Still here doing tornado cleanup efforts

We’re still plugging away!   🙂
The day started out with one of the kids leaving the door open to let in the cool 7am morning air…which also let OUT Molly and Caleb, who went out looking for toads (which are all over when it’s cool out).  They found the mud puddle outside of the camper instead…

Eli and Beth spent the day volunteering with SP.  This is Beth and Katelynne – the ‘Crazy Canuck’ (that is what she calls herself! LOL!), who hit it off this week!  She is 20, and flew down from south-eastern Canada to volunteer.  While Beth loves to hang out with the older women that volunteer, she said it was fun to have someone closer to her age to hang out with for a bit! 

This is really the first site where the kids have used the bandanas that SP gave them – with 103 degree temps, and 85% humidity, they have discovered that that whole ‘dew rag’ thing really works! LOL!   🙂

They spent the whole day on one job request – it was for a homeschooling family that had a lot of tree damage and debris.

Here is Zach (bottom L)(the homeowner’s son, who Eli hit it off with right away), Jep (OK, his real name is Isaac, but he looks just like Jep (Duck Dynasty of course!) and even has that on his name tag made from blue painters tape), and Eli (R).  This is the first SP location that we have been to where the volunteers wear name tags – the crew is so big that they have to!  Eli said that they are sleeping over 100 volunteers at the church every night – that number doesn’t include any day volunteers (like us this time)...and don’t ask what is in the garbage can.  Most locals, even without any/much property damage lost their power during and for days after both the Moore and El Reno tornados.  The power was out long enough that unless they had a generator, they lost everything in their chest freezers even if they were packed full (a solid mass of frozen items takes much longer to thaw than just a few items).  There for awhile, the regular garbage pickups were affected too!  Now there are drop points for people to dispose of such extra nasty trash.
We have had a lot of people coming into the donation center to stock up on household items so that they can use the money they would normally spend on those items to replace their perishable fridge/freezer items.
One of the ladies said that it’s so bad that the gov is putting extra money on people’s food stamp cards to help those people restock.

While those Eli and Beth were with the clean-up crew, Vaughn, Jake, Thomas, and Joel were out at the McC’s property.  They had already cleaned up the house site, and since they piled up the foundation rubble in a long, neat row, the county said that they would come down the lane and pick it up – so then V didn’t have to haul it to the roadside curb, which was a HUGE blessing.
Since the church has the skidsteer for a couple more days, Vaughn is volunteering for the church again to help finish cleaning up the property.   He and the boys took the skidsteer  and buckets down into the woods and used it to remove tornado blown debris. They came home so filthy that Vaughn had dark red clay lines in the fold of his elbow!   His arms looked like they were sunburned, down to the wrist where his gloves covered, but it was dust and dirt and little pieces of leaves…and it washed off in a long, cold shower (too bad all the ticks they picked up didn’t wash off as easily!).  I’m not sure I can save the shirts that the guys were wearing – in fact, I’m not sure I even want to try; they were so ingrained with dirt and sweat!

Today the church got in their last known donation delivery.  The pastor’s wife’s brother, a firefighter in AR, brought down a trailer full of donations.  My guys got home just in time to help unload it before showers!  🙂   The donations included some much needed items like laundry detergent and dish soap and Q-Tips.   The little girls had fun helping to stock the donations… 

Joel took a ton of pictures for me, but someone had changed my camera to some weird mode, and they all came out blurry – this one was the best I got! LOL!  We used a marker to X-0ut the UPCs on the more expensive items like diapers and formula, then the girls would put them where they belonged.  Their favorite job tho, was to put the 3 garbage bags of new Beanie Babies in big plastic totes so it was easier for the kids who came to go through them.

Before Vaughn left for work this morning, he took out the filter for the air conditioning unit in the living room ceiling, to clean it.  The ac sounded like it ran so much smoother and quieter without the spongy filter (which wasn’t that dirty), that Vaughn took off the white plastic cover to the whole unit also.  The ac didn’t sound like it was working as hard, so Vaughn left it off (at least until we leave this sunny south!) – guess it’s cooling the RV a little better too…

…and as it is running quieter, I don’t care that it doesn’t look as nice – with 2 roof-mounted ac units running, plus a rotating stand fan upstairs, and the extra-noisy little fan over the stove on any time we cook, it’s pretty loud in here all the time!  Add in quite a few littles, and I sometimes wonder if the sound echos out of the RV and when the neighbors are going to call the cops to come investigate! LOL!
I know a lot of RVers run ‘white noise’, like a fan, every night, but we are ‘silence’ people.  Give me the croaking of frogs and the chirping of crickets anytime!  😉   I’m sure we have those here, we just can’t hear them over the hum of fans!

After we unloaded and stocked donations, Eli ran and picked up pizzas for dinner ($5.55 specials from Pizza Hut) – it took all of 4 larges to feed my hard workers.  Then Eli and Beth went to share time at the church SP is staging out of, while Vaughn took Jake out to shop for a new pair of boots.  Jake has a pair of Under Armor tactical boots, that he bought himself, that he has been wearing while cleaning up, but they have rather soft soles for this type of work.  Jake stepped on a nail yesterday and it went all the way through his sole and up into his heel.  He came home with some boots with much harder soles.  🙂

Looking forward to seeing what today has in store for us down here…   😀