Weston is 2 Years’s old & Hurricane Helene

Weston started preschool for the first time in August. We were nervous about him biting other children as he bites an often. He will bite our shoulders when things do lot go his way. He enjoys going to nursery at church and childcare at the YMCA so we were hopeful he would enjoy it. So far he has done great! I did get a notice from the school that he had been bit by another child. I had to read it twice to make sure I read it right but I did. Weston is very outgoing and likes interacting with the people he is around.  

Weston still doesn’t use many words but it is increasing at a slow rate.  He can say Mama, Dada, Go, Bubble, Ball, Hello, Up, Hi, and Out.  We have started him in speech therapy. 

Weston is starting to be more of a daddy’s boy. He has asked him to rock him to sleep a few times. He loves to be outside especially anytime daddy is outside. We have to make sure the front door has a safety lock on it or he will just walk out the front door when no one is paying attention. 

Addison decided not to run cross country this year. She had ran for the last five years but decided it was more stressful than fun.  Kaitlyn tried out for the West volleyball team and made the JV team.  She not only made it but earned a starting position and played all six rotations!  The start to school hasn’t been as busy due to Addison not doing cross country. 

Then came Hurricane Helene.  On September 26th, my friend Kim sent me a Facebook video of a local weather guy that said the Hurricane that was coming up through the Gulf was going to cause historical catastrophic damage due to the amount of rain we had already experienced in our area and the amount of rain that this storms would bring and on top of the high winds. We have a lot of pines and few really big oaks around us and the pines aren’t in great shape so I never feel great when the wind picks up.  My parents told me they would pay for us a hotel room if we would just stay there and then they would know we were safe. So we went to Olive Garden for dinner and stayed at the hotel next door, all six of us and Maverick. 

We all slept pretty good and then morning came and we could see the winds howling out the large hotel window.  We lost power at the hotel around six am.  We ate our free breakfast downstairs in the lobby with the emergency light on. I stepped outside at one point with Maverick and the wind and rain were so fierce I could barely stand straight.  I clocked on phone wind gusts at 63 miles per hour.  Around 11 am, the winds died down and we tried to get home.  We heard from neighbors that our power went out in our neighborhood around seven am.  As we tried to get home we realized how bad the flooding was. It had crossed highway 25 near our home and the water had come up into the Dairy Queen, we then tried going down Howard Gap and there were so many power lines hanging on the road with a car on the road that had a huge tree laying across the front windshield.  There were rescue workers there working on the car. I wasn’t sure if there was someone in the car or not and if they were alive or not. I told Josh I was ready for him to take me and the kids somewhere where there was no trees. We then tried coming down Airport road but the road was flooded near the runway.   Our last try was going down Long Shoals road and it was blocked due to trees being in the road. So…we went to a friends home that lived in The Riverstone Neighborhood. This neighborhood is a few down from us off of North Rugby rd. They were gracious enough to let us come stay with them with our dog.  We thought we may get home later but then realized they water was going to continue rising and that we would not be getting home Friday. As we hung out there. 2we walked and rode around their neighborhood and began to see the river waters continue to rise and eventually flood many of the homes in there.  It was very sad.  We always t the night and headed home on Saturday morning.  

We came home to trees on the roof and in the yard and water on the living room floor due to a hole in our ceiling. The water was about an inch thick.  Our back porch roof had caved in and it looked like a war zone of trees in our the back of our yard. 

We then wanted to access the rest of the neighborhood. We had six homes in the backside of our neighborhood that had a lot of water come into their homes from the river. We had many that had water come into their basements from the water in the ground.  We were without power for ten days and out of internet for about 20 days. It was a memorable time.  We pulled together with our neighbors and helped with clean up and cooked meals together.  We first cooked all of our meat that had dethawed and had to be cooked and then we relied on the neighbors for their food.  We had bonfires nightly.  We pretty much worked all day in our yard or a neighbors and then ate together then went home and crashed in the dark.  We did not have hot water which didn’t bother Josh but for me it did.  I took two showers over the ten days and that was at a neighbors house.  The children and I took showers at Becky’s and Lori’s house.  Weston would barely let me put him down and would hang on me like a monkey.  Nana took Weston one night to help and when Mimi and Poppy got power back they kept him there for a few nights.  His birthday came I. October 3rd and we still had no power.  I drove down and spent the. Afternoon with him at Mimi’s.  I tried getting him a cake but since the grocery stores had been without power, there were no cakes to buy.  Poppy took us on a golf cart ride and he enjoyed that.  We gave him a few of his birthday toys including play dough. 

In regards to the trees on the house and yard, Josh. Of t cut them because his chainsaw started acting up. He decided he was going to have to buy another one. The problem was the place didn’t take cards as no stores had power to take debit and credit cards. We soon realized we needed cash to get anything like gas or food.  Eventually when I made it to the atm, the line at the atm was super long as everyone was doing what I was doing.  *reminder to people that having cash on hand is a wise thing to do. 

I felt like we camped luxuriously for ten days as we were still able to sleep on mattresses and sit on couches.  And the weather during this time was perfect.  It was around mid 70s to 80 degrees during the day.  Addison loved helping all of the neighbors and hanging out with all of the teenagers.  They ripped out carpet, tore out Sheetrock, dug up floors and pulled many branches to the road. Kaitlyn helped in a different way by helping g cook some of the community meals and pulling branches. 

The very sad thing is that we fared much better than so many in Western NC. Towns like Bat Cave, Chney Rock, Swannanoa, and Burnsville lost many lives due to flash flooding and mudslides.  So many people’s homes floated down a nearby river or was covered by a mudslide.  Steve, our cousin, said it reminded him of Vietnam with cars being turn over trees laying over and everything washed in brown color from the mud and river sediment.  

They have not published a number of the missing persons.  At one time it was over 1,000. I have seen that there are confirmed deaths so far of over 100.