Anyone There?

I've noticed that I have 0 to 1 comments lately. Is anyone still reading? If so, where are you and are you adoptive parents, parents of birth children or no children?

Is anyone following my blog on my website?  It is not very phone friendly. I need to find out if there is a way to change that. It's HERE.

Augusta, Georgia

Today we left South Carolina for Albany, but since my motto is "It's all about the journey," I had to find at least one cool place to stop. Augusta had many, but stopped at the Riverwalk because it was right on our way.

Jasmine was really fascinated with this. You stand on the month of the year that it is, and your shadow falls on what time it it. And it was accurate. It was 1:00 at the time.

All we really did was walk along the river area for an hour. There is so much to do there, but we needed to go on to Albany.

Anyone live near Augusta,GA or visit it?

Thoughts on Hurricane Michael

It has taken me a while to write about Michael, but I finally posted on my other blog HERE

South Carolina Fun

After many days of no water, no electricity, no plumbing etc, I finally took three of the kids and headed to a friend's house in South Carolina. Here are some photos of the things we've done. The last pumpkin photo and a few of the zoo photos are ones she took on her phone.

 Pumpkin fun

Pool fun

Zoo Fun

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?

Hurricane Michael

We are alive!!!

We were right in the path of Hurricane Michael. Since our manufactured home is in a flood zone and, well, a manufactured home, it wasn't expected to survive. So we went to Jessica's house. She, Hunter and the girls went up to TN. 

Michael hit with a vengeance about mid day Wednesday. I know we should have been hiding out, but we went out and took videos (very carefully), played games and ukuleles. We tried to just have fun and not worry about hearing all the crashes around us. Right before we lost power and cell service, Jessica called.

The conversation went like this--

Me: The tree in your backyard just fell and totaled your shed.

Jessica: I don't a tree in my backyard.

Me: You do now.

It was a beautiful 20 foot shed. And her fence went down too. But all three of our cars were parked in the drive and were fine. 

The pictures below are of Jessica's house and neighborhood the night of the hurricane. So many of my videos and picture are on my phone, not computer. So there will be a follow up post later.

Ty holding up the electrical wire so Rick could drive out, but there were trees down everywhere.

Short update. But right now we have no electricity which means no water or plumbing or cell service or a/c etc. We are going to finish closing out our shop in the next two days and then head out for a few days. The kids won't have school for at least two weeks, so we are going to take advantage of that.

Anyone else hit by Michael?

I'll post an update again when I am somewhere with electricity again.

A Few Brief Updates

Rick and Tyler left last night to drive through the night and today to reach Elkhart, IN where they will spend a couple of days helping his parents and my mom and sister with some things that need done. Tyler is shopping his way to IN and back to get new stock for our flea market shops.

Ready to roll at 10:30 p.m. Ty had to work late.

Jessica has gone back to college to take a couple of classes that are prerequisites for the nursing program, and then she hopes to enroll in that. She has school Tuesdays and Thursdays. Her husband  has Tues, Wed and Thurs off, so that take care of the babysitting issue. Mondays are Jessica and my day to get together. We do exciting stuff like getting dog food at Sam's Club!!! The girls love water so we turn them loose in the yard. There is no school this coming Monday, so we hope to go to the beach so the twins and Jasmine can have some time with Winter and River. 

Sam's Club

Jeff's wife finished army basic training.

We don't hear from them, just what she posts on face book. Maybe some day that will change.

Adam has been in town supporting Tara. There was a motorcycle ride in Keke's memory Sunday, but my car was in the shop. It took off less than a mile from my flea market shop where I was at, so I did hear it go, and Jessica was driving and saw it.

There is a  good possibility that Adam will be going to Norway as an active reserve.

I will post updates on the younger three later.

And, unfortunately, there will be no child #9. We never heard back from the latest caseworker assigned to us. Best guess is that she ran everyone's SS #s and found three police reports for the twins. She probably talked to Kaleb's JDAP coordinator who does not like me because he stole again while he was in that program, and I did not fight to keep him in it. He thought that program was a big joke, and he got kicked up to the regular juvenile court system. His case manager wanted him to stay in it and thinks I'm horrible. I think he needs to face some real consequences. Even now they are being really lenient on him due to his age.

Our home study coordinator could have at least had the courtesy to notify us if they put a halt on our case. 

Our home study was actually complete March 2017 except one signature. No one signed it, and the really nice guy we'd worked with had moved without signing it because they said we needed one more reference. 

The next lady we were assigned to took so long to even contact us that they said we had to start over. She left before doing that. 

Then a third lady was assigned. A year had passed by now. She did one visit and seemed quite pleasant and supportive, but Rick and Kaleb got stuck behind an accident and weren't here for the interview and that set her off even though we said they'd come down to her office so she  didn't have to come back out to the house. We never heard from her again. Welcome to Bay County efficiency.