How high's the water, Mama?

With the girls off at school we had three days to pack and get the new house ready. Yeah.  Perrin was my reluctant sidekick while I cleaned at the new house.  Michelle came to help sweep the basement on Wednesday; Perrin found a spot for snacks and a screen.  🙄

Lori came over that afternoon and helped pack up the kids' bedrooms. I would not have gotten nearly as much done without her.  

I can't remember if we took a load out to the house, or if we (by we I mean I) were cleaning... regardless, box beams!  

Modeling the china cabinet. 😊

So, to really sell the old house illusion, I wanted to put siding on the wall in the hallway opposite the kitchen.  The idea is that it looks like someone added on the laundry room and bathroom and then the garage. Or connected the house and the garage.  I love it.

I will paint it eventually, but right now we're enjoying the smell of fresh cut pine siding.   

My mom came over Thursday with the boys to help pack, and then again on Friday.  She probably did more packing than I did.  😜

Bob took a few days off of work and moved boxes.  He got to help his dad and Conrad hang the mantel.

 

Eeek. So pretty!  Someday I will get around to tiling the fireplace surround.  

Dad was busy putting on doorknobs.

Desaray come and helped me clean and unpack part of the kitchen.  

We still had packing to do back in town... I could have used another week to pack more efficiently and be more organized, but getting to host Miori was worth the lost time.   We were pretty well ready to go at 10pm friday night.  We didn't have the basement workshop or the garage packed up- we were going to move that stuff slowly the following week since we didn't have a deadline to be out.  
Instead of sleeping soundly, it stormed.  Loudly. And we got so much rain. Bob checked the basement around midnight and there was water seeping in from the footing tiles. Ugh.  So we rescued the doll houses from the floor and I went to bed.  Bob kept checking periodically and there was more and more water. So he started unplugging appliances. And flipping breakers to the hvac. And finally cut the power to the whole house because the water kept rising.  (He also made a trip out to the new house, which had a completely dry basement.)  The thunder was so loud I could not sleep.  And we'd hear splashes in the basement when a tub would start floating and tip... or a box would get soggy and slump and whatever was on top would fall into the water.  *sigh*  Bob kept checking on it and at 3am I told him to stop updating me so I could sleep, took unisom, and got about 4 hours of sleep.  (I apparently have inherited the 'if something bad happens I'll deal with it better on a good nights sleep' mentality. 😝) 

 

This was about 1am, not quite over the bottom step yet.  

We got the kids up and dressed in the dark that morning and decided to take them straight out to the new house.  We picked up Kenna and forded several large puddles of water on the roads.

Back in town, the moving crew showed up.
 

Cleaning out the fridge... 

Dang and Matt waded into the basement and started rescuing things.  Matt's estimate was 16-18 inches, almost over his boot tops. It was a mess down there.  Soggy cardboard from moving boxes... sweet corn and green beans from the freezer floating around... 

Michelle went straight to the new house and the kids got busy staying out of the way in the pantry.  :) 

I forgot to change Perrin out of pajamas.  Oh well. 

Bob got a moving truck because our street in town is so congested.  No one parks in garages or driveways and it's always lined with cars.  Plus it's difficult to maneuver a trailer around the dead end. First load arrived at the woods! 

I made a couple of trips back and forth with the van.  Jack wanted to come into town with Cecily and Kenna.

Michelle and Donna unpacked the kitchen.  

The littles helped carry in a few boxes.  

These two got put on dusting off cobwebs before it comes in the house duty.  😊

Lunch break. I didn't have to make any of this.  

There were a lot of people in the house and it didn't feel full, which I love. 

Thankful for so many willing hands.

And the peanut gallery who were actually fairly helpful.  :)  

We weren't going to move the piano (I was going to get piano movers) but they had straps and they were willing so in she came. 😄It's probably a good thing it didn't sit in the stinky, damp old house for long. 

The older girls got their room set up pretty quickly.  Em's pretty excited that she gets the tornado bed.  (I shall have to blog about that sometime...) 

Meanwhile, Dang floated the freezers over to the stairs and they rescued as much of the contents as they could into coolers.  Yeah.  Floated the freezers.  Most of the cuts of meat were still solid, but the ground beef/sausage were getting mushy so my Mom browned hamburger.  So much hamburger. 

The flooding kind of threw any organization out the window as far as where things ended up at the new house.  But by the afternoon Michelle had gotten the living room looking pretty put together.  At least from this view you can't see the stacks of boxes everywhere else.  😏

And the two garages full of wet things drying out.  

Perrin made himself right at home and the stairs became a hot wheels track.  

I slept very soundly that night and we made it to church on time!  Picture in front of the fireplace with the gold key.  The kids were so excited to get the traveling family key! haha.  It mysteriously appears on moving day. 😏

There was a wedding Sunday afternoon and we watched them walk in and then left to assess the damage at the old house.  Rustin had brought a pump over so the water had finally gone down.  

Just... ugh.

The girls had carefully packed all the dollhouse stuff in cardboard boxes that were stacked in the basement.  The boxes were soggy, but most of the furniture and accessories survived!  

Dad came over to help clean up.  We also called Blysky to help us clean up, and ordered a dumpster.  

The kids got to ride the bus for the first time on Monday! woot woot.  I'm not sure they are super excited to be bus kids or not.  

Bob, Rustin, Sharon, and the Bluesky crew pulled most of the mess out Monday.  

They put three big dehumidifiers and air purifiers down there. So weird to see it so empty!  

The dumpster came and Dad and Mom came over to help us fill it.  

Don't look Koch cousins... Grandma's pristine couch is no more.  

We filled a 10 yard dumpster and there is still quite a bit of stuff drying and/or airing out in the new garage. 😜

Thankfully we had already moved photo albums and all of my sewing machines the week before.  Nothing that we lost is all that painful, except maybe the sweet corn I just did.  *sigh*  

Everything else is replaceable, or we didn't really need it anyway.  

People must have been praying hard, because even with all of that I didn't feel very stressed that day.  Or frustrated. And I didn't even feel like crying, which is surprising all things considered. 😝 Maybe I'm also still in shock.  

Blessings.  

Cultural Exchange

It has been a whirlwind of a three weeks.  At the beginning of August Carrie brought a group of Japanese students to the US and we got to keep Miori for 10 days.  We were told that she spoke really good English and that she was very shy.  Both things were true.  :)

When we first agreed to host, we thought that we would have moved into the new house and would have plenty of bedroom space.  Well, that didn't happen.  So Bob and I moved down to the basement and slept on an extra mattress we were saving for the new house and gave Miori our bedroom so she could have some privacy and quiet.  (She's an only child... we asked if she had siblings- 'no I have cats.')  She retreated a few times when the kids were being loud and crazy.  

I took all 6 to the grocery store to stock up on food that she might like.  And we came home with free balloons.  I haven't taken all of them in at once in a very long time and I was reminded why.  

We all got to go to the dentists office.  I brought coloring books to keep them mostly occupied.

The girls all started diamond art painting kits.

Perrin did one too.  

Miori made us Japanese style curry and rice for supper.  I liked it, and most of the kids did also.   
We met up with the other girls and their hosts to swim on Tuesday.  It was hot and a great day for the pool.

There was a high dive, which they all had to try.

Perrin spent most of his time in the kiddie pool.

Kelly took her girls and Miori to the ice cream social at the nursing home that evening while my girls had piano.  

I shooed them outside for some fresh air and they got out the sidewalk chalk.  

Then we made fresh squeezed lemonade.  

Everyone got to squeeze one lemon. 😜

Bob and Trent took their Sunday school class out to eat for an end of the year party.  We were going to go to Kartville afterward, but it rained so they were closed and we ended up going bowling instead.  Miori and Kou were pretty good at it. 

Miri-goose and Perrin made up a game with a box and a feather. 

Thursday Lynelle invited all of the homestay students and families to swim.  And then it rained... but then it cleared off!

Swimming is the great equalizer.  You don't need to speak the same language to push each other off the dock.

Goofballs. 😊

The students got to go to a "target practice" event (haha. a very Midwestern American experience!) so I snuck out to the woods to see what was going on.  I spent most of the 10 day visit with the kids and barely did anything at the house- it was weird. 😏)   Second try laundry faucet fit the sink!

A little Uno.

We went to the library and Pinky's.

The older girls did the puzzle we checked out from the library.

We sent Emmy and Miori off to spend the night with the other girls and I headed out to do some cleaning.

We started packing to move.  We. have. so. many. books.  This is the stack of books that Cecily spent her summer reading.  

So many boxes; mostly books.  

Kelly took the girls and hosts to the farmers market for brunch after their sleepover, and then to the Riverfront Museum.  I don't have any photos of that uploaded, but it looked like a lot of fun! 
More coloring.  :)  The school the Japanese kids attend really discourages screen time so since my kids really like their screen time I felt like I had to scramble a little to keep them occupied with anything else. And not fight. With a guest in the house.  Unnamed child: How long do we get Mom's nice voice for?  haha. 

Ready for church Sunday morning!

Cadence got to lick the beater after we made homemade ice cream.

We took the ice cream out to Bob's parent's house that evening and the girls built an elaborate lego town.

Monday we went to the farm for lunch and to show Miori around.  It was hot though, so no one really wanted to be outside.  They have a new swing!

Carrie took the kids shopping in the afternoon and I swung by the house and came in on this conference.  

They were getting set up to put up my box beams! 

We all met up in the evening for a picnic.  There was juggling.

And games.

These two spent their time on the playground getting sweaty and dirty.  

My brain doesn't work anymore, and I almost forgot, but I remembered in time that gifts are a big deal in Japan.  Londyn made us a custom shirt for Miori.

The last full day was the day before school started.  I took Emmy and Miori to meet up with Kou at Hobby Lobby.

Perrin wanted to play games, but he doesn't really play games.  They humored him.

We did some shrinky dinks.  The first batch didn't turn out all that well, but we perfected our process.

Cecily spent the afternoon at freshman orientation (😭) and we got Eli's and then we took Miori to the grade school and the middle school for meet the teacher night. I was tired and overstimulated after all of that.

We were all up bright and early Wednesday morning.  Miori left at 7am and then the girls were off to school.  2nd, 5th, 7th, and Freshman.  

Overall it was a good experience and I think I would do it again.  I think I would have enjoyed it more if we were not trying to finish up a house, pack to move, and start school all at the same time.  I was kind of a wreck the first few days worrying that she was going to get homesick, that we were going to make her uncomfortable and that we were too loud and what are we going to do to fill this much time and what if she hates all of our activities.  But it was fine.  And I don't think we ruined her trip. She's too polite to tell us even if we did.  Perrin after she left:  Did Miori leave? But I'm going to miss Miori!

Also Cecily: Wow, we haven't done this many things in one week in... ever!   

Blessings.