New Normal

We are settled in at home again, for better or worse.  We are still under evacuation alert, but it seems unlikely that the emergency sirens will go and we will have to make a run for it.  A couple of days ago the local media informed us that our big fat river has crested and levels have been dropping slowly but steadily ever since.

This does not mean life is back to business as usual, however.  Emmett's school is still evacuated, as is the major shopping center closest to us.  There are now two roads open in and out of my suburb, but during peak rush hours it is safer to go the long way around our city on the highway to reach the side with the grocery store.  Emmett is being bussed to a secondary location for school, and Char's bus schedule has been changed to such an early hour that I have yet to get her there on time.  We tend to drop Emmett off to board his bus, and then we continue on into the city for her drop off and whatever errands I have to run during the morning.

My basement is still cleaned out and the kids all sleep upstairs for the time being. I may consider letting them move back into their bedrooms on the weekend, depending on what the flood forecast says.  Lucy is loving having two extra beds in the living room!  She is playing the Basset game where you sleep on the illegal bed until caught, slink back to the legal bed, and then rinse and repeat as humans leave and enter the living room.

I am not sure how long this new normal is going to last, but we are just taking it one day at a time.

A nightly battle for control of the bed.

Charlotte's room has never looked so clean.

We are not auditioning for the show Hoarders, this is just one of the landing spots for basement valuables.

Some recent spelling words from Emmett's school agenda.