where's waldo???

In a nutshell:

We have been back from Disney World for a couple weeks. Driving to Florida was quite an adventure. I LOVED every state we visited and LOVED seeing people I love along the way. I do have pictures to share at a later date.

Disney World. What can I say. I am a DW addict! WH and little A not so much. Thank heavens worker boy had fun! Even though his BF had tonsillitis and spent 3 days in bed. One of my BFs flew down and we tackled yet another Star Wars weekend! WH and little A never left the pool!

Driving home was yet another adventure with barely missing storms and tornados. But we have nothing to complain about as we made it home safely...........

To start off the adventure of the last two weeks let me just say I am JUST now sitting down to take a breath! Our house is high and dry. I wish I could say the same for so many others. Minot has experienced flooding they haven't experienced in over 100 years. Two of our friends have lost their homes completely.

Almost a week ago I got a text message from another. In it she made a comment that she was on her way to get sand bags........?????WHAT?????..We had no inkling their house was in danger. It was raining and the dykes that Minot was so busy building were failing. I texted the rest of the pink posse and we were off! Not an easy fete as at this point half our highways and back roads were barricaded off being flooded. WH went through them.

We got to our friends barely. The roads were covered in water.The need for sand bags was huge. So off we went. In the hour we were gone the water rose around their house over a foot. We sand bagged all we could. By the time we were finished you could see that the water was enveloping house after house inching its way to theirs. We put up as much stuff as we could and had to retreat. We barely made it out. The water came up past the tires on the truck. A lot of praying was going on.

The next day my wonderful friends (even the ones we had helped the night before) took off and helped in emergency evacuations around Minot. This was so tiring and SO heart wrenching. Watching panic on older ones who had no clue how to say goodbye to all they knew. And yet they did. We tried to help get treasured items up and out. One older gentleman broke my heart. He only cared about his mothers old iron bed. But when it came down to it he just wanted us to help his wife. We made sure we got that bed up. He was such a sweetheart. When he cried we all did.

It continued to rain. We just kept moving. When I went home that night I almost couldnt get home. This through me into the first panic attack I have had here. I had made little A stay home. I knew she was safe there. But WH at this point had left for Canada on a trip he couldnt cancel. So all I could think of was that I needed to find someone to get to her. I found a backroad though and finally did make it home. A 5 minute drive took almost a 1/2 hour. The next couple days the t.v. never went off. We were on flood watch. At this point I wasnt leaving again and over 10,000 people had been evacuated from Minot and the city was basically shut down to watch the river.

We are a couple days past the worst. The dykes held. And they have allowed almost half the evacuees back into their homes. So many have lost homes though. But the mid west spirit here is AMAZING! Complaints are few, thanking God for safe loved ones is plenty. In the next week we will be moving many back into their homes.My friends are trying to assess damage and go from there. It will be weeks before the water will let them back in. Right now they can only boat in. This is a picture of their home.

I have nothing to complain about and so much to be thankful for. Believe me I am too.