Baton Rouge flood cleanup

I got an email from the church mid-week requesting volunteers to help people affected by the floods in Baton Rouge, LA. I didn't have any good reasons not to go, so I signed up. About a dozen of us from our ward left at 4 AM Saturday morning and drove to the Baton Rouge Temple where we picked up supplies and got our assignment.

After milling around there for a while, we headed out to work. The first home we went to had the most damage. The water level was well over 5 feet in the house, which you can see on this door.

The homeowner had already removed most of the drywall, but needed help with the fixtures like the kitchen cabinets and built-in entertainment center.

Pretty much everything in the house was ruined, including the SUV out front. A few mementos were saved, like these pictures drying on a table in the backyard.

We did another house after lunch. Every house was different, but most involved ripping out drywall, insulation, paneling, flooring, furniture, appliances, and anything else that was wet, moldy, and/or broken, and making huge piles of garbage out front.

And this was happening in every house in the entire neighborhood we were in.

To add insult to injury, it rained in the afternoon and during the night. Thankfully, we had former ward friends who live in the area who allowed us to stay in their unflooded home so we didn't have to camp in the rain like some of the other volunteers did.

On Sunday morning we attended a sacrament meeting at the stake center adjacent to the temple. To my surprise, the speakers included the mayor of Baton Rouge and the governor of Louisiana. They said that there were over 4000 Mormon Helping Hands this weekend and at least as many coming next weekend. The state may be able to help bring homes to livable condition if the price is below a certain amount, so the work we did may be the difference for some homeowners to get assistance. The vast majority of people affected had no flood insurance, so they're relying on whatever help the city/state/feds can give them.

After church it was back to work. We did three more houses on Sunday, much of the same.

It was hot and humid, and hard work, but the homeowners were very grateful and although I felt like we weren't able to accomplish a lot (those homeowners have a LOT of work left), we got the time-sensitive work done for a handful of homes. Multiply that by hundreds of other teams there and it made a pretty significant impact.

I got home Sunday night just in time to say good night to the kids, take a long shower, and try to get some sleep before heading back to work in the morning.

First day of school

Summer is officially over. School has started. The kids were ready and "super" excited to go.

It seems like not very long ago we were taking Olivia on this walk for her first day of Kindergarten. This time it was for Damon.

He wasn't nervous at all and I think he'll have lots of fun. He has Carmen's kindergarten teacher, and we tried to let her know that his reading level is off the charts, but I'm sure she'll figure that out.

Miles is now our only kid at home during the day, but he will have a preschool group and some other activities to keep him busy (when he's not fighting crime).

Shower

The shower in our master bathroom had a small leak, which was slowly soaking into the drywall and on occasion staining the carpet in our bedroom. Amber had finally had enough and went through the ordeal of getting options and estimates. She settled on a company to do it before our trip, and they started as soon as we got back.

It took a little longer than we were hoping (it's a good thing we have a shower upstairs), and cost a little more than we wanted to pay ("better to pay more once than have to do it twice", we figured) but in the end it turned out very nice.

Amber selected the tile to match the floor tile, and it now goes all the way to the ceiling. We got some new recessed shelves so we don't have to store our bottles on the seat. The door is the trendy frameless style. We still need to repaint, but overall it's a great improvement.

We also had them replace the boring white tile around the bathtub to match.

It's nice to have it mostly finished. We just need to replace the light fixtures and repaint and it'll be done.