hotel until Saturday morning now, instead of Friday. We are also considering hiring them to paint the dining room for us. We’ll steam off the wall paper, but with Dad being gone so much for work, we just don’t have time to paint it ourselves.

Dad goes downstairs for dinner because he has to go to a Deacon meeting at church. The rest of us have dinner in the room and then go swimming in the hotel pool. It’s not very deep at only 3’6” in the deepest part, but it’s still enough room to get good exercise! They also have a hot tub to warm up in.



Eating dinner “picnic style” at the hotel.



We go back to the hotel to start showers. Afterward, I read blogs on Dad’s laptop for awhile. Then we pray and prepare for bed. This time, I am putting the mattress from the cot on the floor instead of the springs. We’ll see if I sleep better tonight.

. . . To be continued. . .