Aftermath and Progress

We finally were able to find someone to cut the tree that fell across the septic system, the pool shed and the fence. As you can see from this picture below, there were some big branches driven into the ground from the force of the tree falling. One in particular is giving us some headaches. Danny has been unable to get it out of the ground. He has dug down to the crushed rock on top of the septic system and it still isn't budging!! This is going to be a tough one but we'll figure something out.

Below is a picture of the shed and fence damage. The shed is actually twisted. It's hard to see in the picture but the force of the twisting caused a window to bust out of the shed. The pool cover has several holes in it and will definitely need to be replaced. At this point, our damage is up around $8,600.00. The insurance company will only cover up to $500.00 to get a tree removed (and that's only if it does property damage). Try getting a tree that size removed for less. It was an eye opener for us!
We've seen a lot of other people with much more damage than we had so we feel lucky but it's a lot of work to get all of the work done and get estimates. I can't imagine how people with worse damage are dealing with it.

I scream, you scream......

No, you are not seeing things.....and yes, this person is indeed my daughter in law getting her dog, Maggie and ice cream from the ice cream truck that comes by their house. Maggie goes crazy when she hears the truck playing music. This dog could seriously have her own television show.

Pregnancy Update......

Here is the most recent picture of Melissa and Gavin. I cannot believe how big her belly is getting and she was only 4 months pregnant in this photo! We find out the sex of the baby on May 17th. She is feeling pretty good overall and hasn't had any big issues...just the usual, being tired and a few headaches. She has been lucky so far.

Planes, Trains and Boats...

Melissa, Tiffany and I will be taking the Amtrak "Downeaster" to Boston on May 12th. I'm looking forward to spending the day with them. We will probably just do the usual, shopping and eating of course. Danny will be flying to North Carolina to meet up with some friends to move a boat from North Carolina to Florida. They'll be doing some fishing and relaxing along the way. I think this will be a great little get away for both Danny and I.

Deidre and Dave will be going to Florida this coming Saturday. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun for them and give them plenty of time to just kick back and relax. I'm jealous! I wish we were going! Have fun guys!! I'll post again soon.

Sisters and Cousins

On Sunday, I hosted what I ended up calling (for some strange reason) Cousinfest. Well, it was actually just more of my female cousins getting together. We had a great turnout. There was only one cousin who had to work and could not make it. We had more food than we knew what to do with....(yes, even us!) I was especially pleased to see my sister Debbie come and make an appearance. It meant a lot to me that she made the effort. We made a few frozen drinks although nobody was really in the mood to drink much and told a few good stories. I created a family trivia game which ended up being a lot of fun. It's great for us to get together without the usual family craziness that sometimes tends to happen in our family. I'm hoping that this allow us to get to know each other a little better as adults and be able to stay in touch. Here are a few more pictures from our gathering.

Back row: Jamie, Cindy K., Patty Ann, Corina, Karen and Cyndi D. - Middle row: Debbie E., me and Cheryl D, - Front row: Lisa M. and Lisa D. (missing - Debbie B. & Andrea)

Back: me, Cyndi, Debbie E., Lisa D., Debbie B. Lisa M. and Corina in the front

SISTERS

Me, Lisa and Debbie

Cindy & Cheryl

Corina and Karen

Cyndi & Jamie

Lisa & Debbie

I'm still working on a picture of Patty Ann who doesn't have any sisters. I didn't get one of her but as soon as I do, I'll be sure to post it for everyone to see!! I'll post again soon. We have lots of baby showers and other events planned for the summer so we'll probably do this again in August I'm guessing. I hope we have another good turnout! I'll post again soon.

Rain, Wind & The Lake!!

I guess the weather is definitely in charge lately. In a matter of 10 days we've gone from warm and sunny to fourteen inches of heavy and wet snow to our latest visitor from Mother Nature. This first picture is a view down the road in front of our house. As you can see, the tree that we have talked about getting cut down (because we cannot see coming out of the driveway) is being taken care of by Mother Nature. See my earlier blog for pictures of this same tree with broken branches from the winter storm last week. I started out my day by driving down the road and seeing a small river across the end of my road that had a couple of cars sitting in it. I was amazed at how flooded the intersection was. They were in the midst of closing it down so of course I turned around. After getting to the intersection at the other end of the road, I was stopped and they were going to shut the whole road down. I called Danny (who had already left for work) and suggested that he might want to work from home because I wasn't sure if we'd be able to get back home later. These are the only two ways to my house. Meanwhile, I went to work and planned on seeing how the morning went. Danny went home and called to tell me about the branch when he got home. Here is some of the damage from that branch:
















That would be our fence and pool shed. As you can see, this is a really big branch. It slammed down across our septic system and tore through the fence and completely shifted the shed, busting open the door and breaking a window. We are not sure about the equipment inside yet. Our snow blower, lawn mower, pool equipment and lawn furniture are in there so I guess once we can get in there to see, we'll know what we're up against. Meanwhile..........yes there's more.......Danny took the dogs out down through the basement and things looked dry. Less than 30 minutes later, there was water pouring into the (finished!) basement. We have a lot of unpacked stuff down there like pictures and of course my prized dining room set! I came home after sneaking through some barriers to get here. Dana came over and brought his sump pump for us to use. This brother of mine.....ya gotta love him. He's always there when we need him. We used a squeegee (sp?) and a push broom along with the sump pump and worked on getting the water out. This pumps 30 gallons of water per minute and it ran for about 90 minutes.....that's equal to about 2700 gallons of water out of our basement! Boy, am I glad that I suggested Danny work from home. My dogs were crated in the basement. For those of you who know me....that would not have been a good situation for me to walk into! We had to take everything out of the basement and move it to the garage.....so much for me unpacking.....I'm throwing a lot of it out! My family pictures were okay and the dining room set didn't fair too badly. Some of the other furniture got wet but I'm not overly worried about that. Here are some pictures of what we have always wanted.....a lake in our backyard.....well.....not one that threatens our home but I guess this is the next best thing:













































Danny and I were just talking yesterday about how lucky we are to have come out of the last six months and have landed on our feet so well.
So....do we still feel lucky? Yes, we really do. We are lucky that we were able to come home. We are lucky that the dogs didn't get too stressed out. We are lucky that we didn't lose anything significant. We are lucky that the tree didn't land on the house. We are soooo lucky to have such an awesome and supportive family who are always there when you need them most. We are so lucky that our kids are all home safe and sound and nobody got hurt. And....we are lucky that we have insurance. :-)

HAPPY SPRING!

NOT!!!!!!!!!

Boy, I was getting pretty excited when we were finally getting some warm weather these past few weeks and then out of nowhere......BANG! We get hit with this damn snowstorm that surprised us all. Danny was out of town that night. We got 14" of very wet heavy snow here at my house. We have huge pine trees in the front yard and very big limbs came crashing down sometime in the middle of the night due to the weight of the snow on the branches. My neighbor also has a couple of big pine trees and his were worse. I slept like a log (no pun intended) that night and never heard the limbs snapping off the trees. At some point in the night my neighbors tree had a very large limb fall across the road. They had to use a chain saw to cut it up.......all of this while I slept (in the front part of the house) and never heard a thing. I guess it's a good thing they all fell away from the house. If they had fallen where I was sleeping, I guess I would not have known they were coming anyway. In any case, what a mess this storm made. I got up that morning not knowing how I was going to manage to get out of my driveway.....Danny had put the snow blower in the shed (over a hill) because he didn't think we'd need it anymore this year ;-) I ended up shoveling two tire paths out of the driveway to get out. Since Danny was out of town for the rest of the week and I was not in the mood to deal with the mess, I had the driveway plowed. Bub and Tiff had no power that night so they came over and spent the night. He shoveled the shed out and used the snow blower for the rest of the yard. I hope it's truly the last storm this year. I'm ready to see what it looks like under our pool cover! We never did get to actually see it. I'm ready to haul the mixer out!!

The Baking Babies

We had a really nice day on Easter. We ended up having twelve people over. Despite the fact that I am not considered to be a cook, everything came out pretty good. Nothing was cold or too dry so that's all that counts I guess. My wonderful son is becoming quite a cook as you can see from above. He made some fantastic homemade rolls. They were a big hit. Tiffany made her now famous coconut cake (also seen above) which everyone loves.....as you can see, Dana REALLY was impressed! There was not a crumb of either one when everyone left for the day. There was however an angel food cake that Ann made (she made two) with some strawberries and whipped cream. Danny and I managed to take care of that too. We didn't want anything to go to waste!

Danny has been traveling quite a bit lately. I'm hoping that things quiet down a little bit and we will be able to enjoy the spring and summer. I'll post again soon!