Thursday, December 21, 2006

I'm Back.

The past couple of weeks have been a blur, a nightmare (of sorts), interesting, educating, and humbling.

About two months ago we repaired our leaky roof. We had water damage to the drywall in Nadia's room that we ripped out about a month ago. That night we all (hubby, me, friends staying with us) got violently ill. We were taken to the ER and told not to return to our house. The church put us up in a hotel for two days and then friends of ours let us stay with them. Our house had mold. Now while we don't think the illness we had was from the mold, it was good we got sick because we could still be in that house and not have done a thing to the mold. We called a mold remediation guy, the insurance company and our families. They came in, cleaned and left. We did a test, this was just last week and the house failed. They only cleaned Nadia's room and did basically nothing to the rest of the house. There was visible mold damage left. They didn't get it all. So we were still out of our house and running out of insurance money. The mold guys came back, ripped out the rest of the mold, cleaned more and set up the air scrubber which is still running right now. Should be until friday. The air quality is already better. Andrew has been vacuuming the snot out of the house. We have a hepa filter on our vacuum. A couple of the ladies and I are wiping down the walls on saturday and I am going to be doing laundry until the cows come home. That's ok, because with all of this, we will be back in the house Christmas Eve. YAY!!
I've learned alot about mold. Mold spores are like seeds, they won't grow unless the conditions are right. So you could have a mold spore on a surface for years and it won't do anything except sit there. Until it gets wet and moist, then it will grow. What we are doing is sucking up, or irradicating any spores that might be around. They can't burrow in anywhere, they will just land, like dust. And I learned that most houses have mold in them, all the time, just small amounts. Those amounts our bodies can handle. Large massive quantities, no. And its worse for a baby. I am so glad I'm still nursing her. I don't plan to encourage weaning until we move out of this house.
On another note, Andrew was approved for ministry with the region we were trying in. This is big, good news! We have lots of ministry opportunities now. I am so glad. That was a bright spot in this whole moldy mess.
We have been so blessed in this whole time, inspite of what's happened. People have come out of the wood work to help and care for us. We are so blessed to have great friends like this. God has taken good care of us.
So we'll be back for Christmas. What a blessing. I got two great big presents from God this year, Andrew was approved and we will be back home for Christmas. Thank you God!