Anna's Christmas Program

I just wanted to let everyone know that Anna's Christmas program is December 18th. There are two shows, one at 1230 and one at 630.

Rebecca

Monday

We had a nice weekend with a lot of fun Halloween activities. On Friday the YMCA had their annual Not So Scary Halloween Trail. Anna had a slumber party starting at 5PM, so we dropped her off and then went to the trail. It was just getting dark when we got there, so it was a little bit spooky but the kids had a great time. It wasn't too cold, so the place was packed! After the trail, we went inside the YMCA for snacks and goodie bags. I think everyone was surprised by the number of children in attendance, because many of the groups were scrambling for more candy! While we were at the YMCA, we ran into all of the girls from Anna's slumber party. (The party was at Anna's friend Lauren's house...Lauren's mom is one of Noah's preschool teachers, Mrs.Fabich. She was helped out by Mrs.Stafford, Noah's teacher from last year. That's the joy of small town living!) The girls all surrounded Amaya, saying how cute she was in her little witch costume. So, Amaya started twirling around in circles and putting on a show for them. It was so cute!

On Saturday, the downtown businesses all had trick or treating for a few hours in the afternoon. Once again, it was a beautiful day (sunny and around 50 degrees, nice weather for October in Northern WI) so the event was packed! Anna had yet another Halloween party on Saturday, from 3 until 5, so I dropped her off at the party while Kindra helped Noah and Am change into their costumes. Then we walked downtown (only a block from the hotel) and went trick or treating. It was a lot of fun, it's always neat to see all the little kids in their costumes! It also got us inside some of the downtown businesses we'd never been to before, which I'm sure is a big reason why they do this every year! I have to admit, it was a little strange taking my kids into a bar or a liquor store to go trick or treating...but it's truly a cultural thing up here. There aren't many restaurants, but there are pubs everywhere....and they have the best food!

On Sunday we had planned to take the kids to the haunted house in town, until we heard how scary it was! Even with the lights turned on for the special children's time, I thought it would be too scary for the little ones, so we just skipped it for this year. Instead Pavan took the kids swimming. I was invited to a stamping party at 3, so I walked over to the Hope Center for that. It was a lot of fun, and I made three cards. Those of you who know how un-creative I am will understand what a big deal that was for me! After the stamping party, we all went to Mike and Meg Beske's house for supper. We've known Mike and Meg since we moved to Rhinelander. Mike works in pathology at the hospital, I knew Meg through a Bible study and she is also on the board of directors with me at the pregnancy center. They are an older couple, with kids the same age as me and Pavan. For dinner they invited us, their oldest son and his wife and three kids, and another couple from their church and their 2 kids. It was a great time! Mike grilled salmon and venison steaks, it was all great! Kindra even ate 2 pieces of the venison!! The guys invited Pavan over to watch the football game tonight, and they invited us all back for supper again next Sunday.

One more thing before I go...apparently the house is mostly dried out because all but one of the blowers are turned off. The cats seem much happier without all that noise, so that's a good thing. Unfortunately, my fish died, which was really sad for me. We had a little funeral for him on Saturday, buried him outside. Angel fish are very sensitive, and I just don't think she tolerated the time without filtration or heat very well.

There is still one blower going in the laundry room. It has about 6 long hoses attached to it, which are inserted in 6 holes in the laundry room wall. Big holes...big hoses. What a mess! Still no clothes for the kids, Pavan called the guy last night and he said they should be back this week. Seems like we've heard that before! We did find several of Kindra's hoodies stuffed in a bag of trash, she was in tears once she discovered what had happened. Her DeSmet, SD and Mt.Rushmore hoodies were in the bag, and they were so nasty by the time we found them. We headed to the laundry mat yesterday and were able to save the DeSmet one, but the Mt.Ru one was very mildewed so I think we'll just have to throw it away. Pavan told the guy about it, and he was very apologetic. Hopefully they'll go through all the other trash bags and make sure there's nothing important inside! Also ruined was Kindra's very expensive PB Teen messenger bag that I had embroidered with her name, it also has MP3 speakers built into the bag. Very sad! Kindra's stuff took most of the water, and a lot of her things were completely ruined...like her stereo system, papers in her desk, etc. Poor kid!

Better get going.

More later,

Rebecca

 

Update on flooding

Well Pavan met the insurance appraiser at the house this morning, he was shocked by the extent of the damage. He told Pavan it would be 6 to 8 weeks before we can move back into the house, which was a shock to us because we'd previously been told 2 or 3 weeks. It's been almost a week though, and they are still trying to dry out the house. The upstairs seems to be nearly dry, but the basement is still very wet. Of course all I can see are the superficial surfaces. Apparently the walls and such are still very wet, the appraiser looked up into the basement ceiling and said all of the 2x4s are still wet. How do you dry out the insides of walls, heck if I know! What I do know is that it takes a lot of time.

As things start to dry, the extent of the damage becomes more apparent. The hard wood flooring in the kitchen is so warped at this point that it's nearly impossible to walk across, you just can's get your footing it's so bumpy. The ceiling of the sauna looks the same, horrible! And just yesterday a new stain started to form on the ceiling of the toy room, this time all the way at the edge of the house....clear across the room from where part of the ceiling collapsed. What a mess!

The good news is that our insurance company is taking good care of us. He even told us to go ahead and call an electrician and someone from the phone company to make sure nothing was damaged. Our electric panels are all in the laundry room, which was one of the worst affected areas of the house. (I opened the washing machine 2 days ago just to make sure there weren't any clothes inside and found that it was completely full of water!!) Also, when Connie first discovered the flooding she tried to call DJ to come over, but our phones wouldn't work, they were just static. We already had someone from the well drilling company come out and take a look in the pump room. He had to replace a switch which was apparently ruined from the constant running of the water when it flooded...even that is covered by our insurance. What a blessing!!

If it truly takes that long for us to move back home, we might have to look at kenneling the animals, at least the dogs. For now, we've been having nice weather, but the next 8 weeks will surely see colder weather and our first significant snowfall. The cats are all safe in the house (we found Sweetie Pea two days ago, and Kindra was able to get her inside yesterday), but the dogs are living in the garage. Poor puppies!

I'll try to get a few more pictures when I go out to feed the animals this afternoon. Hopefully the girls' clothing will be back today, Anna has a slumber party tonight and the one set of PJs she brought to KC with us are WAY too small! Guess we'll be making a trip to WalMart for some new PJs if the clothes aren't back yet.

I just have to comment again on how wonderful the people of Rhinelander have been to us. The girl from gymnastics brought Anna a leotard when she heard what happened and saw that the only one Anna had left was way too small. The principal at the Catholic school sent us a very nice card and some gift certificates to McDonalds. All of the women with the pregnancy resource center have offered to help in any way possible, from cleaning at the house to washing all of our wet laundry. People Pavan works with and even some of the patients he's seen in clinic have been asking how they can help, offering clothing for us and the kids. It's just been wonderful to have so much support, you always see the best in the people around you when things are at their worst!

Better get going, Noah will be out of school soon and I need to run by and pick up some more medicine for the dogs before I pick him up.

More later,

Rebecca

pictures of house

For some reason I couldn't get the pictures to work on yesterday's journal entry, so I just deleted all of them and decided to add them by themselves today.

We are surviving the hotel just fine. Hard getting everyone settled down and into bed at night, but it's nice only having 2 rooms to keep clean! My Suburban is in the shop today, so we are just hanging out at the hotel. They had a shuttle service that brought us back to the hotel, so that was nice. Might walk across the street to the library later, or maybe go swimming again.

I wanted to let everyone know that Anna tried out for the school Christmas play last week, and found out that she got a part! Only 5 of the 3rd graders got a part, so it's a pretty big deal. She's the little shepard, which is the part she wanted. I wanted to let you all know so you could make arrangements to be here if you wanted to. I don't have the exact date for the play right now, it will most likely be sometime the week of December 17th. I will try to get specifics ASAP.

More later,

Rebecca

Welcome home...

For those of you who haven't heard, our house flooded while we were in Kansas City for the weekend. We left Rhinelander on Thursday afternoon. Connie came out to the house on Thursday, came back out twice on Friday...and everything was fine. When she came into the house on Saturday afternoon, there was water everywhere. The poor cats were sitting on the stairs that lead up to the loft, and the water was so deep in the kitchen area that it was up over Connie's shoes. Well she threw all the cats outside and then left to call DJ...at that point our phones weren't working. DJ came out and shut off all water to the house and called us. He also called our insurance agent, and within three hours there was a restoration company on site pumping water out of the house. So far they have pumped out over 200 gallons of water. There are big green blowers all over the house, the carpet has been ripped up and the padding removed. There are also a couple of big machines that appear to be filtering the air in the house and removing the humidity. They have hoses running from them and draining into the bathtub.

Every room of the house is affected by the flooding, except for the loft, the master bathroom and the small sunroom area behind the fireplace.Anna's bathroom and bedroom are completely flooded. The master bedroom closet is completely flooded, and the master bedroom is about halfway flooded. The kitchen is about halfway flooded, with the wooden floors buckling. The living room is about halfway flooded. Downstairs is such a huge mess. The laundry room seems to have taken most of the water, which might be a good thing since there is a huge drain in the floor that probably drained a lot of the water. Unfortunately all of Kindra and Anna's clothing, as well as all of our towels and blankets, and all of the linens for the camper were stored in the laundry room. All of it is completely soaked, and since the ceiling in the laundry room collapsed, a great deal of it is covered in pieces of ceiling. Thank God we had a few outfits with us!! Even their shoes are soaked, and Pavan's. Poor Anna had to go to Mass on Monday wearing blue jeans, she was so embarrassed, especially since it was a special Mass for them to meet our new bishop! She also didn't have a heavy coat, justher hoodie and it was cold! Of course when I let everyone know what had happened they were very understanding, and yesterday I was able to find an old coat and a dress in her closet that weren't wet, so she'll be ok for the rest of the week until they get all of her clothing laundered. She showed up for gymnastics last night in a way too small leotard, which was actually pretty funny. One of the ladies had her daughter bring Anna a couple of leotards she'd outgrown recently, which was so nice!

Most of the living room downstairs is completely flooded...downstairs the water made it all the way across the house. So, the old hot tub room (now a workout room) is soaked, the sauna is completely soaked, Kindra's room is soaked, her bathroom is soaked...including all of the drawers and under her sink, Kindra's study is soaked, and the toy room is about halfway flooded. Also, part of the ceiling in the toy room collapsed. The basement definitely is the worst part, because the water was coming from the ceilings so everything got wet. At least upstairs only the items on or near the floor were soaked.

Yesterday we were at the house taking pictures and video and meeting with the restoration company and insurance agent. I was going through Anna's closet pulling out wet items and about it tears thinking about all of the stuff I needed to haul to the laundry mat and wash. Then the man from the restoration company came in and told me I didn't need to worry about any of it...they will take care of everything. They are even going to take all of the laundry and wash it for us!! That was such a relief to hear about that. Just being in the house was making me sick, the smell is horrible and my allergies were out of control. Now I just have to go out there every day to take care of the animals and see how things are going.

Right now we are staying at the Claridge in downtown Rhinelander. It's a couple of block from the historic courthouse, in an old neighborhood surrounded by big old houses. We are only a block from Anna's school, which is nice. We will be herefor at least a couple of weeks. Wehave a two room suite. One room has 2 queen beds, plus a rollaway for Anna. The other room is a large living room with a fold out loveseat for Kindra. It has a kitchenette with a nice sized fridge. There is a great pool room with games for the kids, and a wonderful restaurant downstairs. Amaya and I walked to the park (3 blocks down) this morning while they cleaned out room, and the library is right next door. It's nice being in town instead of 15 minutes outside of town! I miss having the animals with us, but we weren't able to find anywhere that would allow us to have all of them. Right now I can't even find Sweetie Pea, she's probably hiding up in the walls somewhere! I'm sure she'll feel better once they turn off all of those blowers, they are so loud!

I'd better get going. We are going out to the house to pick up a few things and feed the animals. Also going to grab our swimsuits...looks like Amaya and I are going to have the pool all to ourselves during the day!

By the way, I just have to tell you that the pictures don't even begin to capture the humidity in the house or the horrible smell...it's just overwhelming and so disgusting!! They are monitoring the air every day and I guess they go by the humidity levels in the air to determine when the house is dried out completely. Then they spray down some fungicide to keep molds from growing. Yuk!

More later,

Rebecca

Pictures

I don't have time to write much, I have to leave in 10 minutes to pick the children up from school and then head to Merrill for dance class. I just wanted to try and get some picutres online for everyone. These are pictures from Pavan's trip to New Orleans last week and pictures from our trip to the apple orchard last weekend. We had a great time and brought home 50 pounds of apples that we picked! I've been busy making and canning everything you can imagine that uses apples...and I've not even gone through one bag of apples yet!

If the pictures are all out of order, I apologize. I'll try to get online tonight or tomorrow and sort through them, straighten them out and maybe even add captions!

A couple of reminders...first of all we are leaving this Thursday for Kansas City. We will arrive in KC at 9PM Thursday and head back to Rhinelander at 6PM on Sunday. Supposed to get into Rhinelander at 1015PM Sunday. You can reach us on our cell phones or at my mom's house if you need us for anything.

Second, I hope everyone will remember our family and especially my mom in your prayers today. Today marks one year since Allen died. Hard to believe it's already been a year, although I have to say this last year has been the longest of my life. Losing someone you love simply changes everything.

More later,

Rebecca

Mall of America and Amaya's birthday

We had a great time at Mall of America last weekend for Amaya's birthday. I apologize that it's taken me so long to get these pictures online, it's a lot of work combining my pictures with my mom's pictures, and then getting them all in the right order for the journal! I can easily organize them by date taken in my computer's picture folder, but as soon as I upload them to the AOL journal, they get scrambled up, it drives me crazy!!!!

Can't believe our baby is three years old!!

Be sure to check out the very last picture, it's Kindra's volleyball team...well half of them. She played on B team this particular day. She has 2 more games this week, both away games (Merrill and Medford), then the season is over! Anna has 2 more weeks of flag football and then it's over too. Then maybe a breather before basketball starts for Kindra and competition season starts for Anna's gymnastics!

I'll try to add captions later, need to run and pick Kindra up from her Red Cross babysitting class.

PS Anna sang at mass this morning, it was wonderful!

More later,

Rebecca

Old pictures from 35mm camera

Ok playing catch up with some old pictures. I found an old black and white roll of film in my 35mm camera with pictures from about a year ago. I can tell because Bob (Noah's cat) is just a baby in the pictures and Pavan brought Bob home last October. So, here are a few pictures from that roll. It's fun to play around in black and white sometimes.

Also a roll of film taken in my 35mm camera over the last month. Pictures from volleyball games, flag football games, around the house...

I am hoping to get pictures from Mall of America online soon, bear with me! There are literally hundreds of them, since my mother sent me the pictures she took too. If you add in all of the pictures and video Pavan's parents took, I think we managed to document every second of the weekend!!!

More later,

Rebecca