Trying to Get Back to Normal

So it's been over a week since the tornado ripped through my neighborhood and other parts of FLW. Well originally we thought that our house did not sustain any damage but after looking through the house today during our snow day we realized that parts of the ceiling appear to have done some shifting. My husband went and looked around our house and can't see any visible damage (although he didn't climb on the roof or anything) but he did notice trees down just a few feet from our back yard in the treeline. It's scary to think the tornado was closer than we initially thought. We are still truly grateful for our safety and that our home is still standing. We didn't come straight home after our utilities were restored though. We stayed with a good friend while our house had no power and then after driving back home through the devastated area chose to just stay with her until the weekend. If the boys had it their way they probably would have stayed there forever!

Kevin has been running around doing most of the claim stuff because even though our house didn't get damaged (I typed this before we noticed the damage in the ceiling) the power outage caused us to lose everything in our freezers and fridge. Kevin also received damage to his windshield and we had to claim that and it's already been replaced. The boys were able to go back to school right on time and I cannot say enough about the school district and the way they handled all of this. We received personal phone calls from each of their schools checking on our boys. Because we live in the housing area that was hit the hardest our boys names were on a list that we lost everything. Thankfully that wasn't true but the care and tenderness in which my boys were handled upon their return to school was overwhelming for me.

My friend and I spent a lot of the time after dropping kids off at school helping out at our USO with the tornado recovery. Oh my goodness, there are no words to describe the amount of support we have received from our Military families, our community and even those from far away. We've had trucks come from KS, LA, IL. I mean seriously, the building is overwhelmed with goods for our families.

Operation Homefront Missouri has been a wonderful support for us, clearing out their warehouses to help take care of our Military Families. (Sidenote: if you have items you want to donate to help rebuild their reserve, please do so, they are a wonderful organization!)

Life is slowly getting back to normal or was until we ran into snow days! Maybe I'll finally get the Christmas decorations down!

Here are a couple videos of the aftermath of the tornado and one of the actual tornado (can you say crazy person!)