long time no see.
i do have a reason for my absence.
we were hit by the great flood of Nashville.
it's being referred to as the "flood of a thousand years", as in that's how often a flood like this might occur here.
we woke up on the morning of May 2nd to someone banging on our front door, telling us they were evacuating our neighborhood and we had 5 minutes to get out of our house.
bobby and i thought that this woman must be a little loopy and was completely overreacting.
yes, it had been raining a lot, but we are in Nashville. we are not near an ocean, or even any really big lakes. just a few rivers here and there.
so Bobby went outside to go check things and out. when he came back about 10 minutes later, the water was already knee high across the way.
enter panic mode.
i grabbed diapers and milk and Caleb.
Bobby grabbed Bella - crate and all.
we walked out the door saying:
"do we set the alarm?"
"do we even lock the door?"
we got loaded into the car, and my amazing husband had enough sense to stop us right then, grabbed my hand, and said a prayer.
(have i ever mentioned how much i love this man and how lucky i am to have him?)
we tried to go to my parent's house. they live 5 minutes away, and we couldn't get there. every road there was already under.
even the interstate.
enter major panic mode.
we called my aunt and uncle, who also live close but up on a hill. they were so amazing and gracious. they let us invade their home, even though they had no electricity and part of their ceiling had caved in from all the water.
so we stayed there that day and night. when the electricity finally came back on, we stayed glued to the news coverage, which constantly showed our neighborhood, completely under water. it looked like our house was at least 3 feet under, maybe even more.
we went to bed feeling sick, uneasy, and completely helpless.
the next morning we drove over, just to see what was going on, and we were completely shocked to see that the water had already gone back down, and we could get into our house.
the water had been right around 3 feet deep all through our lower level. almost everything that was on our lower level had to be thrown out.
here is a picture looking down the sidewalk from in front of our house. that is my sofa on the right, just sitting out on the front lawn.....
the trash in our neighborhood accumulated so quickly. it was absolutely unbelievable to see how much there was.
here is husband standing in the middle of it all, to show just how much there was.....
they quickly started tearing the house apart. floors ripped out...walls knocked down...cabinets yanked out.
this is a shot of part of our living room and dining room.....
when the guys were knocking down the walls, they didn't want to take this down. so they hung it in the middle of the living room and left it there for everyone to see.....
it was such a great reminder in the midst of it all.
it is hard to watch your house being torn apart. it is hard to see your stuff sitting outside like garbage. it is hard to see the toys that your baby played with a few days earlier thrown into a trash pile.
every time i thought i had accounted for everything we had lost, i would remember something else that was gone.
not the material things. as much as i really liked some of our things, that wasn't what really mattered.
we lost pictures. Caleb's baby book. Caleb's newborn handprints and footprints. my maternity journal. our wedding album.
but as hard as the last six weeks have been, we are ok.
we have amazing family and friends. they showed up for us in ways that absolutely floored us. we are so grateful for each and every one of them.
we have an amazing God. He watched over us and protected us, and we are continually blessed by His faithfulness.
