The Slow Death of our House: Life keeps going on

Before this post, I just want to acknowledge some tender mercies I forgot to write about earlier.  On the night of the storm, water came into our house from the holes in the roof and broken windows, and was streaming from every vent and fire alarm onto our floors.  Beyond wet carpet and the chunk of ceiling that fell, and some swollen door frames in my bedroom, there was no further damage from that water.  Everywhere there was water dripping, it was in the middle of the floor, with nothing under or too near it to be damaged.  No documents, clothes, toys, beds, or even flooring was damaged from that initial water.  *Amendment--I forgot that Ben's desk was drenched, and it did have lots of papers for Scouts and for his work that got wet, but he was able to save everything important.*  (I will be telling you about damage from OTHER water and wet insulation later!)  Also, though three of my bedroom windows were broken, the blinds were closed and my desk hutch was right up next to them, so they (the blinds and hutch) took the brunt of the broken glass and nothing on my desk, or the large bookcase close by, was damaged.  Also--we never lost our power or water.  Big blessings.

Life keeps marching on, and even during crazy weeks, sometimes your fifth child will lose a top front tooth and look so cute she needs a picture:

On Saturday, Gracie's team played and won their championship game, which I wrote about previously.  Yay!  Also, the restoration people came to check the moisture levels in our home, and decided they were fine, so they turned off all the fans and stacked them in the garage to be picked up later.  Double yay!!  (However, I was still worried about the wet spots in the kitchen.  In declaring our moisture levels to be fine, it meant that our insulation was not going to be removed.)

That afternoon, I took advantage of my lovely friend Misty's invitation to spend some time at her house.  I hesitated to go, because storms were predicted again, and I didn't want to leave the house in its precarious state, but my girls were pretty worried about being in our house during another storm.  I decided to take them and Benson, and leave Ben and Scott at home to take care of anything that came up.

Misty was a gracious hostess!  As soon as we arrived that afternoon, she showed me a room and told me to take a nap.  I slept for three hours!!  When I got up, the kids had eaten and showered and were ready for bed, so we took care of that, and I read for a bit and went back to bed.  We went to church with their family the next morning.  The opening song was "Did You Think to Pray?"  I was grateful for the reminder, because though I had been praying during our "sore trials," I was still in survival mode, and not fully relying on the power that comes from Heavenly Father.  I decided I could be much more sincere and focused in my prayers.

(Thank you again, Misty!)

The rain had started that night, and it stopped for a bit, but came down again hard through the morning.  After we ate lunch with Misty and Luke and their kids, we loaded up and drove home, where we were greeted by an army of people from our ward!

It turns out that Ben and Scott had spent a portion of the night controlling leaking in the attic, but went to church the next morning.  When the heavy rain began about the end of Sacrament Meeting, Ben decided he needed to go home.  He found out that soon after, the Bishop cancelled the rest of the church meetings for people to go care for their homes, and to have others help where they could.  Several people had come over and they boxed up our whole playroom, took down all our pictures, emptied bookshelves, and took everything out to the garage, and helped Ben and Scott in the attic with emptying bowls and managing new leaks.  I walked in and some friends said, "OK--what should we do now?"  I had no idea what to tell them, but I was grateful they were there. 

The restoration people came to pick up their fans.  It was starting to rain again.  We said we still needed the fans, because of all the water that had come in during the night and that day.  They said the fans were for another house now, but they'd call our insurance to see what they said.  They reported that our insurance told them to take the fans, since they (the restoration people) had already reported that our house was dry, and if we wanted them again, we would have to open a new claim for new damage.  We weren't prepared to figure that out at that moment, so we let them take the fans.  That was a super bad call on the part of our insurance, because it was (I believe) the reason our problems went from bad to worse, costing them a whole lot more to fix what was currently not very broken.  To be fair, though, I don't think our insurance guy was aware of the true scope of the damage to our home.  (Who would be, after hearing that it was a hailstorm?  Who has ever heard of a hailstorm doing this to a city?)  Our adjustor wasn't coming until the following Friday, so all this guy had was what we told him over the phone.  He said our house was tarped, so everything should be fine.  He had a whole lot more faith in those tarps than he should have.  The large one ripped away from the house during the storm on Sunday night, and it was so loud blowing against the house and so wet and we couldn't do anything except put more buckets and towels (including those given to us by several friends) and pray for the rain to stop, which it did by morning.

Anyway.

After school on Monday, Tessa took advantage of the all our mud to make cakes, complete with candles.

We are silver lining people.

The Slow Death of our House: We were wet, but not alone...and a lovely diverson!

So, once we got our windows boarded and the roof tarped on Tuesday, the rain came.  Scott and Ben and I spent lots of time that night in the attics (3 of the 4--the one in the garage seemed to be OK) putting every bucket, bowl, pot, and bin we had under leaks streaming water into the house.  Unfortunately, tarps just weren't up to the job of keeping all the water out.

The restoration people came on Thursday, and they pulled off lots of baseboards (in my bedroom, bedroom closet, family room, kitchen, and the playroom) and drilled holes where they were and cut two holes into our playroom ceiling (attic access is limited there), with the idea that it would let air into the walls to dry them out.  They also left lots of fans (over 20) and two more dehumidifiers running, and said they'd be back the next day to check the moisture levels in the house.  It was now so very loud in our house!

And do you know who else came on Thursday?  Some beautiful women from another ward in my city in an area that was not hit very hard.  They had been asking how they could help, and my Relief Society President pointed them my way, and they just showed up on my doorstep, ready to work.  I really didn't have work for them to do, as I was waiting for the restoration people to come, and we had done most of the other work we could do ourselves, but they didn't let me off the hook.  They asked when they could babysit Benson for our insurance adjustor meeting and how long they could bring meals to us.  (They ended up bringing dinner every other day for 10 days!  And not just to me--to several others in my ward!  It turned out to be pretty awesome and needed, because all my pots and bowls were in the attic.)  And then another sister from another ward came by with a dozen bagels and said she heard we might need them.  She really has no idea what that meant to me.  Then the missionaries came by, and they helped Scott and Ben empty the pots in the attics that were full of water.

There was a bit of comfort in knowing that we were not the only ones with significant damage from this hailstorm.  (Misery loves company??)  I tried to take a few pictures from our upper windows to show our neighborhood of tarps and boarded windows and broken cars:

Ooh--you can see the holes punched in the roof of our trailer in this one:

The fans blew and blew and blew.  The spots I was worried about most were in the kitchen.  The ceiling was getting wetter, even though it didn't rain after that Tuesday night.  It seems the insulation inside the attics was wet and getting the ceilings wet.  Since we had previous experience of bad results from this, I took pictures--just in case.

Then Friday came!  A couple months previous, I had purchased some tickets for the Dallas Millennial Choir and Orchestra performance for me and the older four.  (Ben, Tessa, and Benson didn't mind being left out, because they went to our ward's Fathers and Sons campout--for which Ben cooked the breakfast.  No pictures, though.)  We were all so happy to have an evening away from the noise of the fans and the broken house.

We were up on the side balcony, but without assigned seats.  The kids decided to sit right on the end, with a perfect view of the percussion section (and of pretty much everything else, too.)

 Caytie thought the organ pipes deserved a picture, too.

The concert was amazing.  It was fun that we recognized so many people in the choir and orchestra, too!  Scott wasn't sure if he wanted to be at the concert or camping with Ben, but after about 20 minutes he asked me how he could be in the orchestra.  The special guest was Jenny Oaks Baker, and she was phenomenal.  The whole event was so good for my soul.  The kids seemed to really enjoy it, too.

After the concert, we stayed a bit for Emma to get her program signed...

...and then went back to the noisy house to drop off the girls and run Scott over to the campout and then back home to bed (on the couch).

The Slow Death of our House: Damage and Tarps

We have some pretty amazing people around us, as well as supportive family and friends who are further away.  We found this out over and over and over and over again.

On Tuesday morning, after waking up (again), I posted on my ward Facebook group that I needed somewhere for my kids to go so we could clean.  A sister responded right away and came to pick mine up, as well as dropping off her two oldest to help me.  We spent the morning cleaning glass from the back yard patio and grass.  It was everywhere.  We also gathered debris from the broken fence and outside toys into piles.  Scott and Ben were inside doing...other things I don't remember. 

We got a lot of the glass up, and my girls and Benson were well taken care of until the afternoon, when we swapped kids back. I finally had a minute (and the mental capacity) to hug and cuddle and be with them for a while.

We were told that we couldn't get any more interior help for our house until the roof was tarped and the windows were boarded up, so we called the roofers that had contacted us the night before, and they promised to have someone out that morning.  They underestimated their workload from this storm.  We later found out that 80 percent of homes in our city had been affected by this hailstorm, and our area was quickly deemed one of the hardest hit (meaning the hail stones were the largest here, making those horrible holes in the roofs).  The project manager came about 10 am, and we signed a contract with his company, and he promised the work would begin soon.  The workers didn't make it until about 4 pm to board up the windows, and then the roofers came about 6 for the tarps.  We were glad they came, because there was a rainstorm predicted for that night, and they finished just in time.

We had several ward members stop by throughout the day to check on us.  A friend brought us dinner.  Our parents called to check in and offer help, even to come to Texas to help us out.  We really didn't know what to tell everyone, because we were kind of in shock and didn't know what steps we needed to take.  We really appreciated people like our friend Luke, who came again that afternoon and jumped into cleaning the mess of insulation and glass in our bedroom, with Scott as his sidekick, because we didn't have to tell him what to do--he just saw jobs that needed to be done and did them.

Here are some more pictures I took during that day:

This is a double paned window, and the inside one didn't break, so it filled with rainwater during the storm.  The water held for several days!

Divots on the lawn from the melted hail.  Wish I had something in the picture to compare the size.  Just trust that a softball could fit into the holes.

The hail put a hole in the cement board on our chimney

My garden!  Most plants survived, except for the basil I had planted the morning of the storm.  (The broken fence slats are from the storm, too.)

Broken seat and ladder and slide.

The roof of the fort was damaged, too.

Holes in the decking of the roof, seen from the attic access in my bedroom closet.

This easel was in the kitchen.  The hail punched a hole in the red chalk tray.  (It kind of looks like a piece of chalk, but the hole is the floor-colored spot a little larger than a quarter next to the small chalk board.)  The drips on the chalkboard are from the rain that came in the house.

The hail hit the wall (after passing through the window) hard enough to make a divot.

This bin of toys was right under one of the windows that broke.  (Remember that old Saturday Night Live Christmas sketch, when the man is trying to sell the Bag O' Glass as a kids toy?  That's what I keep thinking about with this bin o' glass.)

Scott got this toy for his first birthday.  Six kids (and two years of preschool) couldn't break it, but the hail could. 

I never thought I'd be so glad to see the windows boarded up, but it meant that the rain wouldn't get in and the workers could come start work.

All boarded and tarped.

 Ready for more rain.

Right?

The Slow Death of our House: Good Morning---aka "The Rude Awakening"

So...after cleaning up Ben and I got to bed about 2 am, remember?  Oh, and our bedroom ceiling was kind of wet, right?

About 5 am I heard a slow drip from our ceiling onto the carpet next to our bed.  I woke Ben, and he got a bucket to put under the drip.  About ten minutes later we heard the drip change to a stream of water and a small thunk...like a piece of the ceiling had fallen down.  I think we were very tired, because we didn't do anything about it.

About a minute later, the dripping stopped!  Well, and also a large portion of our ceiling fell down.

See?

It was still dark outside, so I jumped up to turn on the light to see what exactly happened, and I was so surprised to see Ben and our bed (and Benson, who had been sleeping on the edge of the bed next to the fallen ceiling, but was tossed to the middle after the fall [and was still sleeping] covered with insulation!  (Ben said he felt the weight of it when it fell on us, but I didn't, as I was on the far side of the bed.)

Wha?? 

We looked at the mess, and were so tired, all we could do was laugh and take pictures. 

All the fuzziness in these pictures is from insulation dust swirling around the room before settling.

We got up and slept on the front room couches.

Later that morning, we were able to recognize the miracle: the ceiling portion swung down as it fell, not onto us (specifically Benson), or backward, onto Ben's desk, but onto the floor in front of the bed.  We didn't move it--where it is in the picture is where it fell--onto absolutely nothing--not even the buckets full of gross water directly below where it should have fallen.  Also, the insulation was like torn newspaper, and not fiberglass.  Tender mercies.

(Why did it fall?  The holes in our roof were the worst on that side of the house, and so the rain after the hail came right in and soaked into the insulation.  The weight of the wet insulation on the soaking ceiling was too much, so it came tumbling down.)

The Slow Death of our House: April 11th, 2016

I don't know how many times I've told the story so far.  For a couple weeks in our city, that was the script every time we talked with someone new-- "Where were you when the storm hit?" "Did you lose any windows or cars?" and unbelievably, "How big are the holes in your roof?"

The day was a normal Monday.  The kids had come home from school.  I had dinner ready.  Scott asked me to come pick him up from piano lessons down the street from us because the clouds looked like they were ready to drop rain any second, so I quickly drove over to get him.  Ben arrived home from work during that minute I was gone, but was on the phone, so he stayed outside while I gathered everyone to eat.  The kids were a little worried, so I pulled up the radar app on my phone, and showed them how we were just on the very edge of a smallish storm, and we should be fine.  None of us were sure what the pink represented...  Then Ben called us out to look at the clouds.

They were quite amazing.  They were low and swirling, and there was a turquoise horizontal stripe all through the middle of it.  I got the video camera because it happened to be on our counter to record the swirling, colorful clouds.  Then we heard the rain coming.  It got louder and louder.  As soon as the rain started, hail came too.

We've had hail.  We're used to hail accompanying thunderstorms.  This was no ordinary hail.  The first stones arrived and as they hit the sidewalk, they shattered.  They were, from the start, softball sized hailstones.  The kids ran into our safe closet right away.  Ben and I stayed out to watch and film, and we saw the hail hit his car and shatter the windshield.  Then Scott called out to us to say a window had broken.  We came inside and sure enough, our wall of windows was beginning to be destroyed.  It was so unbelievably loud.  There was a small lull in the storm, so we pulled a few things away from the window, covered up our bookshelf next to it with blankets, and grabbed our bird who had flown out of his cage, and threw him in the closet with the kids (who were terrified). 

The hail came strong again.  We sent Scott upstairs to see if any windows were broken there, but it was crazy loud on the roof, so he came down and hunkered on the stairs.  I still had the video camera and recorded some more of the windows breaking.  We were watching hail come through the windows horizontally with amazing force.  (It turns out I hadn't pushed record for the part when it was just crazy clouds, but I did get the windows breaking.  Ben put it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9spHMaszQOE) 

People asked me how I was so calm during the storm.  I think it was because I really couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I also knew I had a closet full of scared kids, and knew I had to be one of the brave ones in the house.

The hail lasted 10 or 15 minutes, and then the heavy rain lasted maybe 10 more, and then it all let up and was gone.  We had water pouring down from all the light fixtures and fire detectors, and from the upstairs attic door.  That's what prompted us to open the attic to discover HOLES.  The hail punched holes right through the decking of the roof.  I had never even heard of hail being able to do that before, but I learned about it--and all the problems it can cause--quick!

The kids had calmed down and wanted to look at the hail, so while they went out with the rest of the neighborhood, I (really in a kind of state of shock) recorded what our house looked like on the inside and outside, and then took pictures.  Here they are:

The first hole in the roof we saw.  Couldn't believe it.

Our wall of windows, with glass on the soaked couch below.

Our uneaten dinner, with glass from the kitchen window (the blinds caught a lot of it), and with water from the broken window and the vent above the pulled out chair.

Ben's car--the hail smashed his toll tag and something inside the engine that made it leak oil. 

(The insurance later declared it totaled.)

Our backyard.  Note broken the broken fence, broken slide, and small fort against our baby pear tree.  Also note the size of the hailstones!

Bedroom and back wall and kitchen windows--14 total windows were broken.

The glass patio table

All the neighbors gathered outside, and we commented on this rainbow.  A sign of hope?

The only up close picture I got of the hail.

Enough recording and pictures--it was now time to clean up.  Honestly, I didn't know where to start.  Glass?  Water?  Feed kids dinner?  Were they safe?  Were they wearing shoes?  I found an insurance bill that had arrived a couple days before and called them, and got onto their call back waiting list.  Ben checked our roof in other areas, and found the back half was full of about a hundred holes, with a large percentage big enough to put a fist through.

Our friend and neighbor called Ben and said he had plastic for tarps, so he went over to help tarp his roof and put plastic over the windows, and then they came to do our windows.  Our roof was too steep and high for them to attempt to tarp it.  I tried to figure out what needed my attention the most, so I gathered up large glass and got things out of dripping water and mopped up what I could.  The kids were outside with all the neighborhood kids until it got dark, and I had them come in and stay in our front room to watch Studio C on the computer, since it seemed to be an untouched room.

About an hour after the storm, a roofer called to offer to tarp our roof.  When I asked how much, he said there was no charge--they just wanted to help in the storm.  This was the moment that I went from feeling hopeless to hopeful.  A little while later the insurance company called and opened our claim, and said they'd send an emergency team out to help with some cleanup.  They didn't come until about 10:30, and the roofers didn't come at all that night, but at least we weren't feeling alone!

We got a phone call saying all schools would be closed the next day for clean up.  At about 9, I had Scott put the kids to bed for me and I continued triage for the house.  It wasn't until the next day that I realized that they, too, had been through a trauma that night, and I hadn't even gone up to say goodnight.  I was just grateful that they were safe and sleeping and not needing me.

Ben and his friend went to put plastic on another friend's home, and they got back about the time Stanley Steemer came.  They were the emergency crew sent by our insurance.  Also about that time, our good friend Luke came with friends from his ward to help, with shop vacs and towels and brooms and willing hands.  Since we had the Stanley Steemer crew working, Ben and all the others went along our street helping a single mom and an elderly couple, among others, with plastic on windows.

The crew did a great job with their big vacuums and even rakes getting a whole lot of the glass off carpet and couches.  I'm not sure, but maybe they vacuumed up water out of the carpet, too.  They spent about two hours here, and left a big dehumidifier in the middle of the family room, and said they'd be back again after we got our roof tarped.  While they were here I cleaned glass and water off books and toys that were under the broken windows (and ended up eventually throwing away anyway, since the glass dust wouldn't come off of them) and mopped and swept the kitchen and cleaned up dinner and did a load of dishes and laundry, because PS--I didn't have my house cleaned before the storm.

Ben got back about the time the work crew was leaving, and he and I kept working until about 2 am, trying to make things as livable as possible before going to bed.  We noticed that the water had leaked into our bedroom ceiling and was splitting the drywall at a seam.  I snapped a picture of it, because maybe it would be worse the next morning:

To be continued...

A thousand words

Despite the adage, these pictures need some explaining before they can say their thousand words...

Remember Benson's elephant that kept getting lost??  We somehow still have it, and sometimes he still takes it places.  One day, on our walk around the neighborhood, he said it was gone.  I hadn't even seen him put it in the stroller, so I wasn't sure if he had dropped it or not even brought it, and since we were almost home, I promised we'd go look for it after I got ready for the day.

I couldn't find it around the house, so on our way to an appointment, I drove the route we had walked.  Just a half a block from where he noticed it was gone (meaning almost through the whole route), I saw this lovely sight, in the middle of the road:

 Found!  Again!  He's a lucky boy.

Why did I take a picture of random grandparents at Gracie's soccer game?

Check out Gramma's ankle:

A tattoo!  It made me chuckle.  Find entertainment when you can.