Pixiemom

Tuesday:
I hear on the radio that there was a tornado that went through here on Monday night and that’s what caused all the mess. It hit us first and then three towns to the east of us in Indiana. Wow! I was glad that we had not been home at the time. I think it would have really freaked the kids out a bit more. The radio also informed me that Tuesday was going to be the hottest and most humid day so far this summer. I groaned at the thought of that since we had no A/C. When Amie went down to feed the cats, she found about an inch of water flooding our basement and since we had no electricity, the sump pump wasn’t working. The kids and I decide to go for a walk to see the damage around here. As we head out, the guy that lives two houses behind us came out and cut down the one branch that broke on our tree. It was barely hanging onto the tree and he was afraid one of the kids was going to pull on it and it come falling down on top of them. As we walked past his house, we stopped and helped him pull a bunch of branches out of his yard. He had a huge branch fall in his yard and he was cutting smaller branches off and taking them to the curb. We helped him by taking the branches after he cut them off. We took a few pieces home for firewood. Then we turned down past the houses beside us and stopped to pull branches out of another neighbor’s yard. Then we just walked around. We found that there was a car under a tree in one street. You could see the new temporary license plates on the back of the car. I thought how aggravated I’d be to buy a car and then have a tree fall on it before I’d had it a month. We stopped and prayed for that person and then added in everyone affected. It was sobering to walk around and see all the trees and stuff.

After coming home, we checked our food. The ice cream was soft, so the kids had a mid-morning snack. The little girls loved being able to have milk to drink when I usually make them have water between meals. I put a bunch of stuff from the fridge down into the top part of our freezer. (Down because we have the freezer on the bottom.) I couldn’t get everything down there though. I put the little girls into the bath to clean off and get a bit cooled off as well. The electric company came and cut the tree down from the power line next door in the late afternoon. I was able to light our gas stovetop with a lighter and we ate a few things from there for our lunch and dinner before heading to VBS. I sighed as I stepped into the lovely air conditioned church. It felt so wonderful. VBS went so smoothly that night. We talked about Jesus being the Messiah. I enjoyed the song we had for that day. For our Mission Rally at the end, we showed the Mission video from Monday as well as the one from Tuesday. The kids seemed to enjoy the videos.

That night we had another thunderstorm. All I thought was… “Oh great, the ground is already saturated and I hate to see our basement in the morning.”

Wednesday:
The kids and I spent the whole morning outside as it seemed cooler out there with the breeze blowing. The storm hadn’t flooded our basement anymore, in fact, most of the water had drained, though the floors were all still very damp. I was able to get four big branches from the tree next door and strip them of smaller twigs and leaves so we can cut them into firewood later. About noon, one of the neighbors yelled out, “Hey Julie!!! We’ve got power!!” The kids started cheering and we went in to close the windows. It was still fairly warm in there, so I came back out for a little longer. The storm the night before had cooled down the temps and there was less humidity outside than in our house. I stayed in the shade most of the day while working on the branches. I enjoyed it. The kids were just happy to have the computer working again and watched a few episodes of “The Sarah Jane Adventures“. We had to fix some meat stuff that had gotten thawed out… about 12 hot dogs and 2 pork steaks. I had to throw a few things away, but not as many as I was afraid of since I’d put a bunch of the stuff into the freezer and the ground beef had stayed mostly frozen, so it kept the freezer cool.

VBS was awesome this day. It was the message of salvation using the ABC method. A = Admit to God you are a sinner (do wrong) and repent of them and ask forgiveness. B = Believe that Jesus is the son of God and that He died on the cross for us. C = Confess in Jesus as your Saviour and Lord. We had two confessions of faith that day. Considering that we are a small church and had only about 3-5 kids per class for 5 classes (except the preschool class, which had about 8 kids everyday), that was a good VBS. The kids loved the song of the day too, except one little boy in the preschool class who took offense at the fact that it started with the hula and he said that was only for girls. It was so cute. He did the rest of the movements, but stood with his arms crossed and a stubborn look during the hula part. The Mission Rally went off without a hitch. Coming home was still a bit frustrating as the humidity in our house was still so high that it made it a bit uncomfortable and hard to sleep.

Thursday:
Things seemed to be getting back to normal in our house. I got most of the stuff that got wet downstairs washed and Amie and Christine worked on cleaning and mopping up downstairs which really helped how it smelled down there. James and I worked on cleaning upstairs. We all got a lot done. I walked down to Walgreens to get bread and chips since we’d eaten almost everything in the house.

VBS was pretty good. The song for this day was my favorite, but the kids didn’t care for it because it was a slow song and they enjoyed the fast songs. I also had Noelle have an accident, so I had to leave one of my classes for a few minutes to take care of her. The teacher for that class just decided to go over the theme song with the kids during that time and then we did our song of the day when we got back. Noelle also left her class twice by telling her teacher that she was going to the bathroom and instead she came running upstairs to me. It made me a bit frustrated, but I got through the day okay. The mission video was about Hawaii and foreign students from Korea, Japan, and China that come for college there. It talked about a woman who served those students and helped them find housing and jobs and all and also shared Christ and the salvation message with them. One of the people who she helped lead to become a Christian talked about her experience and how that now she is trying to figure out how to share her faith with her family. Our Pastor’s wife is from South Korea and she talked about how she had to sneak around to go to church so she wouldn’t be disowned from her family until God gave her the courage to tell her parents. She told how hard it is to be a Christian in those countries. I always enjoy listening to her talk about her experiences in Korea. They are inspiring.

Friday:
More cleaning and we went to Burger King for lunch. Jeremy worked from home that day. I did a ton of laundry. VBS was a little different today. We didn’t have our regular schedule of going to crafts and snacks and stuff. All the classes met for their lesson and then they came up all together to learn the song of the day. After that, we had the Mission Rally with parents joining us and adding in some experiences that people had during the week and what different people learned. It was an awesome day. You could tell that the teachers learned just as much as the kids did. We gave out the certificates for the classes. At the end, we all went down and had pizza and looked at the crafts that the kids did everyday. We all left exhausted, but with such a spiritual high.

Saturday:
Grocery shopping. We had to buy a lot more than normal because of the power outage. Once we got home, we rested. We were all so tired after the last week.

Sunday:
Woke up and had Amie yell up that the washing machine was flooding the basement and that it was not turning off. ARGH! The basement had finally dried out and I’d gotten the wet stuff washed. The girls had just put a bunch of clothes down there and all got soaked. James splashed through the water and turned off the washer. After church, Jeremy worked with the pipe, but when I turned it on again, it just came pouring out onto the floor. *sigh*

And that was our week. A lot of neighborhood clean-up is still going on around here. It is still not normal around here. The power has flickered a few times, but thankfully not gone completely out for long. I got the washing machine to stop leaking yesterday, but I have to fix it before EVERY load. Since I’m still getting caught up on laundry, I’m doing 4-6 loads a day… blankets, sheets, clothes, towels. Oh, time to go get another load in. I gotta go. I’ll talk to you all later.