God is so very good! He has provided for all of our needs abundantly! He has sent the most incredible people into our lives too. Wow! He has given us temporary shelter in a little Pensacola cottage and fills us with peace and joy.

I am finally able to post some of the pictures we took of the house when we first got back into town.



Here is the kitchen. It is actually where the kitchen sink was once located. Guess I won't be washing any dishes here anytime soon.



Here is the stove. I guess there will be no cooking for awhile either.

The truly amazing thing is that as we started to pull all of the debris that was once our cabinets and appliances out of the house, we actually found unbroken dishes! They were muddy, but intact. Pfaltzgraff gets points for hurricane survivability!



Continuing on with our tour, please direct your attention to the dining room. Here you can see our refridgerator acting like a table. . . We won't even talk about how bad it was inside or what came out of it when my poor husband had to wheel it out on a small dolly. . .



Sitting on the dryer wedged into the master bedroom doorway, you can look out across the kitchen and into my office/Mary Kay room. My large floor loom was wedged into the doorway between the kitchen and office. I'm hoping this saved the life of the loom. You can also see the new wall openings which give plenty of direct access from the kitchen to the garage. In fact, most of the east facing walls were full of new openings after Ivan.



And here is my office! To the lower right is where I used to sit and use my computer. The dresser laying on its back contains those Mary Kay products which did not float out to sea or end up in one of a half dozen neighboring yards. Again, you can see the floor loom wedged into the doorway.



Here is the laundry room. We are still trying to dig our way into here!



And now we move into Gregory's room. To the left is one of the blown out windows seen in the pictures of the front entry. We actually found some of Gregory's bedding and one of his favorite bears (Brown Bear) down the street with a boogie board. We suspect Brown Bear of surfing during Ivan. . .



Here is the view of the hallway from the door to the guest room to the door to Gregory's room. The computer desk blocking the door to my fiber closet once stood in the entryway off the living room. Ivan sure moved furniture about!



Here we are in the doorway to Gabrielle's room. Look at the mold pattern already forming on her desk! I had no idea mold came in so many colors.



Here is another view into Gabrielle's room. You may recognize some of the furniture from previous posts. Most of her furniture stayed in her room since her door was wedged shut and since her room was on the west side of the house where there were no holes in the walls.



The guest bedroom too is on the west side of the house and thus has no wall openings.



The internal air conditioning system is a mess.



The kids' bathroom needs to be cleaned. I don't think a Swiffer will handle that floor.



And here is a view of the master bedroom from the sliding glass door and the deck. The large piece of furniture in the middle was my dresser. . .



Here is the vanity area, Kurt's dresser and my writing desk.



Our California King bed tried to escape out the sliding glass door but was foiled by the plywood my husband had cleverly screwed over the door!



Here is the dryer wedged into the master bedroom doorway. On top are the kids' baby books I was attempting to dry out and save. But it was a lost cause.



Here is the wall between the lanai and the living room. Part of it has bowed out. This is where the television once stood. You can also see the remains of our homeschool. . .



The weight set given to me by my father is rusting. Losing those things my Dad gave me has been rough since he just died this past summer.




Here is a view of the lanai from the blown out doorway. All of our doors to the outside were completely blown in, even this west facing one.



Here is my sewing and weaving area in the living room. Buried under the furniture here I found the remains of my Designer I sewing machine (except for the embroidery unit which I found down the street in a neighbor's front yard). I still have the corpse of my dear sewing machine. I know it cannot be saved, but I have not the heart to throw it out. The same is true of my Viking 936 serger, which I believe we found buried in the dining room.



In this corner stood my tri-loom and much of my other fiber tools. You can see what looks like pieces of the tri-loom. However, miracle of miracles, when we pulled off the furniture, we discovered my tri-loom was mostly intact. With a little care, we think it can be saved!!! Running Moon Farm gets BIG POINTS for craftsmanship and tri-loom hurricane survivability!!!



Here is the garage. We had to dig out Kurt's car to have it towed. The white box on the hood was our chest freezer.



Here is the east facing "wall" of the garage. Those full propane containers held up pretty good to the battering storm surge and wind. I don't know if that was a good thing or not. I think our fire coverage was better than our coverage for storm surge. . .



This is the doorway to the storage room off the garage. We still have not dug our way into it. The hot water heater completely blocks access. I'm hoping when we do finally get in there, we will find some of our camping stuff is salvageable. However, since we have found many of the Christmas decorations and other items that were once in boxes in this little room scattered throughout the neighborhood, my hope is not too strong. I'm praying for our camping gear though because we sure love to go camping. Of course, we are on the list for a FEMA trailer and our life may soon become one loooooonnnnnngggg camping trip. We may soon be done with camping for the rest of our lives perhaps.



Here is the doorway from the garage to what was once the back yard (without fences it is hard to distinguish back from front). The lawn mower is buried under the patio furniture, barbecue and what was once the family's bicycles. Too bad. The grass is really growing in the kitchen, the garage and parts of the living room. We could probably use that lawn mower.



The final phase of our tour takes us back outside. Here is the south west corner of our house. The front part is Gregory's room. Where the shingles are missing we are seeing growing water damage on the inside ceilings. We did sign up for a "blue roof" when the FEMA people came around. We hadn't done it before because thus far, most of the information we are getting suggests our house will need to be knocked down and rebuilt.



Here is the front entry way to the house. To the left is the window to Gregory's bedroom where a computer monitor dangles from the frame. To the right is the gaping hole from the blown out window in my office where I kept my large floor loom and my computer. The front door is completely missing, along with the door frame.



I don't know what the wood is in front of our house. It looks like it could be a part of someone else's roof.



You can see some of the holes on the east side of the house. Additionally, the fence that separated the front yard from the back is gone. Between the garage and the basket ball hoop is someone's wall.



We heard the orange "X" on the garage means the National Guard searched our home for bodies.



Here are some of the new openings in our east facing walls. The storm surge came in from the south east and left to the south west. We can tell from the debris paths and damage. This means the front entry way was blown out, not washed out. I'll need to share my new theory with our insurance adjusters.



We once had a door on the opening into the garage. We also had a fence and gate over the indention in the grass.



Here we haven't yet removed the plywood from the master bedroom. Turns out that tools were necessary and we lost all of those in the storm. Fortunately we were able to borrow tools from Art Martin and get into the master bedroom. The deck is in shambles. Kurt had to partially rebuild it so that we could pull stuff out of the bedroom.



Here is the west facing side of the deck where we once had a water feature with a waterfall and a couple of fountains. We had a glider bench in the corner overlooking a flower garden. You can also see the outside of the lanai. Kurt had covered the glass of the lanai with a tarp to reduce the effects of the summer heat inside. The tarp was secured on three sides with duct tape. The duct tape completely survived when so many roofs in the neighborhood did not. Who knew duct tape was so strong?



Here you can see what was once the deck and what was once a couple of ponds, a waterfall and a fountain.



Next to the window air conditioning unit is the hole where the lanai door once existed. You can also see water lines on the house. I am on the side of the house with Gregory. I am 5'6" or so. You can see how high the water came. We figure we had more than 5 feet of water in some locations.



Here is all that remains of our power box (where the electric company has posted a sign prohibiting electrical service without an inspection), our air conditioner and the lawn water pump system. You can also see Kurt's thumb. You can tell from the nice looking fingernail that these photos were taken before substantial salvage work had begun.

Well, that is the tour for today. For contrast I did a prestorm tour in June before my sister Mary moved here. It should be accessible under the archives.

And for a little comic relief, someone posted this on one of my Yahoo groups and it was so funny I thought I'd post it here:

"Florida Governor Jeb Bush held a special news conference in Tallahassee today to
inform the people of Florida of new state symbols. The changes take effect
immediately and must be implemented by all official agencies.

The changes are as follows:

The Florida State Flag will now be a blue tarp..............

The license plate symbol of two oranges will be replaced by a chain saw.....

The new State song will be " Blowing in the Wind".................

The state motto will now be..."Oh my God, Here comes another one".....

The new state beverage will be............anything with an alcohol base.

The new State tree will be ..............any that are left standing at the end
of hurricane season.

The new State Bird will be the "whipper" will.............

The new State nickname will be "State of Disaster".."

-Author Unknown