Two Years

Two years ago today our personal hell began. Two years ago today we were thrown into one of the worst experiences of our lives (and believe me, we've been through a lot).

It was about 9:30 am. We were all having a bit of a lazy morning. It was a little rainy & gloomy out and we didn't have anywhere to go, so we were just hanging out in the living room. We hadn't even turned on the TV yet. It was April in KS~ a yucky windy storm was not at all unusual. Then it all got quiet and an ugly shade of green. We had about enough time to think "huh. That's strange..." and then it hit. The wind was so loud it literally roared and it made this horrible "honking" noise (as my son Mark describes) as the forceful wind nearly popped the windows right out of their frames. We were so stunned we didn't even get the chance to run to the basement or do any of the things you're supposed to do. And within about three minutes it was all over. We were all fine (even the animals outside) and that's what has kept me sane through this whole ordeal. My family is safe~ stuff can be replaced.

So once the storm had completely passed, Mathew and I went outside to assess the damage. The roof was damaged pretty badly, but repairable. Shingles blown everywhere and trusses broken, but livable. Gutters all blown off, 100+ year old evergreen tree knocked down, wood propelled into my windshield of my car and shattered, solid cast iron patio furniture blown 1/2 mile into the corn field and dropped so hard it bent in half, and a barn that was pushed off its foundation and only standing on a splinter.
We're all fine, this stuff can be fixed. No big deal. So we immediately called the insurance company.

And we're still not sure if this was a micro-burst or a quick touch down of a tornado. We called the weather service and the closest location was 30 miles away. They never did get an accurate measurement of the high winds in our area at all much less this. (I'm sorry. 40 mph wind doesn't do this kind of damage).

So if that was the worst of it, I'd just add it to the list of unfortunate incidents in our life and move on. But oh no, of course it can't be that simple.

Insurance company didn't come out for a WEEK AND A HALF! The guy was a jerk and didn't do anything to help us. And so began the fight. We had to purchase and place our own tarps in the mean time to futilely try and keep the water out of our house. The guy tried to claim that the storm couldn't have caused the magnitude of damage to the trusses (as he's looking at this massive tree twisted and broken in half in our yard) and wouldn't give us a dime or aid yet. Mathew was on the phone constantly trying to get help. Meanwhile storm after storm after storm rolled through. It's April in KS after all. The water literally poured into the house. The shop vac couldn't keep up with the water and the floors needed to be ripped out. Then the drywall couldn't hold onto the massive amounts of water anymore and the ceilings caved in. In some places right above where we stashed furniture in an attempt to salvage it from all the water.

After SIX weeks we finally got the manager of our insurance company's branch to come out and he brought along with him a representative from ServPro. They took one look at the place and said "you can't live here! We're going to pack up all your stuff for you and give you a place to stay while we repair the damage.". I was so relieved I cried!! Thank God we're finally getting help!!

Nope. Of course not.

We stayed in a hotel room... All five of us in one room... For 3 weeks. No house to stay in on the horizon. No money coming in for repairs. Nothing. Mathew, the real estate agent had enough, and in one afternoon found us a place to rent. (And yeah. During all of this phase we suffered yet another miscarriage. Why not add insult to injury).

So we moved into the rental house. Only a very few of our belongings given back to us so we could function. Insurance company, even though they weren't giving us enough money for repairs and we were handling it almost all on our own, said that we had enough time to fix the house come December and quit paying for the rental.

From there we had to hop from place to place. Friends houses, multiple hotels. Ten "moves" I had to put my kids through while we fought for our home. Meanwhile Mathew had to fight with insurance day in and day out to no avail. They were pulling crap like dividing our claim into two separate claims: storm damage, then water damage. Even though the water was because of the storm and because of their negligence.
(Oh, and did I forget to mention we were robbed THREE times at this point in my story? Oh yes. They left two trailers full of tools and supplies in the yard so we could work on the house and people saw that as an open invitation to help themselves. Thousand and thousands of dollars lost. Awesome.)
Then they said they wouldn't cover the barn because it wasn't on our policy until Mathew had to prove it to them. They would only pay for a tenth of the water damage because the basement started to grow mold... But the mold was because of the water and it sat because of their neglect, and it got there because of their neglect...

Omg I'm starting to feel panicky again just rehashing all of this. Let's just say that I could go on and on for a week with all of the insurance stuff we had to fight for.

So come August, we realized that we could no longer afford to keep the house and finish the repairs with what we used from our saving and with what little they gave us, so we essentially gave up. But decided to start our life over in Vermont. Now was as good a time as any. And I'm so glad we did!

Now we finally have a home again. Our own beds. My kids have their toys back. Little things we very much missed that we couldn't have for the longest time. We have our life back.


So now, at the two year mark, we think we're at the point where we've gotten every dime from them they'd be willing to give and it doesn't add up to more than a fraction of what we are owed. So now, two years after the start of our nightmare:

WE ARE SUING THE PANTS OFF NATIONWIDE INSURANCE!

I hate this guy.  :/

Word to the wise: if you have nationwide, drop them now!! They are NOT "on your side."

So, now we are hoping this is the beginning of the end. That we can finally finish all of this and put it behind us.
Wish us luck!
 I don't think I have much more fighting in me.

Tragedy Hits Home

I know I've made an attempt to convey some level of anonymity here.  I've refrained from naming the specific town in Vermont that we're now calling "home."  (Facebook friends & local friends of course know exactly where I live, but this is a public blog & I have readers that I've never met).  What I'm about to share will more than likely give that away completely, but I've decided that that little piece of pseudo-security was worth sacrificing in light of what I'm about to share. 

Let me start by saying this.  Vermont is ranked one of the safest states in the country.  This is a place where you can leave your car running in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot while you run in for your morning coffee.  A place where we were actually laughed at by our landlord when we asked for the house key (said he hasn't locked his door for 30 years!).  I looked up the latest statistics & Vermont's murder rate per 100,000 people is one.  One.  Missouri's is 7.  (Not to mention all of the other criteria they calculate.  And keep in mind that there are 600,000 people in our whole state whereas Missouri has millions).  And I looked back as far as 2001 and there hasn't been a murder in this city specifically in the last 11 years at least.
Mathew & I were raised in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.  (Currently ranked #3 in the world.  Go STL! lol).  We certainly weren't in the heart of the violence by any means, but heard enough of the tragic things that went on from day to day on the news & in the papers that we essentially became numb to it.  It was life.  But now we're far far away from all of that.  In a place where it's so easy to get lulled into that sense of security.  Where it's easy to forget that bad people can truly be anywhere.

Last Sunday, a woman was reported missing.  A woman about my age, a mom, a science teacher at the Academy.  Her car was found on the side of the road in a neighboring town still running with her two year old son, unharmed, still in the back seat.
Monday she was found dead.
Wednesday, a husband & wife were arrested & confessed to the entire nauseating & senseless crime.  All of the horrific details were given to the public and, while I won't spell them out for you here, I will tell you that it was unbelievably awful and seemingly completely without motive.  His words were that he wanted to "get a girl."  No more, no less.  He only knew her because he plowed her driveway a couple years ago & called her because he knew she would be good-natured enough to come to his "aid" when he said he needed help with a broken down car.

I never had the priviledge of knowing this woman.  But from what I hear she was a great person & an inspiring teacher, and that she absolutely adored her son.  It's absolutely horrible that something like this would happen to her, or anyone at all.

So why am I telling you about all of this?  Well, in a weird way it has made me so much more proud of where I live.  Yeah, I know I just told you that a really really bad guy just did the most horrible thing a person could do not far from my home.  But what I haven't told you yet is how my town reacted.

Since Monday, our town has been eerily quiet & somber.  There are 8,000 people in this town.  I'm certain that she didn't know *everyone.*  Yet everyone was saddened.  It seemed as if everyone lost a member of their own family.  Come Tuesday, there were luminieres lining the whole street leading to the academy where she worked, each personally handmade by her students, and great big "We love you Ms. Jenkins!" signs hanging from the building.   By Wednesday there were donation collections & fundraisers popping up in every business & at every register at the grocery store asking for donations to support her son who was left behind.  All week there have been moments of silence for her on the radio & dedications in her honor.  And today.  Today was the most impressive of all.  There was a memorial service for her this afternoon.  And today, the entire town has been draped in pink.

Every tree is lined with pink ribbon, many front porches are decorated in pink.  Even the cars at the three car dealerships in town are covered in pink balloons.  And nearly every. single. person. in this town is wearing pink.  Even my boys went to school today wearing pink bandannas around their heads in support.  Absolutely no one has turned a blind eye to this.  NO one is going about their daily business as if nothing has happened.  NO one is allowing this abhorrent couple to gain anything by what they've done.

So yes, in light of this recent event, I am even more proud of the place we've chosen to raise our family.  We of all people know that you can't run & hide from bad people.  There are going to be people no matter where you are that make bad choices.  But I am so proud to know that I not only live in a beautiful place, I live in a truly beautiful community.  And that is what makes me proud to call this place "home."

American Pickers

Ever watched that show?  Fascinating.  How two people know so much stuff about random crap is beyond me.  And the people that hoard said random crap are equally entertaining!  Mathew watches it from time to time & sometimes I watch it too.  (And frankly, sometimes just watching the show about them digging through piles & piles of junk stresses me out too much, so sometimes I don't!  I know, I'm whacko).

Anyhoo, When we acquired this crazy house, we also acquired all of the JUNK that this elderly couple stored there over the last 30 some odd years.  Most of it truly was crap.  But some of it looked pretty cool!  Most of it not necessarily to our taste, but stuff that looked like it might have value to the right collector.  So, what did we do?  We sent an email to the American Pickers show!

No, we did not get selected to be on the show.  Don't get too excited. ;)

But, we found a guy to haul away all the scrap metal & we found an antique dealer or two to take some of the old furniture, and we unloaded truckfulls of trash to the dump & went on our merry way of tearing down the walls.  Most of the junk is long gone, but there still are a few things left hanging around that we haven't found homes for.

Old photo from what the house looked like when we bought it.  Awesome, huh?

Soooo, Mathew is at the house yesterday, working on the porch and a few other things, and this random dude just shows up.  (He almost took the day off.  Glad he didn't!)  Says he's a "picker" and saw us working on this house, and he wondered if he could take a look around.  Ok, cool.  Whatever.  Well this guy found quite a few things that he was excited to have!  Several of which we didn't think had value at all & we were just going to get rid of!  After it was all said & done, we made about 500 bucks from the random junk that was left lying around!  Plus that was a few less things we had to worry about hauling away.  Sweet! :)  How cool is that!

Now, all of the windows are in in the whole house and it already looks SO much better.  With all of this beautiful weather we've been having, we're having this weird "construction ADD" I like to call it.  ("Ooh, we could start this project next!  Oh wait, if we do this then it will help the outside look better.  Oh, but we really need to start on this part...")  Aah!  It's hard to decide where our priorities are at this point.  We're just so excited to be getting stuff DONE!  Fireplace footings are poured & the floor is cut out, but we had a freeze after that was started & the basement still isn't thawed out, so that's on hold.  Matt tore out half the front porch, but found that the brick under the window needs to be re-mortared before we can rebuild to porch, so that's stalled.  The weather's nice enough to finish the back roof, so that's being torn out as of today.  And Mathew is attending an electrician's class tonight to make sure he knows what he's doing to wire the electricity.  A little bit of a lot of things are being started.  I'll be excited to see what gets finished next! :)

On the homefront though, Mark has some exciting news.  He got his braces taken off!  Woohoo!  Such an exciting moment for a kid. 

He'll have to get them put back on in another year or two, but for now he's enjoying the freedom.  Gavin, on the same day, had to have two teeth pulled to move along his orthodontic journey. :(  Poor dude.  But he did a great job and the tooth fairy was quite kind, so he's okay with it. ;)  And Natalie?  Well she's just busy being her cute little self.
I'll update again soon! :)

Progress!

Such a catch 22. I'm sad to see winter go because here it is just so beautiful. Plus, we've been so busy with the house stuff & work & everything else that I feel like we didn't get to enjoy it as much as I would have liked to. (Next year, mountain fun every weekend, I'm tellin ya!) Now I'm not being totally naive, I'm sure we'll probably get slammed with another snow storm soon before it's all totally said & done, but for the last several days it has been niiiiicceee... and we've taken full advantage. I'm so happy to have warm weather! (Not you midwest people's version of warm lol! But we're ecstatic with our 50 degrees! ;)) We can actually go to the house & put in several hours worth of work & not have crying, shivering, miserable kids hanging on our legs. "Can we gooooo noooooowwww??" Oy.

Of course, with just my luck, as soon as we have this gorgeous weather I have to work nights the last couple of days & miss it. Bummer. But Mathew had a pretty funny story from today. (Well, funny for me because I wasn't there to deal with it! lol) So anyway, today he took Natalie & Copper to the house to do some work to let me have quiet in the house & get some sleep. Usually we'll tie him outside to play (no fence yet to just let him roam) but Mathew planned to put in a few windows, so he let the dog play inside & keep Natalie company instead. (He's needy & gets lonely all by himself.) So Matt's in the living room doing his thing with the windows & the thought does not occur to him that he has just created this great big gaping hole in the wall by taking the old one out. Copper thought "FREEDOM!" and seriously leapt out of the window and took off! (He he he!! I can laugh because I didn't have to chase him down the busy street!) Well, Mathew's not exactly Copper's number one fan. He tolerates him because the rest of us love him so much. But this seriously pissed him off lol. He chased him for a little while, about a couple of blocks up to the grocery store, when he said "screw it. I'm not chasing you anymore. Bye bye." So he turns around & starts to walk back to the house. Copper thinks, "well that's no fun" and just followed him home. End of story. Ha ha! That dog is lucky he's cute let me tell ya. ;)

So anyway, now we have all of the windows in the living room installed! WooHoo! I'm seriously so excited to finally see something be *improved* on the house now instead of just torn apart! I drove by to see it on my way out to work & was just beaming. Yay! No more boarded up window in the front! :) Matt says he was drawing a lot of attention too as he was putting them in. Everyone's out walking on this gorgeous day and he said at least 4 people stopped to talk to him. So here's what it looks like:

Yeah yeah. It's still ugly, but those windows make such a huge improvement!! He's hoping to finish the windows in at least the front of the house tomorrow. Yay! Hopefully I will be able to stay awake & help him out. We'll see how that goes... ;)

My hubby is broken :(

Poor Matt. He just can't seem to catch a break lately. Wednesday, while I was at work, Matt called me. (He *never* calls me at work unless it's emergent, so of course I panicked!) He says, totally calm, "So... I was picking up a box in the garage and I felt this 'pop!' come from my back. I suddenly felt, like, this whooshing sensation go all the way around me and I fell to my knees in so much pain and I couldn't get up. And now my leg's all numb too. So, should I go to your ER or the one here in town?"

WHAT!?!

So let me back up a bit for those of you who don't know Matt or don't know this about him. His back is pretty jacked up. He's 32 years old & feels at least twice that. See, he was rear-ended three times in the span of about a year and a half (I was there for one of them when I was 23 weeks pregnant with Natalie. Good times.), and his back was damaged so repeatedly that despite everything he does he's never quite been able to heal. He's been to orthopedists, chiropractors, various physical therapists... you name it. We had one PT in KC who was pretty great (we love Drew!), but once we moved away he went downhill pretty fast. And let's face it. He's stubborn as hell and has this "I can do it" attitude and doesn't recognize his limits sometimes. Fixing up this house hasn't helped.

So anyway, I digress. So this happens on Wednesday morning, while he's watching all three kids and I'm at work helpless. I tell him to call his doctors office & see what they think & get back to me. He does and sends me a quick text a few minutes later "heading your way. Call you when I get there." Ok cool. So his doctor thought it sounded serious enough that he needed the big hospital where they have facilities to do maybe an MRI and have specialists who can treat him. He gets to my hospital just as I'm about to send my patient for a procedure, so I had perfect timing to go see him and make sure he's okay. Or so I thought. I get down to the ED just 15 minutes after he told me he arrived. Just 15 minutes! And he was already walking out the door.

Oh my freaking God! Are you kidding me?

He says the doctor barely even looked at him. Told him to take three flexeril and lay down for three days (What!). He came in telling them he had a 10 out of 10 pain rating and no one even so much as offered him a tylenol! The doctor gave him a script for naproxen (aleve) and when Matt said that doesn't help him he just said "well then I don't know what to tell you." What!?! I was LIVID. And at that point there was nothing I could do to help. I just had to watch him walk out the door (unable to even stand up straight) with my three kids in tow so I could go back to work. Words cannot express how angry I was at how he was (not) treated.

So that night & the next day he loaded up with advil, ultram, & flexeril to bring his pain level from a 10 to about an 8. I insisted he call the dr again & go in to see her. Thank God for the nurse practitioner!! :) I do love nurse practitioners. They seem to take the time to listen so much more than doctors are ever able to do.

Anyway, she was pretty certain that he herniated a disk & she gave him this suped-up attack plan to finally help him actually diagnose & heal his back! Yay! Steroids for a week, x-ray, appointments for a spine specialists (& subsequent MRI with them), and a highly recommended physical therapist. Yay! She was going to prescribe some pain meds for the night before he started the steroids, but thought the advil/ultram/flexeril concoction would work just as well. Ok. Cool. That night (Thursday) we went to a party with my work friends & he did pretty well on all of that. Except we forgot one thing.

Steroids don't work for two to three days. And you can't take advil or ultram while on them.

CRAP!

I have never seen this man so miserable. It was torture just to watch him. And the NP was out of the office on Friday and the nurse that took his call didn't do a damn thing to help him either. So he had to suffer until yesterday when he finally started to notice some improvement.

I am so incredibly sick of how horribly my husband has been treated. For years really. His doctor in KC treated him like a drug seeker and only doled out a few ultram a month after numerous calls for refills. (Ultram! It's seriously no stronger than advil and that's the strongest thing he's ever taken!) And the ED too! I know Mathew is a pretty stoic guy. I can take one look at him and know he's in unbelievable pain, but to someone who doesn't know him he may not look that bad on a day to day basis. He's not the guy to scream in pain. He'll carry on a conversation. But with this it was obvious how badly he was hurting, and it makes me so sad and angry that our society has switched from helping those who hurt with the ungodly amounts of resources we have at our fingertips, to immediately assuming a person is a drug addict if they ask for pain relief. It's horrible! And I can't tell you how hard it is to be a nurse, a person who's job it is to relieve pain & suffering to the best of my ability, and come home & look at the man I love more than anything in this world & not be able to help him.

So anyway, I'm impressed if you made it this far in my little rant. He's doing a little better for now. Needless to say I have no idea what kind of damper this puts on our timeline for fixing the house, but that's not a priority right now. We'll deal with that as it comes. PT appointments are for tomorrow. Say some prayers that we can finally make him better!

Spring Break! Wait, what??

Something in my boys' schedule snuck up on me yesterday that I completely forgot was coming so soon. Spring break!! Wait a second... it's February! (insert puzzled look here. I'm sure you've got one too!) It was explained to me at the start of school and I had completely forgotten that it was already upon us. You see, most schools in the midwest where we're from will have a traditional Spring Break in that it's, well, in the spring! There's nice weather, green grass to run in, maybe a staycation type fun planned by the family. That kind of thing. But here, spring isn't the exact same picture. People around here call spring "mud season." I'm sure you can imagine why. Snow actually sticks around all winter long and just piles ontop of itself. (I seriously got sad last week when we had a day of 40 degrees and it started to melt to the point I saw my first blade of brown grass for months!) Even with this warm-for-Vermont winter we're having it's been white all over. And it's funny to watch the weather on the news here and compare it to the St.Louis or Kansas City broadcasts. My whole life the weather man would act dissappointed that snow was coming, drivers would complain, parents would freak out that they needed to find childcare for another snowday off of school. But here, the weather guy says "Great news for the upper valleys, they'll be getting 3-7 inches overnight! Unfortunately it looks like it will just be rain down south...". Craziness! It's very weird to hear. But anyway, my whole point to my little sidetrack is that snow is celebrated here. Snow equals fun. And snow is what makes money for the Vermont/NewHampshire areas. (Skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, snowboarding, you get it). Soooo, break time is scheduled in the peak of the snowy season so the kids can get out and enjoy the snow! And with perfect timing, we got about 6 inches of snow last night! Woohoo! So hopefully we'll be able to at the very least take the kids sledding this weekend. It's kind of funny. You'd think with living in the mountains we'd have an abundance of places to take the kids to sled instead of boring flat Kansas. But we really do have to go out of our way to find a good spot. Most of the hills around here are either covered in trees, are too steep, have a building built into them, or end on a very busy street. So I hear the country club is "the" place to sled. I think we might go check it out! :)

And for the millionth time, I apologize again for the great big lag between posts. I finally finished my orientation period at work and hit the ground running. It has been rediculously busy and I have either been running for 12 hours straight at work or passed out at home recovering from running around for 12 hours straight at work lol! But I am LOVING my new job and feel like it's right where I need to be. It's a huge change of pace for me but it's awesome. And Mathew & I (mostly Mathew. He's been working his tail off) have finally gotten ALL of our belongings in storage gone through. Two full storage units have been eliminated & we are down to one. Tons have been sold/donated. Tons more at least repacked & consolidated. And now all I have is 10 more boxes of files to shred in my living room... yaaaaaayyyyy...... :/ (not so much). Almost all of the demo is done in the house. I just need to find the time to get there to bag up all of the debris. (Yuck!) And a brand new fireplace/chimney is in the process of being put in. Yep. Great big hole in the middle of the whole house. But it'll be awesome. I'll post pictures once we have something to show off! :)

Mommy Bragging Moment

I never wanted to make this blog a "look how cute my kids are" kind of space. But... look how cute my kids are! lol I just needed a moment to brag because they're so darn cute & I don't say it enough how great they really are. So I have a few videos because you all are far away, & hey. Videos are fun.

So my first is the one & only Miss Natalie. She's so darn funny. She loves to read books, especially before bedtime and in her three-year-old'ness she's starting to pre-read (i.e. memorize books but totally get the flow of reading pages.) So anyway, she asked me to videotape her reading her favorite book The Hound Finds a Friend so she "can watch it when [I'm] five." Hilarious.



Now, the boys, recently had a "talent" show at school. Each class did a skit and it was a riot. I wish I could show you the 45 minute-long version because it really was cute. (Especially the 8th grade boys wearing prom dresses! he he!!) But I have a little video of each of my guys. First up is Mark. His class chose to do "Fourth Grade's Got Talent" where each kid did something special. Some did gymnastics moves, some did impressive math problems. Mark showed off his spelling prowess:



And finally Gavin. His class decided to do a little dance to the song "Three is the Magic Number." Not Jack Johnson unfortunately, but Schoolhouse Rock. Still cool though. ;) Anyway, it's the whole song because it was so cute. If you can't tell, Gav is the guy riding the tricycle (LOL!) and holding the #15.



He he! I love my three little goofballs. :)

And, just for fun, here's a pic of the boys in a basketball game.

They're not the highest scoring team to be perfectly honest, but these guys have heart for sure! And they have a lot of fun, which is really most important.

Last but not least: quick house update. The storage is finally almost completely gone through! Halleluiah! Shouldn't be too much longer and we can eliminate the expense of the two smaller units. And most exciting: windows are ordered! Woohoo! So Matt has given himself the next two weeks to finish the demo so that he can be totally ready by the time they come in to get them installed. Fingers crossed! :)