Moving Day, Five Years Later
What a difference five years has made...
Yeah Daddy
Sam is our hero.
He stayed very calm and followed directions very well after he LOCKED US OUT OF THE HOUSE!
Brian was outside watering after doing yardwork and I went outside to tell him I had put the garage door down. I hadn't been out for more than a few seconds when I turned around and found the front door locked. It took a few seconds to realize what had happened. I turned to Brian and said, "He locked us out". I ran around to the back of the house, knowing I had shut the garage door, but hoping the back door was open.
Nope. Locked up tight.
I told Brian it was a no-go and we looked at each other like, "What are we going to do?" We knew if need be we could break a window, but not wanting to pay for a new window, we tried talking to Sam first. Sam had just finished helping Brian put knobs on the kitchen cabinets, so he knew just what to say.
Here's a transcript of Brian and Sam's discussion through the door:
B: Sam?
S: Hi Daddy!
B: How many knobs do you see on the door?
S: Two!
B: See the one on top, the one up high?
S: Yeah Daddy!
B: I need you to turn it and let us in.
S: (Sam tries turning the lock the wrong way) I can't do it Daddy! I can't do it!
B: Turn it the other way!
Ta-Da! It worked!
So far we haven't been locked out again...yet. Little Turkey.
The Night It Was Too Noisy
The understatement of the year.
We had
just
finished our spring planting. I had
just
told Brian how nice of a job he'd done on our front yard. I had
just
said after dinner that evening (despite the weather forecast), "I really don't think we're going to get any of this rain tonight".
And then the wall cloud came in.
Night fell, we all went to sleep (for a little while) and then it started. First, a soft rain shower, quickly followed by a couple of lightening strikes with almost-simultaneous thunderclaps. My first thought: "Oh no. This is going to keep me awake for a while."
Not long after that, the tap-tap-tap of small hailstones started banging against the house. Now I'm
really
awake. My next thought: "Oh, no. The cars". Almost immediately the storm's intensity increased -
significantly
. Brian flew out of bed to look out the windows. I flew out of bed and put in my contacts - it was obvious at this point that I needed to be able to see further than six inches from my nose.
I looked out the front window once and could only see my pretty, just-planted hanging baskets whipping around in the wind. I checked on Sam and he was curled up in a ball, snoozing away. Unbelievable! I decided to leave him in his bed, hoping the hail would just suddenly stop. I looked out the back windows and could only see horizontal rain and hail. It got louder and louder and, as Brian later put it, just when we thought it couldn't possibly get any louder, it did. It was the most unbelievable sound. The scariest weather event I've ever experienced. Straight-line winds, 80 miles-per-hour, quarter sized hail coming from the west.
I shouted to Brian "I don't know what to do" (it was hard to hear each other), and then decided at that moment to get Sam and take him to our guest bathroom, which is in the center-most part of the house. Brian got us settled in there and then ran for the laptop so that we could pull up radar and find out how much more of this we had to endure.
I bet we were only in there for another thirty seconds, or so. But it was a scary thirty seconds! Brian said later he was waiting for the roof to fly off the house because it seemed like that was where this was heading next. We were convinced that if there had been a tornado or if the sirens had gone off, there's no way we would have heard them, it was so loud!
The hail finally stopped, the rain went down to just a sprinkle and we took a deep breath! We called Gram and Pops, talked to a friend on the phone, then tried to get some sleep. Sam went down easy, but it took Brian and I a couple of hours to get back to sleep, we were so shaky and sick-to-our stomachs.
The next morning we surveyed the damage. Our bedroom window was broken, our cars dented, my windshield cracked. The flowers were smashed - the leaves that managed to hang on looked chewed-up and the stems were banged up. And the fences - oh the fences! Surprisingly, only one flower pot was smashed, and Sandbox-Turtle made it through without a ding! There were leaves, flowers, glass, plastic and roof pieces everywhere. The sidewalks crunched as you walked! Neighbors reported hail smashing through windows, through wood blinds, and down hallways. One neighbor told us she was up collecting a bucket's worth of hail from her spare bedroom at one in the morning.
Right after Brian left for work, Sam called for me from his bed. I went in his room, he rubbed his sleepy eyes and said, "Mama, it's too noisy!". No kidding buddy, no kidding.
Turns out we needed new cars, a new fence, a new roof, a new window, several new screens and some other cosmetic touch-ups here-and-there. The neighborhood's a mess and still crawling with roofers and contractors looking for business. Brian's been busy talking with our home and car insurance companies. It's amazing how much time and money it will take the community to fix just several minutes worth of storm damage. Fortunately we're all safe and sound and the inside of the house is completely untouched!
2011's been a roller coaster of a year so far. It's only April - here's hoping for a calm and relaxing summer? Please?
outside of fence, west-facing
7:30 am, some hail still left, not yet melted
same side
plenty of hail left, seven hours later with temps in the 50s or 60s...
our bedroom window - we were fortunate, only the outer pane broke, so no glass in the bedroom
other neighbors weren't so lucky
Mama's poor car, facing west, little to block the hail
the windshield cracked a few hours after picture taken
Brian talking to one of many roofers looking for business
we've had a crash-course in roofing standards and construction
we'll learn more in the coming weeks, I'm sure
gotta end with a Sam pic - apparently it's now too sunny!
Guest at the Nest
It's a baby bird!.
We've watched Mama and Daddy sit on the nest in our tree for a while now, and we finally have a baby. Just one, though, and boy is he big! Sam and the neighborhood kids have enjoyed checking-in on the birdies everyday I've been able to put my not-often-used zoom lens to good use!
baby bird
baby bird
close-up of Mama bird
We Couldn't Help Ourselves
The Christmas Spirit just snuck up on us. It started with this, a stocking for Sam (not yet finished):
Then we decided Mommy and Daddy needed a stocking, too, also not finished:
I wasn't going to put up our regular tree, because we just don't have a good spot for it, especially considering the fact that Sam is very adept at crawling and grabbing right now, but I couldn't not have a tree at all, so we got Sam a little table-top tree. We had fun decorating it with garland, lights, and ornaments:
But Sam and I decided having only stockings and a little tree just wouldn't do, so that's when Mommy braved the spooky attic and found garlands, berries, lights and wreaths and VOILA!
Now it feels like Christmas!