2008 by th Month

January:
2- We got to participate in the Iowa Republican Caucuses! It was a freezing cold night, I think with the wind chill it was -20. Having never participated in anything like this, We had no idea how many people there would be. It was a circus! But one of the best political experiences we have ever had. We brushed passed Gov. Huckabee, and I just about ran over Canidate Ron Paul!
4- We lost Pepper, our little mini schnauzer. By far this was out hardest day in Iowa believe it or not. If you can picture a pregnant Erin at the edge of an Ice covered river screaming at hayden and Gracie to turn and walk away so they didn't have to watch pepper drown. Heart breaking.
8- We became the Owners of our 4200 sq ft home in New Hartford, IA.

February:
2- My dad helped us move into our House. We built a roaring fire and just stared at the beauty.
5- We found out we were having a Sophie not a Vance.
14- Wes cooked dinner and brought home flowers!

March:
8- the Apartment that we had just moved out of completely flooded do to the River. We were so greatful we had moved, because we would have lost everything. Little did we know we were destined to loose everything! LOL
9- My Birthday! It was a Sunday. Wes made a fabulous dinner.
18- My Mom came to visit. She cooked, Cleaned and played with the kids. I realized just how much I missed her when I watched her board her plane to leave, I cried like a baby.
26- Wes came home and said we need to move back to Utah. He was dead serious, and I felt a little nudge inside of me say "He is right" the next day he called his superior and asked if it was possible to transfer back. 4 weeks later they created a position for Wes in Utah. If Wes had not come home that day in March, he would not have had a job to come back to utah to after the Tornado, a Miracle.

April:
5th and 6th Our first General Confrence in Iowa. We watched it on TV, while all of our ward members watched it at the church house.
26- Gracies Birthday!

May:
2- We listed our house hoping we were doing the right thing. We were operating on blind faith.
10- Wes decides to take all of our photo snap shots down stairs to the storm room. I didn't even have to ask him. He just wanted to get them out of the way.
15- We bought our first riding lawn mower! It took wes 8 hours to mow the 2.5 acres though.
19 through 23- Wes was in Labor Union negotiations and hated every second of it. He would come home from work and we sat on the deck until it got dark talking about it as we watched hayden hit golf balls with his clubs.
24- Wes took Hayden to a baseball practice and I slept in. My dad called and woke me up. He asked me if I was watching the weather cause there was a huge super cell to the west of us that had produced and ef3 tornado in colorado. He said he flew over the storm the day before on his way from Seattle to Florida. He wanted me to keep an eye out for it. I had been watching the weather and so far the storm was supposed to stay to the south of us. The weather models weren't prediciting anything.We had a promising showing so we cleaned ALL day! By the time we were done, we were seriously thinking about calling off the whole move. We just loved our house too much to sell it! We took the kids to the Narnia Movie then went shopping because we were going to host a bbq on memorial day so we needed to by 10 lbs of hamburgers!
25- I woke up and I could barely move. I was 36 weeks pregnant, supposed to be on bed rest because I was in Labor. Remember all the cleaning we did the day before? I did something to my back and could hardly get out of bed. Wes called the Bishop and told him he wouldn't be at church that day because I was hardly moving. I couldn't do much that day, but I could watch the weather models on the computer. And that is what I did all day. At about noon, super cells started popping up to the south west and west of us. The air was humid! And it was 80 degrees the hottest it had been all spring. I was pretty much glued to the computer screen. At 2:30 I started getting really tired, Wes was asleep on the couch with a baseball game on. I thought about going and having a nap, but all the sudden I had a craving for oatmeal cookies! Of all things, first I had no recipie for them, and I was diabetic, I can't have cookies, I didn't even know if I had sugar to bake with. Anyway, because of my weird craving my nap was averted.The next 2 hours I had one window open looking for Oatmeal cookie recipies, one window open watching the NOAA weather models and advisories, one window open watching the Weather Channel models and warnings and one window watching our local weather channel weather blog. At 4:30 we were under tornado watch. I yelled into a snoring Wes, who didn't believe me untill he turned his beloved Cardinals game to the news. Sure enough, with in five more minutes we were under a tornado warning. Then another 10 min went by and there was a tornado on the ground. During all this news watching Hayden and Gracie were quietly gathering blankets and flash lights and putting them in our storm room. The next 45 minutes we video'd and watched an ef5 tornado barrel strate at us. at 5:05 pm it leveled our home. It left us with only the clothes on our backs. We had no cars, no house, no shoes. I had no diabetic medicine, none of my medicine to stop my contractions. All we could do was stand out in the rain and hail stunned, until our home teachers from our ward came and rescued us about an hour later. As we were standing there another funnel cloud started to drop right above us and all I could do was pray please no. Help came. Our house was in shambles, lot's of it flying away to Wisconsin. But, one of our rescuers had a feeling to lift up one of the walls, and there in plain sight was our crumpled up home owners insurance policy. If you would have asked me where that was the day before when our house was so perfectly clean, I would have laughed and said I have no IDEA. Finding that piece of paper was just one of the many tender mercies we recieved through out the ordeal.

I am going to break, and I will post the rest of the year in my next post. I can't believe how just thinking about all this, now 7 months later, still sucks the life out of me. I promise though, for my own record I will finish this soon. Night ~E