Lots of long stories

After 7 (count them, 7!) full days of horrible stomach flu and one mental breakdown on my part, we were finally healthy ...and way behind on the house remodeling.  Brandan and I were taking turns working at the house.  I would go over in the early morning while he got ready for work and then he would go over while I put the kids to bed and stay way to late into the night.  Then, like a little miracle, Dan and Jill, Boe and Kamber came up for the weekend after his interview in Burns, WY.  They were completely amazing!  They spent 9 solid hours painting and working at the new house while their kids entertained Dash and Colt at the old house.  I seriously can't say how grateful we are for their help that weekend.

We've spent the last week working on the house every spare minute.  Brandan had a youth temple trip scheduled for this last weekend, and I'm sorry to say I wasn't sad when the Bishop had to cancel the trip because the roads to Billings are flooded out.  So we've been able to get most of our stuff moved.  We are moving in even though we don't have the carpet installed,..or an oven.  FYI : Never, ever, no matter what have contract work done by the Home Depot.

So we should be done moving by tomorrow, just in time for Brandan to go to Laramie for his Masters Program orientation day.  Despite it all, we are really excited to get into the new house and we feel super blessed to be getting such a good deal.

Dash loved to help with the moving.  He created his own "furniture dolly" with his Tonka truck.  He loaded that full toy box all by himself, including taking it down the front steps.

Other than the house, the other big story here is the weather.  It has been raining, and I mean raining, most every day for a couple of weeks now.  The water table is only 18 inches under ground here so all this rain really has no where to go and so there has been flooding.  Growing up along the Snake River, it makes since to me that a river might flood, but it is weird to see land miles and miles and miles away from a lake or river start flooding. 

Last Wednesday things got particularly crazy.  A huge storm moved in and dropped a ton of rain really quickly.  From our kitchen window we could see the cross street down the road literally flowing, complete with rapids and everything.  I was suppose to go to Newcastle to go visiting teaching so I waited for as long as I could and then headed out.  I couldn't cross the new river road so I found another street, but Main Street out of town was almost as bad.  The water was right under my bumper.  I was pretty terrified, but I just kept going and just a couple of miles out of town everything was dry...it hadn't even rained there!  The next day though, Upton was a mess.  The water broke up some of the asphalt in the streets and scattered it everywhere.  A couple of houses flooded and a business roof collapsed.  So, again, I guess we were pretty blessed to be completely untouched.

It's hard to tell by the picture but this street is flowing with water several inches deep all the way across.