Hurricane Matthew

At the beginning of last week, grumblings started happening about a hurricane headed in our direction.  This is not a surprising development as Florida is an area where hurricanes pass by, usually on the way to other places as of late.  Back in 2004, three hurricanes came through Central Florida (one while we were in Nova Scotia) and they ended up being fairly ho-hum (the first one did cause some serious roof damage for some folks).  For some reason, I distinctly remember Duncan and I walking out of an Albertson's grocery store right before the last one hit that year and chuckling at how everyone appeared to be overreacting to the storm like it was Armageddon or something and it turned out to be harmless even though it was a Category 1 passing right through us. With that memory in my mind, I refused to get too worked up about this one especially since all projections showed it to not be making landfall anywhere near us.

Now, I will give the caveat that we have no tall trees whatsoever near us...I'm sure if we did, I may have taken the storm more seriously.  But, since we don't, Duncan and I really weren't worried about things at all.  We didn't buy 168 gallons of water as advised by a hurricane preparedness website (that's one gallon per day/per person for 14 days) or buy, say, 19 loaves of bread.  I did, however, buy a 6-pack of Propel (peach flavored water) just so I could feel like I was doing something.  And to really stick it to Matthew, I even purchased eight boxes of FROZEN mini pancakes on Wednesday because they were BOGO.  I was THAT confident that the storm wasn't going to be huge and we wouldn't lose our power.

School was cancelled on Thursday and Fridays at every school except Green Gables Christian School.  Yup, that's right.  I'm the mean homeschool mom that made her kids have school even when every other school was out.  Stinks to be a homeschooler sometimes!  But actually, the kids didn't really even make the connection that school was cancelled elsewhere so it was all good.  Duncan got home mid-afternoon and he and the kids spent some time bringing in everything from outside.  We wanted to take some precautions at least.

They had been saying that the storm would hit some time during the night and I figured the kids would want to sleep with us just in case.  As Thursday wore on, the time kept getting pushed forward but it was too late to take back the sleepover invitation so it was the six of us bunking together in our room, Colby once again in a sleeping bag because the pack-n-play was now buried behind a bunch of lawn furniture cushions in the garage.

Before I turned in at about 1:00 am, I checked the hurricane tracker one last time and it was nice to see that the storm had moved east (about 20 miles, it turns out) and was no longer going to actually make landfall directly east of us as originally thought.  It made a huge difference.  I thought it meant I would have a nice easy night of sleep but then Colby woke up about 2:30 am and was all wet and then Calleigh woke up at 3:00 am saying her belly hurt.  The latter was particularly concerning because she had just had a "throw-up session" on Tuesday morning (after a two month lull).  I offered her a glass of OJ to see if it would help because one of Duncan's doctor colleagues thought she might be suffering from hypoglycemia.  She drank a few sips and she didn't end up throwing up which was very nice but I am not convinced it was the juice.  Anyway, I ended up sleeping on the couch with her the rest of the night in some weird position because she was hogging the blanket.  Not the best night of sleep..
The fiercest past of the hurricane hit on Friday mid-morning.  Things were whipping around but no significant damage of any kind occurred.  I would say the gusts were around 50 miles per hour.  We never lost our power although Ron and Elaine did which was no surprise.  After 2004, Ron bought a generator to be prepared. However, as the years went by and no hurricanes came through, he finally sold the generator at our yard sale in April, making the statement at the time, "Now we know a hurricane will hit." So yup.  Blame Ron! The worst part of no power is the lack of a/c because it's still pretty hot around here at the beginning of October.  We were glad to have them come here so they wouldn't have to sleep overnight in those conditions.  It turns out, they got back the power that night anyway.

The extent of our damage.

Watching coverage Friday morning.

Grandpa heading out Sabbath morning.

Everything at church was cancelled except for third service.  It was a capacity crowd who heard a terrific sermon.  Brady was apparently unimpressed though.

My cousin Megan had to go in to work Thursday morning at 7:00 am and could be there up to three days.  She didn't have anyone to take her dog so she asked us. Sushi is a big girl...over a hundred pounds as she's part Great Dane part bulldog.  I knew she was older(eight) now and calmer so I thought it would be a neat experience for the kids.  They welcomed her with open arms! She fit right in and was really good with the kids including when they lied (laid?) on top of her.  The first night we kept her in the crate and that proved to be a bad move because she started whining and crying during the middle of the night but as soon as I let her out, she was fine.  Megan had warned me about not letting her get around any food (which I should well now from my dog days).  As we did school on Thursday morning, one of the kids mentioned a snack and I said they could go get one.  Well, awhile later we all came downstairs for lunch and I noticed the pantry door open and there was a suspicious looking bag on the floor near it. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was a bag of sub rolls, torn open with only 1/2 of the four subs left.  I had another bag of three in the pantry so I quickly went in and checked and they were gone too.  I looked around and couldn't see the bag on the floor anywhere and went into a panic that Sushi had eaten the rolls AND the bag!  How bad would that be?  Thankfully a minute later one of the kids noticed the empty bag in her crate.  Phew!  After that, we made sure to keep our panty door closed.  Megan came to pick her up on Friday afternoon and we were very sad to see her go especially Colby who was sleeping at the time and woke up to find her gone.  Some significant tears were shed.

So, all and all, Matthew was a dud but it did do some damage albeit far removed. Duncan was set to go to San Diego on some business for a few days, leaving Sunday morning.  Alas, a couple of the hospitals on the east coast which had been evacuated ahead of time, were having challenges getting back up and running so he had to cancel his trip.  Thusly, he was around on Sunday morning to take the kids on a bike ride on the West Orange Trail.  I was happy to stay home and have a few hours to myself to clean up and get some things done.  About thirty minutes into my relaxing interlude, Duncan calls me and says "Calleigh crashed and she broke her tooth.  It's pretty bad." Arghhh!!!  I wasn't sure if the tooth was bad or if Calleigh herself was bad or both.  I wasn't even dressed yet but I threw on some clothes and sped over to Chapin Station which is near where it occurred, calling Jennifer on my way to get tooth advice.  I was expecting to find Calleigh all scraped up and bleeding. She was neither of those things but she did have her hand clapped firmly over her mouth and wouldn't take it away.  Turns out she was going at a low rate of speed when she got too close the edge of the trail and "fell" off the trail which is a "ledge" of about three (?) inches off the ground.  Even though it isn't that high, it was enough to knock her off the bike and her face had hit the pavement.  Aubree was behind her going a regular rate of speed and managed, at the very last second, to avoid crashing into Calleigh.  Had she not, no doubt Aubree would have had some serious injuries herself.  Duncan says Calleigh got right up, covered her mouth (she thought it was bleeding but it wasn't), and said "I"m okay, I'm okay." She didn't realize she had broken her tooth until Duncan told her.

I called and left a message for the dentist who called me back within a couple of minutes which was very impressive.  I wasn't sure if we needed to find the broken off piece of tooth.  Duncan had no luck finding it in the grass, weeds, and dirt and neither had I.  Thankfully he said it wasn't that critical and after sending the dentist some pictures of Calleigh's tooth, he proclaimed that no serious damage was done and that I could call in the morning to get an appointment to come in later in the day.  Poor Calleigh seemed to believe that tooth was going to get fixed that day and was very upset that she was going to be in her current state until then.  As the day wore on, however, and after Duncan showed her some pictures of fixed teeth, she relaxed completely.  Her biggest fear, which she kept mentioning through her tears after the incident, was that she was going to be like me and wouldn't be able to eat anything any more.  It is true that with the veneer and crown on my front teeth, I have to eat much more carefully than I once did.  But I still lead a happy life and I assured Calleigh it would all be fine.

She won't mind me sharing now that it's fixed.

We were able to get an appointment at 1:30 pm and Elaine was kind enough to meet us there so that I could go back with Calleigh while Elaine stayed with the other three. I was thinking it was going to take a few hours but it was really amazing.  It was back to good as new less than 45 minutes later and she didn't even have to get a needle to numb it or anything.  You can't even tell to look at the tooth that part of it is "fake." Dr. Bertot used some sort of resin to just fashion the missing portion of the tooth.  Bada bing, bada boom.  The bad news, indeed, is that this fix will only last a few years at most.  With kids, it's harder to keep them from breaking it again whether they eat something too hard or have some other accident.  So in all likelihood, we will be back there before you know it.  But at least we know it isn't that big of a deal.  When she becomes a young adult, she can get a veneer which will be much sturdier.  I'm just glad my girl can smile again with confidence.

Good as new! The marks to the (your) right of her nose are also from her bike accident.

In other more important matters, Saturday evening we gathered at the Zbaraschuks to pray for 4-year old Sammy Vohwinkel who has leukemia.  His mother, Stephanie, was my very first friend when I moved down to Florida in 1998 and I actually knew his dad, Matthias, from when I did a summer internship the year before.  They moved to Texas some odd years ago but we still keep in touch, especially since they homeschool their four kids and more importantly, because they are good people.  Anyway, Sammy got diagnosed about two months ago and he needs as many prayers as he can get if you are the praying type.  Some other friends who knew them also gathered and although it was a nice evening of food and fellowship, our primary goal was to do something special for Sammy, including a group prayer.  Our family shared the special text of Joshua 1:9 which is a personal favorite..."Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." I'm glad we always have hope that God is in control!

Some folks working on the letters to spell "SAMUEL"

We had letter "A" and each kid put their handprint on the sign.

Vasti had a special reading.

We did FaceTime with Stephanie, Matthias, and Sammy (who has been in the hospital for three (?) weeks.

Some things we've been doing for school lately...

Playing "The Royal Game of Ur" an old game back from ancient times.

Stirring some baking soda and water together to make crystals (has to sit for a few days with a string hanging in the solution)

Got this for Brady and he loved it!  He did all 30 cards in one sitting.  Maybe HE will be my math kid because so far I'm 0-2.

At first I had to give him beans to use as counters but then he figured out how to do it without them.

Making her name using Egyptian hieroglyphs

Calleigh doing the same except using some Hieroglyph stamps we had.

Painting pottery at art class.

Some kind of Mexican art.

Homeschool PE.  Doing basketball this month.

Swish!

Boys in the game room while girls are doing PE.

Making papyrus today.

 Some other items...

Aubree has been checking the mail every day for a letter from her penpal in Nova Scotia.  She finally got one back!

We baked some chocolate chip pumpkin bread to take to our new neighbors which we attempted to do on the Friday afternoon of Hurricane Matthew.  Alas, the neighbors had evacuated elsewhere it appeared.

We had success on dropping it off on Sunday.  Only the dad was available so he said he'd stop by with his wife and son the next day.  They did and were so super nice and brought us flowers and a card as a thank you. I am inspired to bake something for more of my neighbors now.  Have a great week!