Heading to Camp

Jenna was devastated this past Spring when I informed her that she would not be going to camp again in Michigan with her cousin Madison. Madison lives in Indiana but the camp is in Michigan. The timing was just all off: no ride, plus Jeff's parents 50th anniversary party is TODAY in Illinois (we are leaving soon to go there). Jenna cried and cried and I even got the silent treatment for about a 1/2 hour. :( I felt so bad. Well..."thanks" to Aunt Lydi's passing Leah was here and so Jenna could ride back with her and go to the camp. The only other hitch was the anniversary party...at first there was going to be a big bash but as time went on the plans got smaller and smaller and now it is just a dinner at a restaurant. (Not even with a reserved room, just pushing some tables together!) So Jeff decided that she could miss that. Jenna was ecstatic when she found out she could go. So she left this past Thursday morning with Leah to go to Indiana,and they leave for camp tomorrow morning. They were especially excited to do the "swamp hike". They were not brave enough to do it last year. I guess you hike through a swamp (thus the name) and it is so gross and dirty and is full of leeches also...you get so filthy that you just throw away your clothes afterwards. Not sure why they are so excited about THAT but they are determined to be brave and do it this year.

Madison & Jenna are heading off to camp this coming Monday, June 30 and they will be there until Saturday, June 5th. If they get 3 pieces of mail in one day, or a package, they have to get up and sing a song in a group. I've been told it's great fun. If anyone would like to send mail, you can send it to...

Jenna (and Madison if you want)
Camp Friedenswald
15406 Watercress Dr.
Cassopolis, MI 49031

House finished!

Well, for all practical purposes (except for a few minor things that can be finished after we move in) we are finished with the house building process! Yipee!! We do not have possession yet because we don't have an sod, but we have already started moving our things in. We won't sleep there until we get possession. Here are a few pics.

row one- our bedroom, our bathroom, the kitchen, dining room
row two- looking from kitchen into living room, in living room looking into sun room, downstairs mini kitchen, family room downstairs
row three- Jenna's room, outside view, downstairs, Mikayla's bedroom.

Celebration of Life

We had a "very nice" funeral for Aunt "Lydi". Jeff preached, Leah have a very nice and moving tribute and the girls and I along with Madison sang.(Jenna played her guitar) The background picture here is of a quilt that she made that was draped over her casket. My girls and Madison (my niece) pose with my grandma, their great grandma. (Sorry Madison your head got cut off !) And in the 2nd picture this is a picture of 5 of the 14 cousins that were able come to her funeral. Left to right- my cousin Kim from Colorado, Penny and Chad from Kansas, me and then Leah from Indiana. It was nice to chat with them and get caught up on their lives.

Aunt Lydia 1/7/08 - 6/21/08

My great aunt, (she is in the wheelchair holding hands with her sister, my grandma) passed away at the ripe old age of 98 this Saturday. Read below for more on this lovely lady!

This n That

On my last post I said that "today is the "last" day that contractors will be there to work" and true to the pattern they didn't get everything done. I have determined that in general people just don't do what they say they are going to do! It has been extremely frustrating. We are planning on today being the "last" day. They have to finish the back steps going from the top deck to the patio. We can not pass inspections without those. That is the finale' for inspection. But they do also need to finish the back screened in porch, we can pass inspection without that. They will finish the steps today and then the inspector can come tomorrow and we can get possession for Wed.


1/7/10-6/21/08 Lydia Yoder
My Great Aunt Lydia ( Aunt "Lydi" as we called her) died early Sunday morning. She was 98 years old and was very ready to go. She was like a 3rd grandma to me as she lived with my grandma for as long as I can remember. Some memories I have of her...

1. Black "grandma shoes."
2. White hair always up in a bun, but if we stayed over night we got of glimpse of it down and it was long!
3. Crocheting...she was always croteching. She made me some beautiful crotehed hangers for my wedding. I still cherish them. (I do not know how to spell that word so I spelled it 3 different ways...it is so wrong that spell check couldn't even figure out what I was trying to spell!)
4. She always treated us like her own grandchildren.
5. She and I my grandma took turns cooking the HUGE meals that were required when all the family came for supper, which seemed often.
6. Ice-cream and crackers for dessert.

Her funeral will be Wed. also and Jeff is preaching that. That is at 12:00, by the time the "festivities" are done it will be 5 (it is truly a great thing that she passed as she was ready to go a decade ago and she herself could never understand why God kept her here so long).

We are planning on a crew to meet us at our old house to help us move beginning at 6 Wed. night! We will move all week and then Jeff has to preach a wedding Sat. night, and we leave Sunday after church to go to Illinois for Jeff's parents 50Th wedding anniversary celebration. We will return sometime Tuesday. We will return to a house totally in boxes. Oh well, God has been so faithful throughout this process as I prayed ardently for timing in all this!!!! The timing had to be perfect in when we sold our house and when our new house would be done...I also prayed that we would have several weeks to move and not to have to get out in like a weekend...we do we have about 2 weeks...I even prayed that we would sell the girls' bunk beds with the right timing. We didn't want to sell them too early or the girls wouldn't have beds to sleep in, but we didn't want to buy new bedroom furniture until we sold them! They sold yesterday, so they will only have about 2 nights to sleep on the floor. God works out all of the details of our lives, even non important in the grand scheme of things ones.

My friend Rose, who is a reader of this blog on the east coast is going to lose her dad from cancer this week. He is in his last days. Rose and I were GREAT friends in high school and still remain great friends. Would all of you pray for her family as they say their good-byes. (Side note: Mom and Dad: that would be Harold Bender)

Have a great week!

Update!

Well my broken camera is even more broken so I can't download the pics to my computer. I had some of the flood and also of the girls swimming. Hopefully I can figure out how to download them soon, once again my camera needs to go in the trash but there is no money to replace it.

Today is the "last" day that contractors will be in the house working. I put last in "" because there will be little things that they will come in and out to do even after we move in. We will have to remember to change the garage code so they can't just come in uninvited! Today the plumber is there finishing up a few things and he was looking out my dining room window, turned around and hit his head on my chandelier and broke it!!!!! We are so sick of contractors! Why was he in my dining room, there is no plumbing there. Just get in and do your job and get out! He is going to have to go to Menards and find it, and maybe special order it. With my luck it will be discontinued!

The plan is that on Monday the inspectors will come and inspect, there will be a few minor piddly things that will have to be corrected and then we should be able to get possession Tuesday. We are going to start moving on Tuesday! If any of you want to drive here and help us, feel free! :)

Safe at home!

We are fine! It was scary for awhile. The girls cried and cried when they found out we had to leave. They see the pictures on t.v. literally 24 hour coverage of the flood and see the houses flooded up to their roofs. The water in our backyard rose another 3 feet or so but we will not get flooded. We are so thankful to God.

I post some pictures. Thanks for your prayers.

EVACUATION!

THE SHERIFF HAS COME TO OUR DOOR AND SAID THAT WE HAVE TO EVACUATE!!! They are closing the road right outside our subdivision. We are not too far from the Iowa River and it is flooding over into our area. I showed you the picture in my last post. We are packing for a week, we will probably go to my parents. They are not home, have left on vacation. You can reach us on our cell phones. Pray for us and our house!

500 Year Flood

Yes, we are in the middle of this flood. We are about 10 minutes away from the devastation. It is totally devastating here. So many lives ruined and destroyed. We know many people that will lose their homes and businesses from this. Have you been watching Good Morning America, Fox News, CNN? That's us!

This is called the 500 year flood because they have calculated the chance that a flood of this magnitude could happen and it is a .2% chance that this could happen every year so that equals out to once every 500 years!

Right now there is nothing we can do to help people but as soon as this water crests (gets to its highest point-which the water is expected to rise another 5 feet or so), and then recedes, which will not be for weeks, our church will make teams to go in help these people totally demolish their homes and start over.

The largest church in the area, Parkview, will totally lose its building. It is covered up to its roof in water!

I was able to snap a few pictures, but they will not do any justice at all to the devastation.

Row 1: Our neighborhoods backyards. If you put the second and third picture together they make a panoramic view. In the second picture you can see a pole sticking up, this pole is a light pole in a parking lot. Last summer we had a baptism here. We parked by that pole and Jenna was baptised a short walk from there. There should be no water there. It is going over the dam. There should be a HUGE drop between the top water and the water on the bottom. The water rushing over the dam sounds like Niagara Falls. So noisy! All of it is water that shouldn't be there. The 4th picture is a picture of a rescue boat going up to a house and making sure that everyone is evacuated, we stood on the other side of the sand bags there and watched them go from house to house.

Row 2: This is a sand bag wall, as you can see the water is leaking through it. The water will eventually rise over it and flood the businesses across the street. The 3rd picture is the Iowa River Power historic dam. (Right behind the Iowa River Power Restaurant) Jeff was able to go and walk on that bridge on Wednesday but they have since closed that bridge because of high water. This is 1st avenue, across the street is McDonalds, Hardees, Cookie Bouquet, etc. Once again the water should have a HUGE fall to get to the bottom of the dam but you can see if it almost even. The 4th pic is looking down stream with the restaurant on the right. Not all of that should be water.

Row 3: Jeff and the girls look over the railing at all the devastation at the Iowa River dam. Haley is in our backyard looking at all the water. And on a lighter note, last night we ate supper around 8 pm at Zio Johnos and this is the girls sharing a huge plate of spaghetti. Yesterday we got the toilets in the house and the girls were so excited. They no longer have to use the port-o-potty (or squat in the backyard). Haley had to go and although we had no toilet paper I let her. She was excited to be the first to use the potty.

Please pray for the devastation in our area. Most of the roads/interstates around us are closed. Travel is not allowed or advised in a lot of the area. Yesterday when we were down taking pictures they were closing roads all around us and we had to take many detours. We are due to have more rain tomorrow and Sunday which will devastate the area more. We are expecting much more of our area to have manditory evacuation. Luckily we live on a hill, althought the Marina is spilling into our backyard. Our neighbor has sandbagged his house! We aren't taking that precaution yet, we are higher than he is.

Is this how Noah and the people of his time felt?

Splish Splash

According to the girls yesterday was the official start of summer because I took them to the pool. We went with another family. It was fun. I did feel guilty as about a mile from us their is severe flooding like you have been hearing on the news, even Good Morning America. We are blessed to live up higher and our new house will be even up higher, on a hill. It is pretty severe here. We are all watching the news as they as keeping us updated on when the levy breaks and all the water in the Resovoir spills into the Iowa River. Then,,,it will REALLY get bad. We live close to the Marina, but so far it hasn't reached close to us. It all is flowing down into the Iowa River so we are safe here. Pray for all those victims, not only here in Iowa but all over the mid west.

House Update

As you can see things have changed a lot on the house this past week. All of the stone and the columns have gone up just last week. Actually the columns today. We are cleaning the inside this week and the carpet also goes in this week. My parents came over today and helped clean. There was so much dust and dirt that we felt like we were shoveling snow during in a snowstorm! The basement is spic and span and ready for carpet. The living room and sun room are done. We have to go and finish Haley and Mikayla's room and also our bedroom. I will meet Jeff up there tomorrow after the girls' swimming lessons tomorrow morning. We close on our house on July 11th. We are hoping to be totally moved into this house by the last week of this month. Yippee! The end is in sight!

Start of summer

The weather finally caught up with the calendar here in Iowa. It has been so rainy and it is flooding everywhere and now the humidity is like at a zillion percent! Yuck!

This week we are spending at the house; cleaning, scrubbing, cleaning and scrubbing. The carpenters will finish up today and that means no more saw dust flying everywhere and our cleaning won't be in vain. We are doing this work ourselves. Normally house builders have someone come in for big bucks and clean for you but we want to save money so a lot of this kind of work we are doing ourselves. Jeff's dad and brother came again to help out. They arrived Tuesday night and worked 2 LONG days thinking they would be able to leave sometime today but they will not leave until tomorrow sometime now b/c of the work. Filling all those nail holes on all the baseboards and trim is tedious. It is finally beginning to look like a house now and not a construction zone. Yesterday the counter tops came in. They are beautiful! I was a little worried because we chose black with brown flecks (granite) but it matches the cupboards perfectly! Yesterday the stone on the front of the house was started. It looks great! The carpet will begin going in on Monday.

The new closing date for our house is July 11th so our goal to start moving out of this house is in 2 weeks. That will give us plenty of time to move and then come back and clean this house a little. It is going to be a really busy next couple of weeks, months for that matter.

Awards Day!

Here are a few snapshots of Awards Day at school. Jenna won many awards. She got an honor roll award (Mikayla doesn't get this because they don't give those until 2nd grade), perfect attendance award, which was a hard fought award. She went to school for a whole week with strep throat and miserable because she wanted perfect attendance. (I didn't know she had strep throat though!) I asked her if striving for perfect attendance was worth it in the end, she said, "NO!" She also won The Most Improved Player Award for Track. The first picture is of Jenna and her track coach with the award. Mikayla won a very important award. She won the Character Award. One boy and one girl from each class is given this award every year. There is a long list of criteria to win this award. The third picture is of our princial awarding Mikayla her Character Award. We are VERY proud of her. She was disappointed because the day before she came in third in the spelling bee. They get to write the word on the board and she spelled it right and then changed it! She studied so hard so she was very disappointed. But we told her that it is much more important to win the character award than the spelling bee. We are very proud of both our girls.

I have one more 1/2 day of school today. Meetings. I am just ready for this never ending school year to be over! It is just feels like it will last forever. I have absolutely no qualms of my decision to leave teaching. As I told someone, "My love for my family hindered my ability to be an excellent teacher and my love of teaching hindered my ability to be an excellent mother." I had to choose between the 2 so that I could do one thing with excellence. TOO MUCH WORK AT HOME! If you have children thank their teacher for the many many hours that they put into teaching OUTSIDE of the normal 8 hour work day. It is immeasureable!