Tornado Clean Up 2.0

For our second weekend of clean up, hubby was able to join us.  We spent the majority of the day at one house.  We never saw the home owners, but felt like we made a big difference.

 It was actually fairly cold that day!

 Once again, Joe was lovely and let me help by driving the tractor.

 Hubby (and others) cut down the bigger trees into smaller, more manageable sizes and they would load them into the bucket for me to drop off at the road.

 He's pretty handsome, even with a face shield on!

 Go baby go!

 Kari did a great job helping again!  This time we just left the kids home with Kaitlyn, and she did a great job of making sure everyone stayed alive ;)

 Usually I am the one who is behind the lens, but I am grateful that there was someone there to take pictures and document the whole thing.

 How many men does it take to.....

 Sometimes it seemed like it would never end.

 We did end up going to another house later in the day.  In this particular area, we ended up piling all the debris in the middle of the field for the home owners to burn later.  (Here, Joe also had a bit of trouble with the tractor, and ended up with a broken gear shifter...  or something like that).

 She's such a good helper...  Hauling such big loads ;)

 I was totally impressed that some of the trees on the property survived.

 I was even more surprised to see the metal wrapped around the branches!  Like, woah!

 There used to be a shed there...

 We had a good group, and it was really fun to work with some of the people there!

We didn't get as sweaty because it was cooler that day.  And we were able to celebrate the day with friends by eating pizza together!

2nd Week of March, 2019

Monday, the kids still didn't have school.  They finally went back to school on Tuesday.  Hubby headed down to FL and the kids had gymnastics.

Wednesday, Kari headed down to the Beta Convention.  Her and her classmates were participating in the Living Literature competition.  Basically, they take a scene from a book, dress up and make a stage, and then stand still as if paused in the middle of acting out that particular scene.  Kari's group chose to do a scene from The Wizard of Oz.  And Kari volunteered (or was volunteered) to be the Cowardly Lion.  We had to provide our own costume.  We ordered a lion onsie from Amazon, and some stage make up.  This was our inspiration.

 This was the picture she sent me, when she had changed.  She thought she looked pretty good.

 Then, her groupmates got a hold of her, and she sent this picture when they were done.  I LOVE the difference in her facial expression :)

 Kari was gone until Friday.  And the rest of the week was pretty normal.  On Thursday, Dylan was suddenly very attached to wanting to play legos with Daddy when he got home.

 So, when hubby got home, we had a family lego building experience.

 Everyone got in on the action.

 And Dylan got his wish....  to be able to build legos with daddy!

Saturday we were able to do another day of tornado clean up, and we ended the day with pizza with the Woods and the Hills.  It was Dylan's birthday too, but we waited to celebrate it the following weekend.

Sunday we watched the Ashcrafts so Diana could do a Yoga certification retreat thing.  And we had regular church stuff.

Hog Hunting

These are really hubby's memories, so I will be inadequate sharing them.  But I will try.  Hubby was invited to go hog hunting in Texas.  They aren't allowed to pic up the hogs or anything.  They are there for pest control.  But, they get to do it with high powered guns and helicopters, so...  what could be more cool than that?!?

This was the deer that was a bit like a pet :)  He came up to be fed and hang out with the hunters.  His name was buddy.

And, as you can see, he was quite domesticated and appears to like the taste of shoe laces.

Its a pretty view, yes?

One of the fun things they got to do was shoot tannerite.  When you shoot it, it explodes!

The gentleman stayed at a lodge, but had to travel to the nearby farms to shoot the pests.  And what better way to do that than in style?

Seems like some pretty cushy digs for big rustic hunters if you ask me :)

This was the lodge.  There was a communal part where everyone could hang out with.

Rustically decorated, of course.  Hubby's room was the one on the right.

And several guns to play with.

This is the truck that hauls the helicopter around. 

The hogs in the area are pests.  They destroy farm land and crops, and procreate like crazy.  They aren't allowed to pick up the hogs they shoot to harvest for meat, otherwise it is hunting.  The permit they had only allowed for pest control.

He's a pretty handsome fella, isn't he?!?

They were pretty high up, and using pretty high powered weapons.

He had lots of fun!

It doesn't look all that fancy, but....  it carried everyone around.

Hubby was originally supposed to be home earlier, but changed his flight.  Because of the weather, they weren't able to do their flight when they were originally supposed to, and if hubby had flown out on his original flight, he would have missed the whole point of the trip.  So, he rescheduled, and was able to have some fun.  But, the flight schedule home was not without its interruptions and delays.  He was able to eventually get home.  But it was expensive, and timely.  

Tornado Clean up 1.0

Saturday morning, we left the three younger with Grandma and Grandpa, Kari and I headed to church.  We got our work groups and headed out.  Our first area was a residential place with lots of fallen trees.

Our friend Joe was in our group and allowed me to run his tractor for a while.  He was stronger and better with a chain saw, and could be helpful in other ways.

And grandpa, gosh I love him!  I am so proud to have such a hard worker to come up for a visit and to help out.  He did remark how he had never been to a clean up effort where so many people brought their own tractors and bobcats!  He credited the fast work for so many available machines.

I have always admired Kari's work ethic and strength, and she was certainly helpful that weekend.

Most of what we did was haul trees from further back in the property up to the road side, so the county could (eventually) pick it up.

We would cut the bigger stuff that was too big to haul into smaller pieces to make it easier.  Some of it was small enough that it just needed to be loaded into the sled to be pulled out to the road.  Every once in a while the sled would slide too far, and Kari came home with some wicket scuffed up knees.

Hi Grandpa!

We finished the first work order after only a few hours.  With so many workers, it went relatively quickly.  Then it was time to head out to the trucks and head out.

Here was our whole group for this work order.

One of the gentlemen had a drone, and made a cool video of each area we worked.  Here is the first one.

Then, it was load back up in the truck, and head to the next place.

Marveling at the destruction on our way.

The next place we went to used to be a residential place too.  However, the tornado tore off several walls, and spread home items all over the yard.

I know we made a difference at the first place, but the difference at this place was even bigger.  The yard was littered with debris when we got there.  By the time we left, you could actually see grass!

This place was interesting in that the county was collecting people by the bus load and dropping them off at places to work, without giving much direction or knowledge of what to expect.  We had lots of helpers, but not many people knew what to do.  For this video, take a look at the HUGE piles of debris already dragged out to the road.  

After the second house, we sat around in the parking lot waiting for our next work order.  We were trying to figure out what we were going to do for lunch, when a group of volunteers showed up handing out meals.  It was dang delicious too!  At that point, we had had a luxuriously long lunch, and were still waiting for another place to go serve.  We ended up basically going across the street to clear a driveway.  Technically, I don't think there was actually a house there, but there were trees down, and we were willing to help with no where to go.

Funny story, we had a dolly there to help us pull out branches and trees, and for some reason, the tire decided to blow up, when no one was using it or even around it.  But it sure as heck scared a lot of us, because it sounds like a shot going off!

Video of our final work order.

The ability to use Joe's tractor made it so my feet survived.  Having Kari was a great success and she was a huge help.  Having Grandpa there was a morale builder, and I was impressed with his strength and desire to serve.  It was a decently long day, though it could have been longer.  At the end of the day, we returned back to the church parking lot.  The supplies had been dropped and organized there (we had actually helped to unload them the night before).  And there had been a large shipping container dropped off for storage.  Before we went home, we helped load the supplies into storage containers.  Once we got home, a shower felt heavenly, and dinner that Grandma had cooked hit the spot!