Do It Anyway: Mold and Flood and Tree Crashing ... Oh My

In August, water started coming out from under my counter in my bathroom. After finding out it was our supplemental hot water heater (just for our bathroom), Aaron decided to replace it himself to save us money. As soon as he pulled it out he saw that it must have been leaking for a long time, and all of the wood base of my cabinets were rotted through with water. He therefore had to rip it all out. He found mold. We had it tested and thank goodness it wasn't dangerous. But, he did need to cut it out of the walls. With the help of a great handy-man he's Dad uses, we were able to get the cabinets rebuilt.

base of cabinets ripped out and fans blowing to dry the rest of the walls and wood out

On Tuesday night, September 7, 2010, our house was hit by a storm. I was not home because I was at the hospital. I actually talked to Aaris that evening on the phone and she stopped our conversation to tell me that the radio was talking about tornadoes. I told her to not worry and that nothing would happen. Well, the next day I found out a lot had happened.

First, some random tornado force type of wind gust must have passed through our backyard. It hit our beautiful, large shade tree just right and knock it over at it's roots. Even at that moment God had his protective hand over our house. The tree fell at the only place that it wouldn't crush part of our house. We did get some roof damage from one of the large limbs, a crushed trampoline, and a broken fence. Also, the tree fell on the power lines coming into our house and actually pulled the power-line pole over. It knocked out the power and the leaning power-line pole was causing fires in the trees in all of the backyards of the houses around us. The fire department had to come out.

Second, it rained HARD that night. About 15 inches in our area in a matter of hours, as well as 15 inches upstream. That led to flood waters in our creek that have never happen before. Aaron stayed up all night watching the water rise, and rise and rise. When it started coming up to the back door of our house he rushed the kids across the street to be safe in our neighbor's house. He then started pulling everything off the floor that could be destroyed by flood waters. The water did come all the way up to the front of the house which means that if you were standing at our then backyard fence, only feet away from the back of our house, the water would have been over your head.

The kid's playhouse and slide tower were washed away. Our big wooden picnic table was washed away. Our chain length fence in the back was yanked out of the ground and twisted up in several areas. Water got into our office and my closet, but mainly in our big storage closet off of the office. But, after seeing the complete home devastations of many people upstream in our neighborhood (who are still homeless because their houses had to be gutted) we find ourselves really lucky.

One thing that really ASTOUNDED us was our community. We have only lived here a year, but our neighbors came out full force to help us. They took off work to help cut down and haul off the branches, they brought over their tools and their skills. The kids who were all out of school due to the flood weren't relaxing at home, but instead, they were at our house helping with either the manual labor or babysitting my kids. Our neighbors, the Dusterhoffs, brought over lunch for everyone. Then, those really close to our family at church were also supporting our family. As soon as the tree fell, our dear friend Jeffrey Hejl, was over here with a generator so we wouldn't loose all of our food. Then, he and his dad, Charlie Hejl, along with Steve Martin and Aaron's Dad were over here once daybreak hit helping to haul off parts of the tree. We are one VERY BLESSED family to know so many with such selfless and giving hearts!