Preparing for Normal

Well the boys and I have been back in Galena for about 2 weeks now. I am finally getting a chance to sit down and blog about the events that have been happening in our lives. For the last 2 weeks, I feel like I have not had a chance to sit down at all much less post something. We got off the plane and didn't seem to slow down at all. Every night I fall into bed and sleep like I am in a coma. Then we wake up and do it all again the next day. I guess exhaustion is something that goes alone with a disaster zone. Along with mud, trash and an endless to do list. Sadly this to do list needs to be done soon since the temperature is already dipping into the 30's. Winter is fast approaching and I heard a statistic that only 20% of the houses in Galena are ready for winter. Residents seem to keep going with caffeine and adrenaline. There is a huge amount of volunteers that have come to help rebuild Galena and together things are getting done. We even had friends from our church in Lake Jackson come help. So far they have brought 3 teams and I will post more on that later. It is awesome to go to church on Sunday and it is FULL of residence and volunteers all together. Community really means something special here. Working together helping each other, relying on each other. I love that about Galena!

My list of To Dos before winter/school starting is getting done. Oh did I mention that I am homeschooling Kaden next year? I am excited to start and see what I can learn...I mean teach Kaden. The curriculum that I am using this year has a lot of my favorite books that I read as a child and the curriculum does a lot of world study. I am super excited. We got our school room set up, which was on the To Do list. Plus I have cooked and baked a lot of food to help with busy days or those days that I really don't want to cook come up. I have frozen casserole dishes, Banana breads and jarred lots and lots of Salmon. Jarring Salmon was on my list so that I could make room for our moose when we get one. Moose season is here and I am ready to fill my freezer since we are down to the last packages of moose meat. The leaves are already changing and the Fireweed flowers have gone to seed so Fall is officially coming. And with that, comes the knowledge that Snow is coming soon meaning we still have to find all the rest of our fire wood that floated away in the woods. Saturday Keith and I walked a bit and found lots of wood as well as our bags of soil. The soil is about 100 lbs heavier then it was before it got wet making it really hard to pick up and bring back to the house. Cleaning up the yard and getting trash out has been mostly done. We split and stacked wood, with the help form our Texas Teams. We have been dealing with mud and silt in everything that the water touched.  Camping gear, baby clothes, wood, the day is full of scrubbing that stuff. But after 2 weeks I am feeling better about our yard getting back to normal. Whatever Normal is!

But having a feeling of Normal is what I am going for. Getting back on schedule, back in the kitchen, back to the everyday kind of life. maybe i should decorate for Christmas to make me feel normal.....I am Kidding Keith! I will at least wait till October for that! =) hehehehe I will hopefully get back to the normal blogging I do and catch up with the happenings of our summer. And when Keith has time to down load pictures from our camera, I will even post some pictures.  But I wanted to blog saying we are home and trying to get back to the Normal side of life.