EAGLE PROJECT

Several months ago, an Eagle Project opportunity came up in the Stake, and Scott was the first to volunteer, so he began working with our Stake Emergency Preparedness coordinator to plan an emergency preparedness fair for the community.  He helped run the meetings and organize the booths and the blood drive and arranged getting the posters made and then...the day of the fair arrived!

Yes, I recognize the irony of running an emergency preparedness fair while our family was living in a hotel due to a natural disaster.

It was a pretty great day.  That's Scott in the blood drop suit, waving people in.  He had our friend who owns a printing business make the reusable sign.

The Cultural Hall was set up with different booths around the edges, the blood drive at the stage, and a kids zone in the middle (which I manned with my Primary counselors).

His Scout troop ran the First Aid booth (and took turns wearing the costume).

 The fire truck stayed much longer than the 30 minutes they originally promised.  They were so good with all the kid questions they got.

 There was a CERT and ham radio display, as well.

There were a couple guest speakers, the blood drive people reached their goal for the day, and (drumroll, please...) the project was complete!  And he actually got all his paperwork done quickly after that and everything was approved and done.  Hooray!!!

Several people have been congratulating me for Scott's achievement.  I have to back away from this one, though, because though I was heavily involved in Scott's Cub Scout career, Ben has been the driving force for getting all the Boy Scout rank advancements, merit badges, and Eagle details taken care of.  All the extra kudos go to him, without a doubt.

So, now it's my turn: congratulations to Scott--and Ben--for earning the Eagle rank!

The Rebirth of our House: Goodbye, Mold!

From Ben's Facebook:

May 16th (Monday): So, the mold testers/cleaning crew came by today. We found a couple more spots where sheet rock needs to be removed. They're going to take care of that tomorrow. Then on Thursday our contractor is going to bring in scaffolding and remove and replace the sheet rock on our vaulted ceiling. After this week the mold should be taken care of and they can start reconstruction. I really can't wait for it to be finished. It's getting really old and cramped living in a hotel. It was fun for the first day or two but now we're ready to get out. I can't wait to get a good night sleep. I've been sharing a bed with Caytie and Scott while Emma has been on a cot. Holly has been in another room with Gracie, Tessa, and Benson. We've been in separate rooms on separate floors with the kids. We think this should last for only another month or so. It's a slow process but it's moving.

May 17th (Tuesday): I'm running late now to get to work. This time it was a screw instead of a nail. I'm hoping my patch job holds. I did test it with soapy water and it passed. Now I can get to the data center. As for an update on our house, the mold company is coming out today to pull down more walls. We found a few spots that have issues. We'll be glad when the contractors can start repairing the home. Clean up first.

May 18th (Wednesday): My plug didn't hold. Trying to get air in it so I can drive to discount tire to get it fixed. We have these 22" rims with low profile tires. They're really rough driving with. I'm hoping to swap them out for factory rims soon.

May 18th (Wednesday): Awesome news! Our contractor started work today repairing our home. He believes he can have the home finished in about a week or so. Yeah! I'll post pictures of the progress as it happens. Thanks everyone for your help and support.

May 20th (Friday): Here's some forward progress. Yeah!

May 24th (Tuesday): Progress is being made slowly. Looks like we need to stay in the hotel for another week. We were looking forward to coming home this weekend but they need more time. Also, my work is remodeling the offices and we had the choice of working at a temporary table space or work from home. The temporary table space wasn't what I thought it would be and since I don't have a home right now, I made myself a small office space in our garage. Lol. Someday we'll be able to park our cars in the garage and I can start working on my B-24 again.

May 24th (Tuesday): Ah man, Rainbow (mold removal company) just called me and told me to call my contractor to stop hanging drywall. Apparently testing has to be done before it goes up. Ugh... My contractor was planning on doing texture tomorrow and painting on Thursday and Friday. Now he has to wait for the testing to be completed. More delays.

Super Saturday

One Saturday, I took three of my girls to a STEM day hosted by the junior high school.  They had SO MUCH FUN!  Here are a couple things they participated in...

Creating egg drop devices!

The egg survived!  (It was hard boiled, and dropped from a step ladder, but still...it didn't break)

Creating cars from food!  (The superintendent walked by right then and took a picture of Caytie for his Facebook page)

(The Dum Dums were not the best wheels, by the way.  And that Cheeze Whiz/blue gel frosting combo?  Well, it sure was noticeable!)

Marble runs out of insulating foam!

Building bridges with spaghetti!

 They also made hover crafts with balloons and CDs, created cards, made balloon powered water bottle cars, and more.  We stayed until it closed.

On the way home we stopped by the dollar store, since it was right next door to our hotel.  This was Gracie's favorite find:

That evening was Scott's Band Gala (awards, dinner and dance).  We were proud that he was awarded Most Improved for the percussion section, and his band directors had some great things to say about him.  He stayed for the dinner and dance, but we did not!

Love these kids.

The Slow Death of our House: Final Installment

Here are my pictures of the end of the month after the storm, followed by Ben's Facebook comments.

Emma was anxious to try out her chocolate pen.  Being in a hotel didn't stop her!

We were able to try out the cold hotel pool.

 (Apparently Santa Claus summers at our hotel.)

The holes in the ground from the hailstones are still visible almost a whole month later!

Rainbow Restoration started taking out the sheetrock.  You can see the mold on the boards by the light.

 Guess what--it was Mother's Day on the 8th!  Ben and the kids got some flowers for me to brighten our room, along with a new temple bag and a book about having a Christ-centered home.

Our bedroom ceiling without sheetrock.  (Note the mold!)

Our kitchen ceiling from below...

 ...and above, as seen from the attic access in the girls' closet.

You can see the work they did--they sanded down the affected boards, sprayed them with a chemical mold killer, and sprayed them again with the white mold barrier.  They also set up "air scrubbers" to catch any mold spores that had been knocked free during their work.  What a relief to have this work being done!

From Ben:

May 7 (Saturday): Wow, two full days working on the roof and they're still not done. Fun thing is, I have to learn to watch out for roofing nails. I hope I did an okay patch job.

May 8 (Sunday): 2nd nail found. I'm going to start keeping a tally. Today is day 3 on the roof and they're about half way through. I've never seen a roof take so long.

May 9 (Monday): It rained last night and a bit today. Our roof still isn't complete so we had a few more leaks after checking on it this morning. It's hard watching the house you built fall apart. Holly has found a couple homes we could possibly rent. Hopefully they will work out. Hotels are fun but that wears off after a couple days. It's been 4 weeks since this happened. Many more days to go. I want to say thanks again to all our friends that have been inviting us over to their homes for dinner and to just hang out. You all have been amazing. Thank you. (*Note from Holly--they never found/approved an apartment or rental home for us.  Thankfully we were able to stay in the hotel as long as we needed.)

May 10 (Tuesday): I can't believe it. The roof is just about done. Also, the mold guys have been working all day today and made a lot of progress. Yeah! We'll probably still stay in the hotel for a while because our mattress got soaked from water leaking from the ceiling and was covered in glass. But we're hopeful we can get a replacement soon or we might figure something else out. It might be nice to wait till everything is done before we get a new mattress.

May 11 (Wednesday--one month to the day of the storm): Rainbow came today and pulled out all the carpet in our house. They were able to find glass in the rooms. :) Also, Stacy from McBride (our contractor) came out and went through our claim with us. We found stuff that needs to be supplemented. I feel much better about our contractor. We got our second check from Safeco. There should be about 5 checks coming. I'm really curious if this claim makes it to 100k (it might not). There's a lot of repairs that need to be done.

May 13 (Friday): Mold, mold, mold... I'm really questioning the standards the professionals have in regards to what's mold and what needs to be removed. I really believe these brown lines in our sheet rock is mold growing between the wood boards and the sheet rock (I could be wrong). Also, in one of these pictures you can clearly see black and pink mold growing. Has it been treated and/or removed? They told me it's been treated. Hmmm... I've learned if I stay on top of them complaining and insisting they test it, things will get done. I'm making them come back out to look at it again.
Oh the joys of repairing a destroyed home.

May 13 (Friday): Latest update on our kitchen. They are now removing the ceiling sheet rock and found more mold. Amazing. Lol. Really, these guys from Rainbow are awesome. The problem is the insurance company will only let them remove so much. That's who I'm fighting to allow more removal.

They're in the bedroom now. Sad seeing it being all torn apart but this is good.

So, after the destruction comes the REBUILD.  That's why this is the last installment of the Slow Death.  It's time for the Rebirth.

Happy Fifteenth Birthday, Scott!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This boy is (sniff) growing up, in lots of ways!  Good thing he's doing a good job of it.

His birthday was a Saturday, and his big gift was a left-handed black powder muzzle loader, so he and Ben and a bunch of boys went to try it out at a shooting range.  Since he and Ben shared the upstairs hotel room, I didn't even see them before they left, and they didn't return home until the afternoon, when they soon left again to see a movie with all the boys.  (We were going to go out to dinner as a family, but the movie started too soon.  I got fast food with the other kids instead.)  Scott and Ben had a great day, but I was missing celebrating with them.  So, on Monday, I went all out and bought him a cake. :)  (We ate it in the garage, of course, right before heading over to another family's home for dinner.  Sorry/not sorry for ruining my kids' appetites...)

He kept his rifle (which he apparently really likes) at home, so it took a while before I got a picture of him with it:

This is a good kid right here.  Vote for him, and all your dreams will come true.

A NEW ROOF!

It took five days from start to finish, due to replacing all of the decking and a small crew due to every roof in our city needing to be replaced, but what a beautiful sight!!!  (Of course it rained on the fourth day, so we got some more water damage, but at least this was the first BIG step forward.)