Hurricane Irene

This is what Hurricane Irene did to our backyard.  It was a big mess.  Our basement also flooded.  We are truly grateful that the tree fell away from our house, because it would have taken Camille, Anni, and Justice out of this world as they were sleeping.  Thank you to Jacob for his prayers as the tree was falling over.  His watchful prayer and the angles pushing the tree away from the house are why it fell that way.  He stayed up until it fell over and then woke me up.  Then he passed out and I couldn't sleep.

We are grateful to our neighbors for helping us to get the water out of the basement by lending us a shop vac that has a hose attached to it so it pumped the water into the yard, running an extension cord to out house so we could plug in our sump pumps, bringing over an extra sump pump to help with the flooding, sweeping the water into the sump pumps.  They also let us plug in our fridge and freezer so we didn't loose our food.  One took our kids and fed them waffles while we tried to clean up the basement.

Our power was out for 1 week.  We didn't realize that we had a gas water heater until day 4.  :)  Wonderful and friends and members of our church fed us dinner, let us wash our clothes, charge our cell phones, check our email, washed the dirty dishes that were in our dishwasher, and let us shower (that was when she told us her funny story of finding out that they had a gas water heater, and I said I needed to go home and check, low and behold, we have one).  They called several times a day to check in on us.  One let us use his generator after his power came back on.  Another lent us their huge fan that dried out our basement so quickly.  We were so blessed!

After the power company cut the tree off of the power lines, 3 of our friends came all Saturday and helped us chop the tree into smaller pieces.  The kids and I knocked the dirt off of the roots.  Another ward member lent us his chainsaw, while another lent us tools to split the wood (sadly, it was too wet to split).  They hauled the trunk to the dump and it weighed more than 1 ton.  We were shocked!  Jacob's brothers helped stack the tree along the fence when they were here to run the AF Marathon. 

This has truly been a wonderful experience.  Sure, it was scary, sad, overwhelming, and tiring, BUT to see the tender mercies of the Lord along with His miracles, throughout all of this has been amazing.  We are so grateful to Heavenly Father for blessing us with wonderful people in our life.  We are grateful for all the prayers that were offered in our behalf.  We are grateful for the charity, meaning the pure love of Christ, that was pored out on us in this difficult time, and for the vast amount of service pored out on us.  In this world that can seem so self-centered, this was a time of caring, sharing, and sustaining.  I am in awe.

Thank you for all that you did for us!  We love you!