The tone of tonight's entry about our "Flooding Spring Break" is a little different from yesterday's. Yesterday we were enjoying the beautiful weather. We were getting things donated and setting up ways to help. Today we were faced with a bit more of the reality of what's going on around us. First, I'll start by telling you about some of the fun things we did. I painted the bay window area! That's fun, right? ;-) This is my *before* picture. It's sucks, but it's what you get when you realize halfway through the set-up that you forgot to take a before picture. So, you get what you get. I don't have an *after* photo yet, because it's not finished, but hopefully it will be later this week. We went to my school and got things set up, then hit McDonalds for lunch. Livie had dance and we just kind of hung out the rest of the time. It was pouring down rain all day, so there wasn't much else to do but hang out. I heard, at the last minute, about the school board having an open meeting tonight, so I decided to go, so I could get an idea of what the school looked like and what the plans were moving forward. I walked away from that meeting with two things. One - we have an amazing group of Administrators that obviously have been working tirelessly to get things moving in the right direction for the school. And, two - that the state of our school is MUCH, MUCH worse than I realized. The whole thing for me tonight was overwhelming. The band room was flooded with over 2' of water. The mud and river residue is still on the band chairs. The gym floor has buckled and created a 3' tall bubble with its floor. There is mud everywhere. The boiler room was submerged. The cafeteria and K-1st grade classrooms (one of which was Livie's room) are unusable. Totally covered in mud from the flooding. The water had reached the door knobs there. There is no chance, even with the clean-up crews working feverishly, that these kids will be going back to their school building before summer hits. Many ideas were discussed about how to move forward. The one that they were leaning to (and, of course, this could all change as the days go on) that they will split the grades up and send them all to different buildings in town. Busing will be crazy, not to mention feeding them, but they don't have a lot of options right now. So much is still up in the air. We really don't have any idea what is really going to happen yet. I just know that this saga won't end this week or probably even next. It's hard on the kids too. They are enjoying this little break to some extent, but they are worried about their school, their friends, what changes are coming. And, these past two months have been hard for them. They lost their beloved social worker to suicide in March and here we are unable to go back to school, because the school is a disaster area. Literally. So much to pray about. I'll be praying, not only for the victims of the flooding, who have lost homes and belongings. But, also for our teachers and administrators They need wisdom in the coming days as to how to proceed. They need strength of mind and body as they face these tasks. And, of course, our kids need prayer. So much has happened to them and you can see the uncertainty on their faces. They're scared and worried. It's a lot to handle. So, there's our Day 2 update. Hopefully tomorrow will bring with it hopefulness. We need a little more of that.
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