Day 11

Today was another great day. We had help from Dad's brother, M. He took a day off work and made the one hour drive to help us out. I honestly wasn't sure how I was going to react when I saw him as the last time we visited was at Dad's funeral a few weeks ago. "We gotta stop meeting like this!" If you don't know M you don't know just how much he looks, sounds and acts like Dad. It's uncanny really. I didn't know if his similarities would make me upset, but they didn't. In fact, it made made me feel Dad's presence. made me feel like he was there with us. so nice!

It was just D, M and myself, but we were a good team. We got the ruined furniture out of the front room, swept the hardwood floor and covered it with flatten boxes and rugs. we are doing our best to preserve the floor. the insurance agent assured us they will cover any damage to the floors, but if we can reduce the amount of damage we'd like to. the less damage the earlier we can get back into our house, right? once that was done we emptied the big dressers and night stands and moved them into the front room. M and his wife had a major house fire a few years ago, so they are able to offer advice on how to approach the disaster from that perspective. Valuable information!

Once we got all the furniture to the front room we were able to approximate how much more storage unit space we needed. We have a crew coming over on Friday from D's work to help us move large pieces onto a trailer to take to storage. With tomorrow being Thanksgiving we knew we needed to get a storage unit lined up before 5 today. But how was I going to call places without a computer, without a phone book and without internet access to my phone? "Who can help me??" hmm. Mom was probably busy getting ready for Thanksgiving and D's parents were busy with the boys...The library! I called the library and explained my situation to the woman on the phone. She was super happy to take my name and number and call me back with a list of storage unit phone numbers. So nice!

I got on the phone and called about seven storage unit facilities in a forty miles radius before we found one. "Sorry, we're full." Sometimes you have to get a lot of "no's" before you get a "yes." i picked up the phone to call the last number on the list and the woman had one space left and it was really big. YES!! We literally jumped in the car and headed straight there to sign on the dotted line. Not to sound too preachy, but God is definitely providing for us. On His schedule and with a little perseverance on our part, but He is providing!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Tomorrow will be seven weeks to the day that we got the call about Dad. It will be a little less than six weeks from his funeral. It will be three weeks since my refrigerator broke, two weeks since L and N had croup and one and half since the tornado hit. We've had a rough couple of months, but we remain blessed, fortunate, thankful. While we will have one empty seat at the table (and that'll be hard), we will have many seats that are full and for that we are grateful!

If the last two weeks have taught us anything it's to appreciate the things you have, even in a time of loss. Happy Thanksgiving.