Home Sweet Home

Three months ago today we moved back into our house. It's been a busy three months, but we are deeply grateful to be home! Home Sweet Home and "Home is Where the Heart is"  have taken on different meanings for us now. The first few weeks home were bliss. Despite all of our belongings being boxes stacked all over the house we were ecstatic to be home. We could feel the stress leave our bodies. We were so much lighter. We still had a ton of work ahead of us to button up our rental, sort out our mail delivery, turn off cable, move garbage and water back to our landlord's name, etc, etc. Twenty one days (and one major concussion) after the moving trucks took our stuff from our rental house to our big house we turned over the keys to our rental, "the little house." And believe it or not it was bittersweet to close the door on that little place. We made so many memories there. That was the place we survived this thing. The boys wanted to buy that house. There for a while they didn't want to return to our "big house." D and I were working our fingers to the bones to get back home and the boys would rather not go back..Oy! It wasn't until later that we discovered the boys didn't want to return to our big house because they thought the men doing the work at our house (painters, contractors, carpet layers, etc) were not going to leave our house after the work was done. For all they knew the people who had been working at the house were going to live there with us after it was done. They thought they were going to have to share our house with them forever. Their minds were put at ease a few weeks after we moved in when they realized just the four of us would be living here.

After we turned in the keys for the little house we regained time in our day. We were no longer going over to the big house every night for two or three hours to work on things. Every night we would eat dinner and we'd all load up and head to the other house to get whatever work we could get done before getting the boys to bed. And on the weekends we'd wake up and head to the big house to work all day long. Honestly, we worked hard and I'm really proud of all of us for doing so much work, but it was completely exhausting. We went on adrenaline for so long that our exhaustion didn't catch up to us until recently. A person can only go so long at this pace and at the stress level. We are fortunate to have most of our neighbors back in their homes in our neighborhood and it's interesting. We have all experienced our share of minor (and some major) health issues that we attribute to the stress of the last ten months.

At one point this summer my goal was to unpack three to four boxes each day. I was also trying to do fun things with the boys to enjoy summer. That proved to be too much, so I finally surrendered. D came home one night and I said "I am surrendering to the boxes. I can't do it all." We only have so much time for summer so I surrendered and enjoyed the boys and made memories....Now that the boys are back in school I've gotten back to unpacking. We still catch ourselves looking for things and we occasionally realize an item was lost in the storm that we'd forgotten about. There are multiple times a day I  have to remind the boys and others that we no longer have an item because we lost it that day.

We are super grateful to be back in our neighborhood to be with our friends and with the kids' friends. We are excited to see the amount of construction that's happening around us because that construction means that the rest of our neighbors and friends will be home soon. However living in an area with this much construction going on at once has proven to be both frustrating and dangerous. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's a minor miracle that we haven't had a collision on our streets and I'm crossing my finger that it won't happen! You just have to build in an extra five to ten minutes any time you leave the house because chances are you're gonna have to wait your turn to weave your way down the streets. Our bus stop has been moved due to the construction which has presented more challenges than I anticipated. We're hoping that's a temporary set up and the bus will get moved back to it's original place.

With all of that said we would not change anything. We are happy to be home and we find ourselves saying "aren't you glad we're not going back to the little house" frequently. We continue to think about all our friends who are not back in their homes. Our hearts go out to them. We try to support them by making food for them, helping them move things when needed, they borrow tools and use our bathroom when needed. We really, really feel for them. So please continue to keep our community in your thoughts and prayers. We've made considerable progress. but we still have ways to go.

5 Shirts

We returned the keys to our rental house this morning. Yay! We're really excited to get that behind us, but that little house will forever hold a special place in my heart. We made lots of memories under that roof in the six months we lived there. Christmas, New Year's, Birthdays, Mother's Day, Lost Teeth, Game night, Snow Days and sidewalk chalk were all had at that house. We made the best of the situation and I'm really proud we pushed through and did the special things that we did.

The other day D came home from work. He was standing at the kitchen sink washing his hands and I watched him. He looked different but I couldn't figure out why. Was it a new pair of jeans? A different hat?? "Honey, you look different. I can't figure out what it is.." He wasn't sure. After a minute it occurred to me. His shirt was different!! I hadn't seen that shirt in over seven months. When the tornado hit I packed an overnight bag for the boys and I and D  packed one for himself. I remember thinking (I was clearly in a major state of shock) I better pack two to three shirt for each of us because "we'd probably be out of the house for two to three days" before we could return. The day after the tornado I came to the realization that we'd be out of the house a little bit more than originally planned, so I grabby three or four more outfits. Mom grabbed five pairs of work pants and five work shirts for D. I remember us joking and saying, "We're gonna have to send him back to work at some point." Five shirt would get him through a week of work, right? Well, those five shirts got him through seven months. He wore those five shirts all winter because that's all we had. Why go out and buy more long sleeve shirts when you know you have ten more of them in storage? In the last few days we have unearthed D's summer shirts and some of mine...and we are wearing them. It's so nice to have more than a handful of outfits to wear. Such a luxury. 

We're home, however

We moved back into our home two weeks ago. We are elated to be back! We worked so hard to get to this point. Even if our stuff is still in boxes and isn't quite in it's place it's (mostly) under one roof and back in our home. There's no other feeling of relief quite like it.....However we have a set back going on. We went to a minor league baseball game last weekend with N's boy scout troop. After the game there were fireworks and the scouts and their families got to camp out on the baseball field. It's such a neat thing for the kids to do. Daddy, N and L talked me into camping out with them. The stuff I remember was really fun, but things went south late in the night when I woke up with terrible stomach pain. I woke D up and I told him we needed to go to the ER. We were on our way out of the tent to head that way and I passed out. I stood up to walk and I kept on going and landed flat on my back. I really shook my melon. After extensive testing and a stay at the hospital it was determined that my head is full of nice healthy brains, but I sustained a severe concussion from my fall.

The first few days of being home were really tricky. I couldn't handle any noise, light, temperature or weather change. My appetite was less and I certainly couldn't do any chores or play with the boys. My head and neck were both very tender but I was also nauseous, dizzy, weak, fatigued and slow. Slow to walk,  think,  talk, comprehend. Just plain slow. I still feel slow in conversations, but I'm catching up in all the other areas. I'm getting to the point where I can handle stimulation from about two of my five senses at a time. A friend of mine works with neuro patients and she said it very well when she said to take one sense at a time. I feel like I am getting closer to handling the normal level of noise and commotion at our house but I'm not ready to go out into public and negotiate all that noise, motion, light, driving, etc. In fact, I think I've only left the house five times in the last nine days. I usually leave the house that many times in about two days. Ha!! I'll get there, but I've gotta take it slow. 

Today marks day number nine of life with a concussion and day fifteen of being back in our house. Over all today was both icky and wonderful. I felt pretty bad in the morning but this afternoon and evening were wonderful. It felt like our first true day of true life in our house. D got his tractor out (and got it stuck in the mud), the boys played outside, we opened the kiddie car wash for the season, D and L planted flowers, I got a few boxes unpacked, D made a trip to Menards and we ate a nice dinner. I'm really learning to appreciate the littlest things that I normally take for granted. I now realize how much we do on a daily basis that our bodies can handle without us even thinking about it.

We've made it through this week with a lot of help from family and friends. We really could not have done it without you! Thanks so much!

Be funny with attitude

Last night before we left the "big house" there was one last thing I wanted to do with the boys. I knew the carpet crew was coming the next day to lay down carpet, so I knew we better do it quick. I wanted to write quotes on our bedroom floors to put some good vibes in the house, so that's what we did. We know the quotes will be covered with carpet, but I thought it'd be fun to have messages in our rooms even if we can't see them. We wrote a few quotes from Pinterest in each room, but N came up with one on his own that I thought was really sweet. "Be funny with attitude." And you know what's funny about this picture? No matter what I do I cannot get it to rotate. So you'll just have to be funny with attitude and enjoy it the way it is!

We visited the house today and the carpet in the living room is done. It feels so good that N laid down on the floor and did carpet angels. Ha! (The first time we did carpet angels was in our hotel room in Nashville on spring break this year. That's another story for another time). The rest of the carpet is laid down in the house. The guys will return tomorrow to finish the install. Yay!! Woo-hoo!