Allie Singing Secondhand Serenade

Kyle plays "Fall For You" by Secondhand Serenade on his guitar to Allie all the time. She now knows the words and can sing along. Here is a video of her yesterday and today singing the first verse and chorus.

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Pictures from Ike

Yippee for having the Internet again! Time to post our pictures from the hurricane. At 4 AM on Saturday morning I woke up to the SCARIEST wind ever. I honestly don't know what I was expecting, but I truly wasn't expecting to be that frightened. I was just glad Allie slept through it. We threw Allie's new mattress in front of our window and just prayed that the wind wouldn't break the window. At times our walls were shaking so hard I feared our building wouldn't withstand. The winds were 110 MPH sustained and gusts up to 130 MPH. I just can't imagine what a CAT 3, 4 or 5 hurricane would be like. At about 6 AM we heard some drops hitting our coffee table in our family room and we went to see what was leaking. Our ceiling fan was the culprit.

We don't have renters insurance so we new it was important to salvages as much as we could. We pushed our stuff out of the way and placed Allie's old baby bath under the fan to catch the water. It starting coming down so hard and fast and was splashing everywhere so we moved our couches into the dining room area. We placed our pool floaty which had small pockets to catch water and a plastic tarp under the pool trying to save the carpet which eventually proved useless. Throughout Saturday we emptied all of the pots, pans, and buckets more than 6 times.

Then we noticed parts of the ceiling paint were bulging so we popped them so it wouldn't spread. It did spread and we had to move our furniture again from the dining room to Allie's bedroom.
Here is Allie hiding out in the closet while Kyle and I were trying to save our stuff. She was so good to sit in there with the flashlight (we had no power) playing with her stacking cups. The winds were still really strong at this point plus we didn't want her playing in the disgusting yellow water.

Here are some pictures of us trying to save our apartment.

Well we packed up our priceless items and took them out to the car and left for our friends house. It is really funny what you consider priceless when the possibility comes that you might lose everything. Here is a picture of our roof. You can kind of see the missing shingles...some over our family room and more over our master bedroom.
Our parking lot...not our car.

We spent the day over at our friends house, the Painters. Talk about LIFE SAVERS! Allie had a blast playing with Zach and Lily and it was nice having a dry place to hang out until the storm passed. We did stay overnight in a one-bedroom place our manager let us use but then we were back over at the Painters the next morning. We hung out with them Saturday, Sunday and Monday - you guys rock! After breakfast we went back to our place to see what damage was done through the night. Thankfully Allie's bedroom was still dry (where we stashed all of our furniture). Some Sheetrock from our ceiling had fallen and made a huge mess. Our carpets were completely soaked.

Later that day more of our ceiling fell.

These are cute vinyl lettering's my mother-in-law gave me that are on my dining room wall. Honestly I can find SO many things to be thankful for. 1) We are all safe 2) We had friends to take us in 3) Food to make it through 4) A dry place to sleep 5) A new apartment within 3 days 6) Wonderful men in the ward to help us move 7) Family and friends who love and worried for us 8) Our furniture saved 9) Power back on within 2 days 10) Kyle's job who let him take a couple of days off of work paid to get our family moved....seriously the list could go on! We definitely felt blessed and watched over.

Here is Lily, Allie & Zach. I don't think they even realized what was going on. Allie was just thrilled to spend all day with her buddies.

So now we are settled in our new apartment. It is nice and we like that it is on the first floor. We do miss our fireplace...well mostly me because I don't have a place for my Christ picture. I apologize I haven't gotten back to many of your calls & emails...talk about a crazy week! Thanks for your concerns and love.

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Here are some pictures of Allie and Lily taken a day before the hurricane. We took them to the park and they loved the swings. Aren't they adorable!!

Ike Update

Pictures from the damage will come later but I thought I would let you all know that we are doing fine. We took a beating being on the 3rd floor of our building. Our family room started to leak at about 6 am yesterday and continued to leak throughout the day and last night. We moved all of our furniture to Allie's bedroom (the ONLY room in the house that wasn't leaking). Some of the ceiling in the family room is now on the floor with insulation everywhere. We tried SO hard to keep the carpets clean and put pots, pans, mixing bowls, casserole dishes, Allie's baby bath tub, and sheets of plastic under all of the holes in the ceiling but eventually it was just too much. Our apartment is now unlivable but we are so grateful that our apartment manager is letting us crash in a one bedroom apartment in a different building. We are going to be staying there for 2 days until we move to another apartment on the first floor for good. I think it will take too long for them to fix our apartment so they are just letting us switch.

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A big shout out to our friends Dave & Tara Painter who have let us spend all day at their house. It has been nice for Allie to have friends to play with and for us as well. I'm using their computer right now to post this. Thanks a million!

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I probably won't be posting for a while until we get all moved in and unpacked. Thanks for all of your prayers and well wishes...we definitely feel blessed for the way everything has turned out.