Family Bonding 101

Dearest you,
(Monday)
Well, we evacuated our home this morning at about 11.
Last night water started rising again, in our garage, in our front yard, and in our back garden. When we left this morning the garage had about two feet, the yard had close to three, and our patio (raised off the garden) had about six inches (barely an inch shy of coming into our living room). And all this was rising.
We've moved into our friends' home for the moment in Mt. Juliet.
Blake and I were in charge of keeping track of the water level, in order to make an estimated guess when or if the grimy, disgusting water would reach our house. Guess who fell asleep at 1am? Blake. So I had to round up Gen to accompany to the very dark, very creepy back patio. It WAS rising about an inch every half hour, but it slowed around 2:30am, about when I drifted off to sleep :) And two gigantic fire engines pulled up at our house about 2am just to assess the situation. The called back and forth with my mother, who was on our front porch while they stood safely 15 yards away, over the growing lake in our front yard. They didn't offer many suggestions.
We had to cut our electricity around midnight because the water level was getting too high and a power line had come down--but remained attached--just a few feet from our house, caused by a tree falling. Soooo, no stove, oven, fan (for the very stuffy upstairs--where all eight of us had to camp out), and NO lights! Ohhhhh, and our mom wouldn't let us use the plumbing for fear all the pipes would overflow. Welcome to wash basins and chamber pots. Family bonding 101 for sure.
One of my brothers was up at 6:30am, and he woke up several others, including me. So I'm a little tired, as on of my friends could attest to, considering I was talking a mile a minute on the phone with her :D And that was BEFORE I had caffeine.
When we left our house we had to trudge through a 3+ of feet deep trashy swamp, just in order to get to our van. People from our neighborhood--and from others--came down to our house to take pictures because it was one of the only three houses that were still surrounded with water.
Between rapids, stubborn rain, fire trucks, a self-inflicted black out, yard sticks to measure water level increases, and walking through thigh-deep swamp water, we've had an interesting couple of days.

(Tuesday)
We began cleaning up our home. It was dirty. And smelly. Our living room had six inches of water in it overnight. It drained. Praise the Lord the rest of the first floor remained dry. Our neighbors fed us food. A swamp remained in our back yard. We went back to our friends' house. And slept.

(Wednesday)
While my mother and some of my siblings returned to our home, I remained with our friends in the hopes of getting some school done. I did. A little.
I also read a novel on their deck as chickens clucked around me and danced in a robotic way.

(Thursday)
I think that's today. I honestly have know idea what day of the week it is, much less the date.
We went back to our home this morning, hopefully to stay. My dad returned from China last night. It probably wasn't the most welcoming sight walking through our front door, considering the carpet has been torn up in the living room, along with half the walls (thanks to the help of some wonderful friends! Otherwise, we'd all smell like mold. True story.)
Today we've had very random people coming in and our of our home helping with various clean-up procedures. I mean random, as in I-haven't-seen-you-or-talked-to-you-in-years kinda random, and I-haven't-EVER-seen-you-in-my-entire-life kinda random. We've met neighbors we never knew we had. It's amazing how many strange people the Lord has brought to our door. And they've all been a HUGE help! Peoples have been blessing us with food and work and prayers left and right. And forwards and backwards. And day in and day out. And I think you get the picture.

We are all so thankful the water did not get in farther. The damage could have been soooo much worse, but it wasn't. The plumbing and electricity are back in order. And we've received so much help from people we know, and those we don't. Many people had their homes destroyed by this flood. We are SOOOO lucky and SOOOO grateful.

I've written this post in sections because I'm a perfectionist and I don't want to send anything out that hasn't been edited and I haven't had time to go back over it all and I still haven't had time or energy or interest to go back over it all and I've made up my mind and I'm going to post it anyways and get over my perfectionism and I thought the best way to do this would be to write a n extremely long and annoying run-on sentence and keep it going as long as I could keep thinking and so this is the result. Happy breathing.


Praise God for friends, neighbors, and strangers!!!

Con amore,
Sophie