Rebuilding

I know it has been a week since I blogged last. Been busy and I have felt very unmotivated and a little depressed. Everyone here has a lot weighing on their minds and I have all these crazy hormones to contend with.

Debris removal from our yard is complete. We are now in the rebuilding phase. I have pictures of our new backyard fence, but I can't find the camera-to-computer cord. We still do not have any side yard fencing.

We had church in the parking lot one weekend due to loss of power and only an hour last week because we have some displaced members living in our building. Some of these people have lost everything. We had men in work clothes at church on Sunday for the Primary Program. The men in the ward are spending the weekends in Galveston and I helped make lunches to take to the crews and the families they are working with last Sunday. I also made and took dinner to a dear friend of mine and her family who flooded bad and she has had to gut out her home. It felt good to be doing something to help. It is odd to me that seeing piles of debris, blown out signage, blue roofs, leaning or broken power poles, and smelling mildew in stores are all a normal part of life. Every morning on my way to work I see convoys of power trucks and telecommunication vehicles. My kids drive around with us and point out big damage verses little damage. Even Nathan says, "Mama, look a damage. More damage, more damage, etc." He's only 3! Kenny has struggled with this storm. At least once a day he says he wishes storms never happen. Last Sunday he asked me why Heavenly Father let the storm break the good people's house and not just the bad people's houses? Try explaining that to a 6 year old.

We all went back to school and work on Monday, which was a bit stressful. I have lost two weeks worth of teaching time. It is already October and I have to start testing for the first report card next week. Thank goodness the passing requirements for the 1st kindergarten report card are fairly low and most students can basically pass the testing with what they came to kinder knowing. But I have about 4 who do not have a hope or a prayer of passing. They came to me knowing very little (a few shapes, no letters, could not write names, can only count to about 5, etc.) I have not had the time to get those poor babies enough knowledge to pass the test. My school also went ahead and held Open house last Tuesday. We had been in school 12 days, 1 day since the hurricane, and I had to do Open House. Let me tell you, it was my lamest Open House ever. Luckily (I guess), the parents only had 1 day's notice after the hurricane and I only had 5 parents show up.

So Guess What!! All the stress of evacuating, hurricane clean up, and returning to week has proved to be more than my body could handle. I started having contractions every 5 minutes, along with back pain and nausea yesterday. Things eventually stopped and I was ordered to spend the rest of the weekend on bed rest. Assuming things stay calm, I can again return to my modified bed rest plan on Monday. Maybe I'll get lucky and this will be as severe as my pre-term labor problems get this time around. Who knows?