Home at Last

I must apologize as we are behind on our blogging. I have no excuses worth mentioning, but I am going to strive to catch us back up today as I have little else to do.

On June 28th (notice that is before our last post) we were able to move back into our apartment. All in all we were only out of our apartment for 15 days. We were very blessed by the Lord as the damage our apartment sustained was minimal. In fact, our apartment was only flooded with one inch of ground water. Try and remember back to all your geology classes in high school and college to remember what ground water is (that means you Swaag and Tote). In other words, we had no bacteria nor fecal matter that filled the water most of the people dealt with in the flooding; therefore, rather than smelling like the rest of the street which induced severe vomiting for many, our apartment smelled as sweet as honey. Furthermore, since we only had ONE inch of ground water the sheet rock in the apartment was placed high enough that it was not touched. Hence, no molding occurred in the apartment and all that needed to be replaced was the carpet. The first of the Lord's blessings.

Lest you think that the Lord's goodness ended there I will relate more of the flood story to you. The owner of our building just happens to own a carpet business. As you can imagine after severe flooding like Iowa sustained here in the last month the carpet businesses that were not under water were kept relatively busy. However, the Lord provided us with carpet from the owner of the building and it was laid within four days of the water exiting our apartment. All in all we were able to move back in within two weeks after we moved out and within five days of the water receding out of our apartment.

We also did not have to pay a cent for our lodgings while we were away due to the kindness of those around us. It was incredible to me to see the love and sacrifice those around us were willing to show us in our time of need. The night we moved out we received multiple phone calls from the ward members, my friends at school, and Cylynn's friends at work offering places to stay and help to move. I may be repeating some of the remarks Cylynn made in previous posts but I want to show my gratitude.

I am grateful for the Lord's blessings in our lives. Unfortunately, even though we were able to move into our apartment so quickly I cannot claim that we arranged our apartment back to the way it was nearly as quickly. It remained in the state you can see below for far too long. I did enjoy my new computer though, as you can see.

Shyla's Accusations

For those of you that do not read the comments at the end of each post let me display Shyla's comment for you. The following is a direct quote.

“I sure am sorry to hear about all the problems you have had. I'm glad you are okay though. Nonetheless, I have an extremely serious concern. I couldn't help but immediately notice that in the picture of the belongings you left in the apt to possibly be flooded, was your plant. Was that Jade? Wasn't she your practice child? I mean, what I'm seeing here is that when your life was in danger you left anything that was holding you back and apparently that is the category Jade fell into. She was right next to the trash can! I now have even more misgivings than I did before about you being responsible for a real child. Please explain yourself--if you can.”

A few words on our behalf. Yes it is in fact Jade in the picture. However what you don't know is that we took the picture the night before we moved all of our stuff and therefore it only appears that Jade is going to remain behind. We took her from household to household and though we were worried about her going into shock because of the many different environments in which we lived, she survived.

She was a real trooper and we are so proud of her. I have to say that even after all of the moving she is standing a little taller, growing a little bigger and loving her new family more and more every day.

So Shyla, please do not worry about our ability to parent we are doing a wonderful job. We feed her once a week, talk to her at least twice a week and the best part is that we never have to clean up after her. If this is what parenting is like I say...BRING ON THE CHILDREN!

If you are having misgivings about our ability to raise a practice child just reminisce a little about our time together in Arizona and how well I took care of you. Don't make me list the ways in which I raised you to be a contributing citizen to society.

The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up

Here are a few photographs from our flood experience. First we have a picture of our home when we decided to evacuate. The unfortunate fact that Sterling does not possess any ark building skills forced us to stack things on our counter top or pack them up and move them out.

Next we have an illustration of what happens if you don't move your car before the road is closed. We were lucky enough to get the car to safety literally minutes before the road closed. Had we not moved the car we might have been forced to swim to school and work.

Here we have a picture of a man trying to save his refrigerator. I think his efforts were in vain and by the way who would want to save a refrigerator that is floating in poo infested waters? Not me! Anyway, this was taken right in front of our house the day we decided to move. Imagine going to bed when the water is level with the top of the curb and waking up to waist deep water in the street.

In this picture we tried to show just how close the water was to our apartment when we finally finished moving everything. To Sterling's right what used to be our street but is now a river and to his left is the front of our apartment building. Luckily we live in the back of the building and the it is built on a slight incline. The front two apartments sustained a majority of the damage for which we are saddened and a little grateful. We are sad because some of our neighbors lost quite a few of their belongings and yet we are grateful because our home was spared and we don't have to be homeless any longer. We moved home today (6/28/08)!

And finally at least these little guys enjoyed the water levels. This is the apartment two days after we moved. As you can see the water is only being held back by the sandbags that some kind citizens stacked around the building. The sandbags were not able to stop the flood waters from reaching our complex entirely but they sure helped to minimize the damage that could have occurred.

Morton Salt Had It Right!

So the Morton Salt slogan is "When it rains, it pours[.]" and that is exactly what we have had to live through for the past few weeks.

If you don't know already, Iowa has experienced some extreme flooding and Sterling and I have been able to enjoy it firsthand. On June 13th Sterling and I evacuated our apartment and literally headed for higher ground.

The Iowa River (one block east of our apartment complex) and Clear Creek (one block south of our apartment complex) were both rising quickly causing a little anxiety for Sterling. I, on the other hand, remained calm and tried to ease his anxieties by attempting to convince him that it was not going to affect us and if it did we shouldn't worry because none of our possessions were all that precious. My efforts were in vain because Sterling knew that there was a reason to worry and I was living in denial.

As the flooding continued it was apparent that our apartment and our belongings were in danger. When Sterling came home from work that day our street was almost completely filled with water and as far as we could tell the city would be denying access to our street sooner than later. At about 7:30 pm we went outside to check on the flooding and decided that it would be wise if we moved our car to an apartment complex behind us which is set on a hill. Within minutes of our decision to move the car to a safe location our road was closed.

This would make it difficult (but not impossible) to evacuate if needed. We went back into the apartment and immediately started packing our belongings and discussing what we would save if it came to an immediate evacuation. We moved everything to the counter tops or to the highest shelf possible in each of the rooms. Sterling was making telephone calls to people in the ward in order to find help with moving our couches and beds which were not going to fit on the counter top. By the time Sterling had made arrangements to move our larger pieces of furniture the drizzling rain had turned into torrential downpour and all of his efforts had been foiled. We would have to wait until the morning to move.

It is amazing how quickly we packed up our home. We started packing at 8:30 pm and by 12:30 am we were finished. Please note that at least one half hour was designated to Sterling trying to console me during my breakdown when the reality of the situation set in. It turns out that I am a little more attached to our belongings than I thought. I was trying to save so many things that I am sure Sterling considered ridiculous but he never complained or laughed at me and I am grateful for that.

The next morning the moving crew (Steve Courtright and Ben Robbins) arrived at 8:30 and the evacuation began. We had carry everything to a parking lot behind our complex. It made moving less pleasurable than most moving experiences (which aren't fun to begin with) but well worth it. At first we were just going to move our couches and beds but in the end we moved almost everything we own. All of it isn't worth much monetarily but the memories associated with our belongings are priceless.

Since the evacuation we have moved three different times. In fact our friend Ben saw us moving the other day and said, "Hurry grab the next available apartment before the music stops." Musical apartments is not as fun as it sounds. It consists of living out of a suitcase, carrying all of your dirty laundry in the one laundry basket you decided to bring along, transporting your "necessary" foods from refrigerator to refrigerator, doing laundry whenever the five outfits you packed are soiled and sleeping on the couch or the floor depending on whether or not the both of you are home at the same time.

All in all our experience seems like a vacation gone horribly wrong. We get the pleasure of living out of suitcases but we still have to go to work.

Starting a Family

This past weekend Sterling and I did some redecorating. One of our generous neighbors was doing some down-sizing and put some shelving and a small cabinet out by the garbage. On my way to get Sterling from work I noticed the cute little cabinet and decided that we could use some more furniture to make our home look more like a home and less like a mere living space.

The shelving is a corner shelf and provides a delightful place to display our wedding album. The cabinet serves as a bookshelf and storage for our past Ensign and Liahona magazines. The color scheme of the new furniture (red and purple) doesn't exactly match the brown couches, carpet and coffee table that we have in the living room but it adds a nice little touch to our mundane life.

So now that our apartment looks more like a home we have decided that it is time for us to put our parenting skills to the test. We have saved up and we are ready for the challenge. We have decided on the name Jade.

Now don't get your hopes up. The addition to our family is a plant. We still aren't prepared for a real family and we don't want animals so we decided that the best way to test our abilities as nurturers, parents and providers was to buy a plant. We decided on the name Jade because that is the type of plant that we bought.

We are already struggling to take care of our plant. In fact Sterling called mom to ask for suggestions and I spoke to Jaycia three different times to find out how to tell if a plant is an indoor or outdoor plant, what we need to do in order to replant our little baby and how often do we feed it. Hopefully when we finally decide to have children it won't be this difficult.

Like most proud parents, we will post pictures soon.