Day 1

This is the Thursday after our house burned down.

When we first woke up, it all came right back to me.  I cried and cried again.  The kids were fairly happy to be in a hotel, and even happier to find all their fun things in their newly donated backpacks.

We were all happy that my parents and sister had arrived.  We had a slow morning (we were all tired from the long day before).  TJ had been asking to see the apartment, and I was really anxious about taking him.  We needed to go over and pull some more things out, and we decided that it would be a good thing for us to go as a family.  The boys would see and understand why so many things were gone forever, but we would be there to reassure them that we were safe.

It was hard to go back.  TJ was very interested in the damage and asked lots of questions.  He had looked at lots of pictures and we had told him the story a few times so he had a pretty good handle on things.

Eli, on the other hand, was not really prepared.  We honestly hadn't done a very good job of taking steps to prepare him for seeing his home in ruins.  He stared around in surprise.  He asked to go see his room and my mom carried him upstairs.

After he came back down, he was so sad.  He didn't cry, but he needed someone to hold him.  When we set him down, he got very upset.  He pointed and jabbered about what was around him.  He was sad and scared by what he saw.

Thankfully, we were all there and we talked about being safe and together, and buying new toys to replace the yucky ones on the floor.

Next we headed over to a friends house.  She had generously offered to let us store things there while we sorted out an apartment or storage unit.

We unloaded some of the things we saved from the apartment that morning.  The kids were so excited to be at their friends house again, so we left them happily playing and went to work.  We grabbed lunch at Chick-fil-A and headed to Target.  I bought some basic medicines, a few other toiletry things, hair ties, and pillows and new sheets for the boys.  I wanted to get them pillows to keep with them as we moved from bed to bed over the next few weeks.

We also got laundry soap and Clorox.  We went to the laundromat with a few of the things we had saved - my mom had pulled my nice dresses and Tyler's suits.  We put what we could in the wash and took the rest to the dry cleaner.  We spent the afternoon washing and then I went back to my friends house for dinner.

In the mean time, Tyler had been working, job searching, and talking to our insurance adjuster.  We were really stressed about getting our stuff out, and we couldn't do that until the adjuster came.  The adjuster finally called Tyler.  After looking at the photos Tyler sent, he decided to declare the unit a total loss and pay out our entire policy.  It honestly felt like a miracle.

After talking with insurance, Tyler met us for dinner at our friends house.  The boys were obviously tired and pretty strained, so I'm sure that it had been crazy to have them all afternoon.  They fed us a delicious dinner, and we went back to the hotel to put the kids to bed.

They both fell asleep on the short drive over.