Prepare for an overload of words and pictures here. September was a month that will go down in our life story as one of the craziest (and longest) months EVER! As I mentioned in my last post, the kids missed a day of school towards the end of August because of a tropical storm. The school builds in one "hurricane makeup day" every year, so it was no big deal - we figured they'd have to go to school that day to make it up. Who knew that was only the beginning?!?
On Labor Day, Sept. 4, the kids were off school for the holiday, and we started hearing on the news that a hurricane might be headed our way. It was still way far out, but people seemed a little more concerned than usual about it.
We weren't sure what to think, but we decided that I should head to Costco the next morning first thing (they were closed on Labor Day) to get a few more cases of water to add to our supply, just in case. Costco opens at 10am, but I had a feeling I should go early because other people might have the same idea. Wow. I arrived at 9:15am and was probably the 300th person in line (or more?). They ended up opening at 9:45am because so many people were there all the surrounding parking lots were packed and more people were arriving all the time. They had signs up saying there was a limit of 5 cases of water per household. I ended up waiting in line for an HOUR just to get back to where the water was, at which time I was informed that they had lowered it to only 3 cases per person beacuse they were running out too fast. They loaded them into my cart and I waited another 30 minutes in line to check out. On the way home I stopped to top off my car with gas, and waited in a 30 minute line and then had to get premium fuel because that was all that was left.
As a side note, Andy and I were scheduled to fly to Nebraska for a job site visit on Thurs-Sun, and our kids were going to stay with various friends.
On Tuesday evening some of our friends chose to evacuate, including some of the ones who were supposed to watch our kids. Plus, even if they weren't evacuating, we didn't feel like we could leave our kids alone during a hurricane while we left. We looked and looked for plane tickets to take them with us, but everything was sold out because of evacuations. We weren't in a mandatory evacuation zone, but the governor had urged that if people had a place to go and a way to get there, they should voluntarily evacuate.
We were able to reschedule our job trip for 2 weeks later, and then we chose not to evacuate Naples for a few reasons. It's really hard to explain, and I know that for people who weren't here (or in Texas before theirs hit), it's really easy to judge and say "why didn't people just LEAVE?!" First, the hurricane was still at least 5-6 days out, and nobody was at all sure if it would even reach us. They can change paths so much over the course of that many days - you have no idea where it'll go or if it'll fizzle out, or what. Plus, Andy was still assigned to go to clinicals, and the kids still had school. Also, we live way down the peninsula. We're 6-7 hours south of the Florida border, and Naples was already out of gas at many stations. With just one freeway going up the West coast to take people out of the state, we were already hearing stories of people having to drive way off the freeway on huge detours and wait in 1+ hour lines to get any gas. Traffic was horrendous, and all hotels within 8 hours of here were sold out. It seemed insane to risk getting stranded with no gas and/or no place to stay when there was a fairly good chance the hurricane would miss us entirely.
Over the next few days not a lot of sleep happened for me. I was checking the weather updates everytime a new model was posted (which was about every 2 hours). For a day or two it totally looked like it was turning north early and might miss Florida entirely, or maybe hit the east coast instead of us. However, the hurricane had also been upgraded to a Category 5, which is really bad. People kept telling us, "You should leave. You should just leave. Why haven't you left?" What people didn't understand was that for many of us in the bottom of the state, leaving was more scary than staying because as the days passed, the chances of finding gas were getting slimmer, and hotels were still non-existent. With hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people trying to get out on the ONE freeway - if the hurricane took it's projected path straight up the middle of the state - we'd be in big trouble. So we, along with some others we know, chose to stay.
I should also mention that our landlord figured out that he actually did NOT have hurricane shutters for our home. He thought he had them in his garage, but it turns out that he did not. And by the time this discovery was made, it was too late to get plywood or anything. Everywhere was sold out of everything. So our plan was to take a bunch of our food and water (we had PLENTY of that!) and go stay at our landlord's house to wait out the hurricane. I'd been talking to my cousin (who is a meteorologist for Delta in Atlanta and had been monitoring the storm really closely), and he thought we were okay to stay, too.
But then on Thursday night the storm updates changed. The hurricane didn't turn north when they thought it would, and it became fairly certain that Naples would take a direct hit from the hurricane, possibly still as a Category 5. I didn't feel good about staying anymore. I don't know if I was just overly exhausted from not sleeping for 4 days or what, but I felt like we needed to get out of here. Even if we would be totally safe at our landlord's house (which I was uncertain about), our kids would be terrified of the dark and the noise a hurricane brings. I really didn't feel good. I messaged my cousin and he agreed. He felt like it was looking really bad and we should get the heck out of here if we possibly could. He told me Delta was adding some "rescue" flights to help people evacuate, and we started jumping on right then (at midnight) to look. But the flights sold out as fast as they were added. It was insane. So we finally gave up on that, and resigned ourselves to stay, even though by that point Andy also agreed that we should try to leave it we could.
On Friday morning we packed as much stuff as we could into our upstairs closet, our downstairs bathroom, and our laundry room/pantry under our stairs, because those are the only rooms in our home without windows. We packed our bags and a big box of food and prepared to head to our landlord's house. Then my cousin called me and said "Hey, I talked to my boss and we're going to add another flight out of Ft. Myers to Atlanta. It'll go live in about 15 minutes, so be ready." We had already packed up all our computers and things, so we contacted a couple of family members and told them to jump on and see what they could get. My sister Connie got 5 seats into her cart, but by the time she got through the checkout process it said it was sold out. Luckily, Andy's mom also got 5 seats into her basket, and when she got through the checkout process it let them go through. I can't tell you what relief we felt. I actually burst into tears. We found out later that my cousin's co-worker had actually reserved 5 spots specifically for us anyway, so we would have been on that flight no matter what. We were so grateful! We threw our stuff in the car right then and there and zoomed to the airport. We had no idea if our car would survive in the long-term parking lot, nor if our home would survive since we had no hurricane shutters, but Andy and I both felt really good about how things worked out, and we knew that "stuff" could be replaced, so we took the opportunity to get out of here.
We arrived at the airport with about 45 minutes to spare before our flight, and the kids were super excited to go on an airplane.
When we got to Atlanta my cousin picked us up and took us to his home. They were so generous to host us at the last minute like that. And we had such a great time. They have 4 kids also, and our kids had a BLAST there. (I'm not sharing pictures that show their kids because my blog is not private and I want to be considerate.) Colby loved this swing in their backyard.
All the kids loved jumping on the trampoline, going for walks on the trails surrounding their home, playing games, doing puzzles, driving around in their little electric princess car, etc.Their daughter is just a few months older than Ally, and Ally STILL talks about her almost every day. She keeps wondering when we're going to go back and play with her new friend Scarlett. I think because the flight was so short, she doesn't understand that Scarlett actually lives far away.
The hurricane did end up hitting Naples directly (the eye went right over) on Sunday, but luckily it had downgraded to a Category 3 by then, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. It ended up hitting Atlanta as a Tropical Storm much later, and a bunch of leaves fell.The kids had fun picking them up, and I was really glad that THIS was their experience with the hurricane.
It took some doing, but we ended up getting a flight home on Tuesday evening. It ended up being the second flight back into Ft. Myers after the airport re-opened, which was a strange feeling. Flying in, so many places were still without power, it was really really dark, and then the whole airport seemed abandoned. However, we were incredibly grateful to find that since the airport is 30 miles north of our house, the storm had weakened even more by the time it hit there, and our car was totally fine. We'd really been fearing the worst.
Even more miraculous was the when we arrived home, not a single window was broken at our house. This whole row of trees on our street (above left) had toppled like dominoes (about 500 feet east of our house), and many other trees in our neighborhood looked this (above right). The stop sign (as well as many, many other street signs in the city) at the intersection across the street from our house was flattened.
But our house was fine. We did have some roof damage (as did pretty much everybody else), and it will likely take months before it gets fixed because they'll work on roofs in order or priority for who needs it most. We also of course lost all the food in our fridge and freezer because the power was out for 72 hours, but we have a fire station right behind us that we are apparently on the same grid with, so we were one of the first to get power back on. Some locations took upwards of a month to get their power back. It could have been sooo much worse. We definitely feel like all the fasting and prayers that happened here and everywhere else made a difference.
Over the next few weeks, things were definitely not normal. These photos were taken at Walmart a week after the hurricane. I'd heard that they had gotten some fresh meat, and went to try to get some since our local grocery store hadn't gotten anything fresh in yet. Nope. Costco still had nothing in any of their cold or frozen cases 2 weeks later. We were on a boil water notice for 2 weeks (luckily I really did have tons of bottled water!), our cell service was spotty for about a week until they fixed towers, outside smelled like the sewer for a few days until trucks could come pump because the city sewer pumps were down due to lack of electricity, and the kids were out of school for 12 school days. They didn't start back until Sept. 25. We definitely got tired of eating boxed and canned goods, but otherwise we were okay, and were incredibly grateful that we were able to evacuate and spare our kids the fear of waiting for the storm to hit us and pass by.
For three weekends after the storm we were asked to help with hurricane cleanup as part of Mormon Helping Hands. Andy and I only got to participate for the first weekend because then we were gone to Nebraska and New Hampshire for job interviews, but it was a great experience. Andy went out with work crews on Saturday to help remove fallen trees and stuff, and I helped with the food and supply distribution on Sunday. The church still didn't have power so it was like 95 degrees in there and I had to change my shirt twice due to total sweat saturation, but it was so fun to see people come together to help others. One guy (in the back middle of the photo below) came to pick up food (not a Mormon), and then after he took it home to his family he came back and worked with us for the rest of the day because he thought it was a great thing we were doing.
Just as we were finishing up for the day another huge semi fell of supplies arrived, and they asked us to help unload it. It was really cool to see how quickly the Church was able to get stuff in to us, and how much help was able to be provided. It was so organized. Everything from wheel barrows, to gloves, to tarps, to can openers to put in the boxes of food.
The Tampa Stake was asked to be in charge of the Naples support efforts, and their volunteers came down and set up tents on the lawn at the church and stayed all weekend.
Two weeks after we were originally supposed to go to Nebraska, we actually went. Andy's dad was able to come watch the older kids for us and we took Colby with us. In Nebraska I realized I didn't have a memory card in my camera - so we slacked on the photos!
The following weekend we flew into Connecticut and drove up to New Hampshire for another job site visit. This time Andy's mom came to stay with the older kids and we took Colby with us again.
New Hampshire was beautiful. Andy went to the hospital for a tour and meetings and things the first day, and then the next day we drove around and explored the area. We went to this farm and saw some horses and some super cute brand new baby cows.
Colby did such a good job! For three weekends in a row he was on planes. First to Atlanta and back, then to Denver and back, then to Connecticut and back. And in between he spent a lot of time driving in cars, but he kept his happy smile and traveled like a champ!
After visiting both Nebraska and New Hampshire, we did a lot of talking, a lot of praying, and a lot of research. Ultimately we accepted the job in North Platte, Nebraska, and will be moving there in mid-March 2018 after Andy graduates.
And that, folks, is the end of a loooong month. I usually feel like time flies, but September felt like a whole year all scrunched up into one month. Some parts were great and some parts were not great, but we survived, and it makes for some interesting memories!
