Pictures and Such

I totally forgot about Tori-bug's birthday on June 14th. She turned 10. Double digits now!! Woohoo! We kept it very mild this year and only did a small family party since her "real" gift from us was GymDog Camp. Here she is with her favorite GymDog--- Hillary Mauro! Tori-bug had such a fabulous fun time during the entire week. But, true to Tori-bug fashion she did break her pinky on the first day!! Poor girl, she didn't even want to tell me for fear that I wouldn't let her go back the rest of the week. I guess she didn't realize how much we had spent on that week of camp so "Oh, she was going back every day!!" She barely let it slow her down at all. She just couldn't do a couple of the bar routines. The mat slid out from under the beam on dismount is how she broke the finger. She's good now.

This is my gorgeous niece Leah! She is now 15 months old and has a brand new baby sister. She spent a little time at my house this day and we got her an Tori-bug in a little baby pool on our back deck. She had so much fun. I sure do love that little sweet thing.

Speaking of brand new---- here she is, Kylee Kristina. She is so adorable. She was born on June 10, 2010. My very young, 20 year-old sister now has two precious baby girls under age 15 months. She is a great mom though, just has her hands full. My other sister and myself try to help out as much as we can.

Pictures of my sister, Monica's burned up house. The house caught fire on July 10th. at 7:00pm. My husband and I had been camping for the weekend so I had invited my sister and my disabled mom to come visit me at the campground for the day. They did and we had a great day and ended it with a cook-out. My sister, her husband, 3 kids, our disabled mom, and my sister's inlaws all lived in the same house. The in-laws and the children had went to Florida for the week. A 12-year-old neighbor called my niece (not knowing she was in Florida) to say her house was on fire, the roof was gone, and the firemen were there. She didn't know if anybody was home. I got the call at 8:30 about 45 minutes after my sister left the campground to go home. The inlaws didn't know Monica and the dog had been with me all day so thankfully nobody was home at the time. By the time my sister arrived at her house, the whole thing was in flames. We decided to stay put at the campground so the rest of the family could go to my house to sleep EVENTUALLY. About 80% of the house is burned. The basement where the mother-in-law suite was and my niece's rooms was not fire damaged, just under a foot of water. Everything down there was soaked. My family was devastated! All night I cried out to Jesus asking what are we gonna do. My house is not that big, but we have the new camper and such so we would make it work. With my mom being disabled with only 18% of total lung function she was the one we were most concerned about. My sister and the rest of the family functioned during the day out of my house and at night were sleeping in a hotel. People in our community really opened their hearts and brought homecooked meals, food, clothes, school supplies, etc. We are really blessed.

The biggest praise out of all of it was this: All night while I was crying out to God, my sister's best friend (unbeknownst to me) were both asking God to save my sister's pictures. Everything else is replaceable, but we couldn't replace pictures. On Sunday, after the firemen released the house to us we discovered that only a portion or about half of my sister's bed was burned for some unknown reason (*well, I know the reason, but anyway*). The side that wasn't burned had three storage totes under it. Guess what was in those totes? My sister's wedding scrapbooks, birth photos, and baby pictures!! We both fell out praising God for that miracle. My God is a big God. What ever is over my head, is under His feet. They still haven't determined the cause of the fire. They are supposed to go in the morning for them to release the investigation report. Doesn't really matter at this point. They had insurance and they have been amazing thus far. They got moved into a rental home yesterday which the insurance provided for them. It is far more than we could have asked for too. My sister had quite a large house, 3600 sq. ft. as you can imagine with 8 people living there, but the new rental house is 6-bedrooms and 6,000 sq.ft!!! God proved himself big in that situation too!!

It will take them about 6-9 months to rebuild and they are thinking of adding another level when they do. They will level the house down to the foundation and start over. The ins. company even rented all new furniture to go in the rental house. They even rented pictures to go on the walls to make it look "home-y".

Thanks for checking in on us! Sorry this was such a long post, but I had to share some of our experiences over the past few weeks. It has been a busy month indeed!!

Hopefully the next month will be a little more relaxed. School starts for us on Monday, so we shall see :-)

Wendy

What a mess!!

Lots of stuff has happened since my last post. Most recently, as in on Sat. night, my sister's house burned down. My sister, her husband, 3 kids, my disabled mother, and her in-laws lost everything in the fire. My family is totally devastated. We are a super close knit family and have endured a lot of stuff but never a fire. No injuries or lives were lost and we were able to salvage some pictures, thank God for that!!! They think it might have been an electrical fire, but it is still under investigation. The pictures (which I haven't downloaded yet) are horrendous. My family is staying with me for now. Well, between here and they are sleeping in a hotel at night. Mom is with me. It will take 6-9 months to rebuild so we are praying and ask all of our friends to pray that they can find a handicap accessible rental house big enough for 8 people that is in our area.

On a lighter note, my Tori-bug was able to go to GymDog gymnastics camp a couple of weeks ago. She had the most fun and learned a lot. I'll try to post pictures of her experience soon. She says she is going to be a future gymdog. I surely hope so b/c she needs a scholarship to go to college :-)

I have a brand new niece, Kylee. She looks just like Leah, her sister. She is gorgeous, but I'm a little biased I guess. I need to post pics of her too I guess.
I just wanted to ask everyone to pray for my family as we go through these trials. I will try to post again soon and put the pictures up.