We were lucky

Over the past few days, we've seen the weather events of Thursday night on the AP Newswire and PR Newswire (specifically on the Today Show and Yahoo), but nothing could prepare us for driving down 291 toward the airport just yards past our house, or coming back toward our house in the housing addition to the west of us. The housing addition literally looks like a series of bombs blew up taking out windows, doors, walls, even one house's entire structure with only the front door standing. At one end of our addition sits an All State insurance mobile van and at the other an American Red Cross help station. It's literally hard to take in.

Thanks to our neighbor, who is not only a great guy but handy with tools, our patches are now covered with tarps as we wait for the State Farm claims adjuster make a decision on what is needed. We're hoping this comes out to be reasonably painless financially, but we're still not sure yet what's going to happen. The roof we have is not yet two years old, so we're hoping for some kind of warranty to kick in, but you never know what might happen.

Here are photos of some of the roof areas:

Yesterday, we headed out to Kearney to see Marc's mom and dad's new kitchen remodel (which is about 95 percent completed) and have a late lunch on the grill. The weather was so nice out we couldn't help but buy a swing for the little bear to have some fun in. He seemed to really enjoy it and we're so happy to be able to have him outside more often:

But probably the best part was when Jakob fell asleep laying in Poppa's lap:

Today is Cinco de Mayo. It's a big day for Marc's people. :)

In less than twenty-four hours, we will sit in front of a judge and Jakob's state ward and go through the final proceedings to make Jakob our legal son. We're excited, but nervous as well. In addition, Jakob's subsidy from the state begins this month, and we can definitely use the help with Marc's recent medical bills we've begun to accrue.

Also, we have begun the search for new daycare arrangements for Jakob to start back up in the fall. We received notice that our daycare provider and her family are moving to Overland Park where her husband works because of the high cost of gasoline. We're really going to miss her because not only is she great with Jakob, but the location is very convenient. Kim and I have been talking with individuals in the hopes of finding someone soon.

In our next post, we hope to have photos from the big day Tuesday.

More soon.