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Hi Ladies,
Please excuse my asking for prayers again as I have not been able to contribute much on the board much lately. My family and I just returned from my husband's 7 week business trip to Hawaii yesterday (remember the Tsunami prayer request?). We live in RI where we have major flooding going on. The state is a disaster! We arrived home after 17 hours flying to a flooded basement. All I wanted to do was get to bed and take a good long nap, but we had to get the water out of our house. There are so many others who have lost so much, and we are thankful our flooding was minimal, only 2 -3 inches. We have 2 finished rooms in our basement. One is our schoolroom and the other is a spare bedroom/craft room. I have 2 double sized bookcases in that basement school room with old out of print children's books that I have collected for years! I'm so thankful that the water didn't get up high enough to damage them. I did loose a bunch of "living math" books that were in a cardboard paper box under my desk that I use with my 3rd grade son . We are still going through stuff in the other room, not to mention the basement part yet. Anyway, I just wanted to ask for prayers for our family as this is so discouraging to come home to! Not to mention the hard physical labor involved with ripping up carpet, moving heavy bookcases, furniture, hauling bucket loads of water up stairs to the yard. We've called the insurance company and they can't tell us how soon our adjustor will be able to get out to us. Also, places like Service Master have waiting lists just to get someone to come out! I'm asking prayers for our family as this has just been an unbelievable year as far as schooling goes. It seems as soon as we hit a nice routine, wham! something else happens.
I'm praying that we will be able to get most of this cleaned up at least, as we are supposed to leave next Wed to drive to Cincinnati to the Midwest Homeschool Convention (Yayy!!) Lord willing. I really need some "refreshing" after this year!
Sorry to ramble on so... any prayers appreciated!!
Charlene
P.S. On a very positve note, I wanted to mention praises for the little girl in our church that I've mentioned on here before. Here name is Caitlyn and her mom is homeschooling her this year for K5 (using HOD!!) due to Caitlyn's cancer. Well, she just completed her last chemo treatment this week after 10 months of weekly treatments! God is so Good!!

Charlene - I just prayed for you. I'm so sorry you are going through this. I will continue to pray for you. I'm glad you got home when you did and were able to salvage a good portion of what is precious to you. Our basement began to flood when my dh was away on business, and I had to have the boys go out and dig trenches from our basement door down the yard to give the water a new route to run. It worked, but the cleanup was daunting, and it didn't even get to all of our basement, so my heart goes out to you. Keep at it a little at a time, and soon it will be done. I am going to Cincinnati too - if you can, pop in and say 'hi" to me at the HOD booth!

In Christ,
Julie

Hi Julie!
Thank you SO much!! I really appreciate the prayers. I was just so overwhelmed yesterday plus the jet lag with sleep-lessness when you change time zones (6 hour time difference) just does one in. I really have to be careful with my sleep habits as disruption of any kind brings on migraines for me... and that is the LAST thing I want right now!

Yes, I will make sure I stop by your booth to say hi. I plan to place my order for the new RTR guide and packages while I'm there. It's so nice to know I can order my curriculum from HOD and just browse through the rest of the convention for pleasure. This will be our first time attending this particular convention, so we are looking forward to it.

You are so right! I'm so thankful that we were able to get home so soon after it happened. Apparently, the heavy rains came Monday night and many people said they woke up Tuesday morning to the flooding. We got in around noon on Wed, so it had only been one day. God is Good and I know He's taking care of us in this situation, but I sure wish He'd given me a couple of days to recoup before letting this one hit! LOL!

Also, it appears that our personal "flooding" was due to heavy rains damaging our gutter right above our bulkhead (basement) doors. The rain just poured in through the bulkhead. We have no mud/dirt mess to deal with just rainwater, thankfully.

I took my dd to the doctor yesterday and we saw many water hoses draining basements down driveways. Our local mall is now called the "World's First Underwater Mall", jokingly on Facebook. You can check out the photos over there. Macy's had several FEET of water inside and I hear that the security guard had to be rescued by boat! Unfortunately, the entire mall will be closed indefinitely now. My childen's pediatrition's office was in this mall parking lot and the entire 1st floor was flooded. The doc we saw yesterday (at a different location) told us they weren't even sure they would be able to re-open that office.

Ladies, any prayers on behalf of all those affected are truly appreciated!! It will defintely take a while to recover from this. We are not supposed to wash clothes or run diswashers and limit all water usage until the flooded rivers subside. This amount of flooding has been unprecedented here in RI before from what I understand.

Thanks again!
Charlene
P.S. Is anyone else having problems wiht the message board? It's very aggravating trying to write this while the screen is bouncing up and down with each key I press!

Oh my, Charlene! I'm glad it's water not mud, but still, what a mess to clean up I am sure. I'm always amazed how heavy water soaked things get. I was trying to pull our carpet up to drape it over card tables and folding chairs and could hardly do it (though I'm NOT in the best physical shape, I didn't think it would be that hard, and that was after I'd shop-vacc'd out all the water I could from it). My heart goes out to you and all that live there. It will be nice to meet you in Cincinnati! That will be a welcome change of pace for both of us.

In Christ,
Julie

Charlene, I'll keep you in prayer. Up here in New Hampshire, we've had some flooding too. Ours wasn't too bad, our basement had probably 1 inch, maybe 2....but only on the finished side. It wasn't much but it was enough that it caused all the seems in our laminate wood flooring to "pop". So that will eventually have to be replaced, but we didn't loose anything of value so that was good.

Again, I'll keep you in my prayers.

Julie & Kelly,
Thank you again for your sweet words of encouragement and your prayers. I'm doing much better today and the sun IS shining!

Julie, I can't imagine having to do all this work alone. You are certainly a brave woman! Maybe it's hormones, but at 46 I just have meltdown in these situations lately. Last year a 40 ft. oak tree crashed down in the middle of our shed during a spring storm and my husband was away. All I could do was cry! I'm so thankful dh came home with me this trip!

Kelly, I'm so sorry you also have flooding. Being away for 7 weeks has left me out of touch with the local news and extensiveness of this rainy March. I heard, at least locally, that this has been the wettest March on record here in RI. Is that true for NH also? Our insurance adjustors are working up in MA somewhere, so there must be flooding up that way as well.

Well, one thing I brought home with me from Hawaii is the memory of all the rainbows we were able to see over there. In HI it rains almost daily (drizzles more accurately) with the sun shining so rainbows are almost a daily event! What a peaceful reminder they are to me.

Thanks again, Ladies for your sweet prayers and encouragement!
Looking forward to see you, Julie, in Cincinnati!
Take care,