Packing Out

It has been a challenging few weeks as we have been working on the long process of getting our house back to normal after The Great Flood of 2014. we dealt with giant drying machines, digging our stuff we need on a daily basis from piles created in a mad dash to save them from water damage, finding a general contractor for repairs, and then the regular craziness of our lives on top of all of that.

Lately my anthem I sing to myself throughout the day is Hillsong's new song called Oceans.  I think the name is quite fitting considering how water has had such an impact on our lives lately.  Here's a video of the song I found on YouTube:

Today we start on the next step in the recovery process.  It's time for "Packing Out" in order to get our stuff out of the way so the flooring crew can tear up the old floors and put in the new.  Movers are here now and they are packing up everything in the downstairs of our house.  That's half of our house!  They will move everything into a storage pod that was delivered to our driveway this morning. 

The unit seems a little small to me.  It will need to hold a couch, washer, dryer, sofa table, long school table and chairs, kitchen table and chairs, china cabinets, multiple book cases, plus boxes and boxes of school books, board games, pots/pans, etc.  I'm not sure if they are packing out the dishwasher and stove too but that might need to be in there too.  And this list only includes the things on the affected floor area.  The playroom is a step higher than the rest of the floor so it didn't get water damage but they are talking about packing it out too in order to keep everything from getting dirty during the demolition process.  Apparently removing wood flooring that is glued to concrete can be a very involved and messy process.  There was talk about chunks of concrete coming up with it and having to level things out before putting in the new flooring.
The kids were quite excited watching the whole delivery process. I had to get this quick video of how the truck moved the unit into place:

I called the town yesterday to see if the storage unit could be on the street but they said that is against the town code.  The lady said it would have to go in my driveway yet even then a code enforcement officer could give us a warning to have it moved in some time frame.  Hopefully this will be a quick process and it won't cause any problems with the town.
Insurance is putting us in a hotel starting tonight.  It could be up to 10 days so we've been hoping to get a hotel with a pool so the kids can have something to do during school breaks (Yes, I'm bringing all of our school stuff with us!  The school year isn't over just yet.)  We have really been hoping to stay Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine because their amazing water park is available for guests to use. There have been issues with insurance covering it but Stuart has been on the phone with insurance several times this morning and he is at Great Wolf right now with the kids trying to work out the details.  I literally just got a text message from Stuart that said he worked it all out.  He said the kids are very excited.  He's amazing! That will make for a wonderful "staycation" for the next 10 days...and I can tell you we could all use a little down time right now.
The movers are busy bees downstairs.  They discovered that a wet box had been on our dining room table (aka school table) and after sitting there for a few weeks now has a moldy spot on the wood.  Most of it wiped off but some has gotten down into the wood. 
I think I heard one of the movers say that it might take them 2 days to pack it all out.  And I think there is a concern that it won't all fit in that storage unit after all.  Just another bump in the road but I keep reminding myself that Jesus is with us and He's got this all under control.