Flagstaff Blizzard

This has been my week so far. Very Shitty to say the least.

One of the worst nights of my life was Monday December 9th. The blizzard was predicted, so we were somewhat prepared, but it was worse than we thought it would be for us in particular.

School was let out early and all parents were instructed to come and pick up the kids since the busses would not be running. Luckily I had just made a run to Sams Club and picked up all kinds of crap in addition to buying batteries that I had no idea how much we would need later.

We all went to bed as usual, but I was still awake when it all started to go down at 11:00 pm. The power went out since the wind was howling around 30-40 mph. Then the fire/smoke alarms went off and continued to go off for the next 6 hours. Obviously all the children woke up in histerics and Carl pulled on some pants to see what he could do to stop them which turned out to be nothing at all.

The alarms are hard wired. While the power was out we could take out the batteries of the alarms downstairs that we could reach, but the upstairs 16 foot vaulted ceilings we could not get to since the 20' ladder is stored outside under the porch.

We moved all the kids downstairs to sleep on the couch where it was somewhat quieter and I put big hats on all of them to try and protect their eardrums.

I even called our local fire house and they had no idea how to turn off the alarms. Once the power wnet back on all the alarms started going off again since they had power. Carl even ventured out in the now 60 mph winds and blowing snow to turn of the main power and that didn't even work.

Somewhere in the midst of all this we heard a loud creak and were suprised to see that a huge piece of our roof ripped off. I was scared to death to see where the peices had landed since we couldn't see a thing out the windows due to the blizzard.

We woke up the next morning and this is what we saw. State Farm has been anything but helpful in getting it taken care of. We have been told it could be a week before a claims adjuster gets out here. Awesome. They really know how to get shit done. In the meantime I'm trying to find a contractor to come and get the loose pieces off the roof and tyvac the thing before the next storm hits on Friday.

This could be the thing that takes our house from us. I don't have the $4400 deductable to get it fixed. The credit cards are maxed out and I am at a loss as to what to do. I'm trying to be cheerful, but this is not going to be a good Christmas.

Oh and did I mention that we also need to replace our garage door. Carl closed the door again after one of the kids left their snow shovel in the jamb and it bend and shattered all the glass in the door.

This is the best week ever.