Is there a normal anymore?!

 This year- Again, I have no words.  I am not sure we will ever be back to normal.  It was weird going into stores wearing a mask to get ice. But for now...

1. All of our schools were damaged. We lost part of the roof to our new school.  The damage is so bad in our community that they delayed the start of school for 3 weeks.  I go back August 31.  The kids start Sept 14. I don't know if I will have my books. It  is full of uncertainty so I am learning the value of being flexible and open to changes.

2.  Tyler spent this crazy time with us.  He lost his food too and his area was demolished!  Although his apartment sustained no damage.  He has been off work the past 2 weeks since his work place was pretty damaged.  He goes back tomorrow.

3.  Bob had to go into work a few days because we didn't have power or internet for him to connect here.  He has been extremely busy with projects so has been putting in extra hours on the weekends as well.  He hurt his back in our clean up.  Those pine trees were so heavy. So he is doing some recouping from that as well.

4. Alayna arrived this week and we are so thrilled to have her home for a bit before fall semester!  She is scheduled for all her fall classes and I think she is pretty excited about another new awesome experience coming up!  She turns 18 this week and we are happy to have her here to celebrate!

5. #2020 sucks- Marisa and Anthony were supposed to move into their new home on Thursday- they just had the walk through and everything was looking great!  Then they got word that their home flooded and now lots of work has to be done :( They are devastated and I don't blame them.  They have been so excited to have a place of their own!

6. Kayla and Brandon are coming this Saturday and we are so excited!  Brandon is going to help us figure out how to fix and put up the gates and fences.  It is gving us a good excuse to fix up the playground after the storm too.  Brandon will have his birthday while they are here so we are excited about that too

7. The Harts are coming in September too- we LOVE having family come but sad that they were going to help us harvest all the apples and now there are literally only 10 apples on the tree :( But we will have everyone here for Labor Day and I am so thrilled to have family here.  It's been a tough year!

8. I got new glasses! Doctor said my eyes improved so my other glasses were too strong causing me the constant headaches.

9. I love getting pics of everyone, especially the grandbabies.  I love when Ellie calls and we get to chat.  This week she really cracked me up when she was running around laughing hard with this filter on:

 

10. My AHA moment:

Obviously we spent a lot of time in the darkness these past few weeks.  Those 8 days of minimal light at night was rough.  Our candles and flashlights were tiny flickering lights. The day before we got power back, I was doing my scripture/conference study and the next talk was "Christ: The light that shines in the darkness". Whoa!  As I read, several things stood out to me this time BECAUSE we had spent 8 days in the dark.

Satan tries to "dim our light, short-circuit the connection, cut off the power supply, leaving us alone in the dark." "Seeing darkness where I expected light reminded me that one of the fundamental needs we have in order to grow is to stay connected to our source of light-Jesus Christ. He is the source  of our power, the light and life of the world. Without a strong connection to him, we begin to spiritually die."

"Take a few more steps on the covenant path, even if it's too dark to see very far. The lights will come back on."

I truly believe as we work hard to do what we can to stay on that covenant path we will see more/experience more things like this as we grow and learn.

 

 

The clean up...

The clean up has been overwhelming and is still happening as I write this- like I said- It will be a long process.

It took us several days to clean up the yard damage (still doing) and 4 full dump trump loads to the dump of tree carnage.  I am heart broken, especially about the apple trees and pine trees.

 

We were without power for 173 hours/8 days.  You have no idea how much you use electricity until it's gone.  We lost all the food from our refrigerators and freezers.  We did our laundry in the tub.  We cooked on the grill (thank heavens for the grill). And thank heavens for our food storage plus running hot water.  All the restaurants and businesses (Walmart, Aldi's) everything ws closed due to damage or the power outage.  We actually went to Iowa City twice for ice, gas, food, and to charge phones. Thank you so much to the Riberas for the battery powered fans and lanterns!

Both Tyler and I got TONS of reading done since there was no power and no internet and no where to go.  I enjoyed some amazing books!

What the heck is a Derecho?!?!

 

So- what is a Derecho?

A derecho is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system and potentially rivaling hurricanic and tornadic forces. Derechos can cause hurricane-force winds, tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash floods.

Our winds were clocked at 140.  This was an inland hurricane which after assessing the damage has been classified as a Category 4 hurricane.  It absolutely slammed our city and it is going to take a long time to recover.  The damage, especially of the trees and wild life, will change things here forever.

I can't describe the damage well enough but it is August 22 and we are all still cleaning up. Like I said- we were the lucky ones. Here is what our mayor in Marion said, "
To our non-Iowa friends who might have no idea what’s been going on here in Iowa the past 10 days, I finally have a minute to breathe and share with you photos of Iowa’s derecho (hurricane on land), which occurred on August 10 and ravaged a large part of our state, with Marion/Cedar Rapids area being the epicenter of the storm’s fury. National weather service now estimates the winds, which uprooted trees, downed power lines and caused widespread damage, may have reached 140 miles per hour. 90% of our buildings in Marion have some damage. The storm caught most people by surprise. Nearly 600,000 people were left without electricity and still today tens of thousands are living without electricity and many lost their homes. Thousands of crewmen are working hard to rebuild the network and restore power. The impact of the storm goes beyond the estimated $4 billion in physical damage. 10 million acres of crops won’t be harvested. Families and small businesses already stressed by the impact of COVID now have to deal with recovery from this historic natural disaster. We’ve lost half of our prized tree canopy. The cleanup will take many months. Most of our streets are lined with mountains of debris, most street lights need repair and huge trees are still sitting on people’s homes."

 

People from all over the US have come to help with the cleanup.  Apartments were demolished, trailers flipped over, semi's flipped over- and now tent cities are popping up because people don't have a place to live.  National Guard finally came last week- FEMA arrived a couple of days ago.  Many still without power.

 

We didn't know it was coming...

So, I was writing my last post on August 10,2020.  Complaining and sad. I didn't want to go back to work yet and was tired of the virus and all the uncertainty.  I never finished that post...

It was a beautiful, sunny. normal day.  I did the treadmill and then Bob and I did our 20 minute walk around the block at 10AM like we always do. And I complained about how I didn't want to go to work- especially since they were having us come IN person for PD and we had to bring our own lawn chair since no furniture has arrived yet. 

Later I was reading my scriptures when I saw a weather alert. I asked Bob if he knew we were supposed to get a storm and he hadn't heard anything either.  The alert was different than normal- it said a very strong wind storm was coming and we needed to get to the basement. Then it said- we aren't kidding- this is a bad storm.  Get in the basement. So we look outside and don't see anything except a few clouds. Then the sirens go off and of course, we are baffled.  There's no tornado. Really no storm.  Then the wind picked up and all hell broke loose.

I know we should have been in the basement but with so much destruction, it was hard to tear ourselves away. I have truly never seen anything like it.  The wind sounded like a freight train.  I started taping some of it just to show the kids. Then Bob said, "Um...we lost our fence." We watched our apple trees fall, our front tree crack, our pine trees uproot, our gates fly, and almost our entire fence come down. We watched roof tiles, trash cans, and crazy things fly through the air.  It would get bad, we would run to the basement and watch through the windows, then it would seem to be over, we would come back up and it was still going.  It went straight for over 45 minutes.  Again, I have never seen anything like it in my life.

 

I remember posting about how badly it hit us and how much we lost- not realizing that out of all of Cedar Rapids and Marion- we were the lucky ones.

And summer is over...

I go back to work Tuesday and I am sad. I have absolutely loved being home and doing my own schedule.  That 4:30AM wake up time is going to be brutal!  I also found out we will be in the building for PD all week which makes sense. And I cant just wear a shield and I get close to passing out when I wear a mask so I am trying to get special permission to wear a shield and a mask and stick my nose out. It's going to be busy and stressful- plus I wont fully vent but I did find out this week that my books and furniture will not be here until end of September. I was pretty angry.  But here are some updated pics of the library.  I haven't seen it since my 1st visit months ago.

Thoughts and an A-Ha moment

The last 4-5 months have been very different in the world- our daily lives and what "normal" is have changed.  For me I have been extremely grateful for the time. I was asked by someone in February- if I could have any superpower what would I want? I answered "invisibility" because honestly who wouldn't want that? But that night, after thinking about it, I decided what I really wanted was the ability to stop time. I had just been offered my dream job and was essentially working 2 jobs as we started prepping.  I was hurting and past my exhaustion point.  I was just trying to crawl to Spring Break.  When the bell rang and we left for spring break- I watched all the teachers leave looking as exhausted as I was- many talking about not coming back next year. As I was on the plane to Cancun I thought- there has to be a way to slow down time so I can catch up.

This virus, for me, has been a massively huge answer to my prayers.  I was able to spend 3 weeks with my girls in Utah- which I would never be able to do- and be there for Rylan's birth and Marisa's wedding.  I was able to hold both grand-kids every day, spend time walking to see animals, experiences I will treasure forever.  I have been able to walk every day outside with Bob and spend time together in the evening, and knock of riding the train across Colorado!  I have been able to focus on me, my health, and most of all my soul.

Yoga and the peace it brings has been life-changing.  But more than that I have had more time for the scriptures which has been invaluable.  The last several conferences have mentioned many times over and over that we MUST be reading the Book of Mormon and studying the general conference talks every single day.  "Every day, every day, every day."  They have also said we have to make ourselves worthy for personal revelation and stay on the covenant path- no one else can do that for us.  I was reading before but not consistently- my reading, studying, immersing in that every day has again, been literally life-changing.

Now it's a habit and priority which I am grateful for.

I had one very profound A-ha moment recently while I was on the treadmill watching X-men.  I wasn't planning to share but its been nudging me for weeks so here you go. There is a part in "Xmen: Days of future past" (the confusing movie with time travel) where the younger Charles Xavier visits the old Charles Xavier in the future.

Long story short: he had gone into Cerebro after many many years.  For those who aren't up on X-men- in Cerebro he can see every single person in the world and can feel all their pain and joy.  It is overwhelming- but he is the only one in the world who can do it because of his "superpower".  He tells the older Charles "I just can't do it, there is so much pain." The older one says: "It's the greatest gift we have, to bear their pain without breaking." I almost fell off the treadmill.  For the 1st time it made clear sense (plus the visual in Cerebro) how the Savior could feel and experience and carry our pain so we don't break.  What a beautiful sentiment.  I am grateful how we can learn line upon line and grateful for a Savior who knows my physical pain and is the Master Healer.  (Even if these A-ha moments come in the middle of Xmen!)

Hoping you all have a Happy Sabbath- we love and miss you all!

Going 1:1

Because our district is going 1:1- meaning every kid gets their own computer- we had to go in and get all the computers ready.  All 5th and 6th graders will get a brand new one their 1st day of class.  So Deb (the other intermediate librarian) and both of our assistants had to come in and process 1300 computers with no other help (because of that fun virus).  We had to unbox, label each cord and computer and cover those labels with tape, sort by homeroom teachers, and rebox it up for transport to the schools.  It took us 14 hours.

I have some very mixed feelings about school.  I am very upset at our governor.  She has declared we have to go back on-site.  I want to go back and be in the library with kids but at the same time we are a red state meaning we still have very high cases and deaths here.  I have had several bad dreams about me contracting it and dying.  I can get a dr note to opt out of on site this year- but then I lose my library and I have to teach courses and grade them online every day- the kind of teaching I hate.  I know there are no good answers so for now, I am trusting that Heavenly Father will protect me as I take precautions to isolate myself in the library and protect me. The district said to keep them posted and if I ever feel I need to move to just online and teach I can.  Seriously- what is happening?!