More on Hurricane Michael

I didn't get back to posting as soon as I wanted to.

The hurricane hit Wednesday. We lost all power, water etc. First thing I did Thursday was go check on my shop. I knew I wouldn't be able to get to our house.

This was my first sight of the flea market.

Needless to say, we were all heartbroken. The outer shops had walls ripped off, and some were buried under piles of concrete blocks. For me, my wreaths hanging in the hall were splattered with mud. When I closed Sunday, we were only expecting a tropical storm, so I didn't close up as tightly as I would have had I known it would develop into a Category five hurricane that would hit us head on. I would have put the wreaths in plastic bags in my shop. I had a lot of water on the floor in the shop, so anything on the floor was soaked. New in box toys are no longer new in box. My funko pops were knocked off the shelf into water, so about 30 funkos lost their boxes.

When we did go to the house, we had to walk a block,climbing over trees and downed lines.

Our house has damage to the roof, so the ceilings are wet. The siding is ripped off. And it was blazing hot. 

Heat combined with no electricity or water does not make for happy people. LOL. It's hard when it gets dark at 6 p.m. and there's nothing to do.

Here's what we look like right now.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I worked at packing up my shop, and Rick drove the loads home and unloaded them in our house. We were so hot, plus almost out of gas and clean clothes, so Tyler, Jasmine and I headed out and drove over an hour to do laundry and farther for electricity. Then Monday we were back at the shop packing up. Tuesday noon I couldn't take it anymore. It was over 90F in both the house and shop. I decided it was time to take off and go see a friend. 

Rick had to stay behind and try to find out about his job.

I had all four kids packed, but Kaleb decided to have a probation violation and was not allowed to come.

So the house is full of boxes. Rick and Kaleb are working hard on closing the shop, and we are feeding not only our own dogs, who can't run in the yard anymore because the fence is down, and our cat, but also four abandoned cats -- a mom and three kittens about 2-3 months old.

And now I am in an amazing place. Anyone guess who I am staying with?

It's Been a Month

It's been a month since I last posted. Sometimes there is nothing to say, others times there isn't time to say it.

Opening a shop at our local flea market has been very time consuming, but it's also given me a sense of purpose.  It has been a waiting game with hearing back from a publisher about my YA fiction. No answer to my e mails, no nothing. A waiting game to hear from our adoption worker and wondering why everything has come to a halt. But when it comes to the shop, we are all fully engaged.

Ty and I spend the week searching for good buys--toys that are for sale cheap because of their condition that we can clean up, repair etc and get ready to resell. Our family room (you remember I fixed it up a while back--see that post here) now looks like a warehouse. Other than being totally frustrated by the clutter, I am loving it.

Tara came to visit the shop. I will take some better photos of the shop on Friday. The flea market is open 8-5 Friday and 7-5 Saturday and Sunday. We can't get in during the week at all. So bad news if we leave something there we need.

We've had spring break.Too much of it was spent dealing with behavioral issues, but we also had a nice day at the beach.

I took River to the park while Jessica went to her prenatal appointment. She goes weekly now.

There is a big storm moving in right now, and school is already canceled for tomorrow. Jessica is due on the 11th, and I'm hoping she doesn't go into labor during this storm.

I have a parenting blog that features quick tips since most of us don't have much time to read. You can check that out HERE.

Who has already had spring break and who is on break this week?

Forward We Go!

A few posts back I wrote about the counseling session and what the counselor said about us not adopting. That has been bugging me, so when I took Kayla today I asked the counselor to talk to her first. I asked if she'd talked to adoptions, and she said no. I told her that I somewhat regret giving them her info because I'd thought she would tell them that we have parented multiple children with issues, so we have some experience with it. No real answers, but experience. I told her that the stress level at home is fairly low on a day to day basis, and that if we wait until Kayla consistently makes good choices, we may never adopt again.

We are not child collecting, we have not adopted in over seven years. It seems like we are missing one last child. A boy 12-15. There are not a lot of people asking for them, and it may be some child's last chance.

Well, her response today was totally different. She said it was not her place to say whether we should be approved to adopt or not. She said she would say we are a loving family who supports their kids and has consistent boundaries. And that we get our children the help they need. But she said that she would also have to say that we have a very manipulative child, and she does not want to see an adopted child get sabotaged by the manipulation.

It turned out that we had a short notice second visit by the adoption worker today. He said they had talked to all but two of our references. He did not mention the counselor. I did not bring it up. He took a video of our house with the kids narrating for him. Then he asked about each child and asked what behaviors we absolutely could not accept in an adopted child. I will write more about that in a later blog post but I am interested as to what you the blog readers would say to that question.

The kids played Disney Princess Uno during part of it but had to leave the room while we talked about them. After he left we had supper and strawberry short cake. Now Ty and Jasmine are trying out a used juicer I got for $2. They are mixing carrots, celery, pears, strawberries and Granny Smith apples. No recipe, just random choices. Any suggestions?

In other news, we are having a blast with the shop we rented at the local flea market. More about that later.