Parker's Turn

Parker had oral surgery on Friday. It was supposed to be Monday but the office didn't have power from Milton back yet. (This is his fall break week). This is Parker's first surgery and first time getting anesthesia. He had a sweet furry friend to snuggle with in recovering. 

 

Surgery Checkin

After a month of recovery and a few weeks of being on zoom calls with my camera off, I'm back online now fully. I got my hair done this week which definitely helped boost my mood. And I got another beautiful set of flowers from our Warren Willis Camp family. 

 

 

 

Grace For All

On the Saturday after Milton, Daryl and the boys went down for a workday at Grace to help cleanup some of the year debris. Wesley is a good person to send up a tall ladder! 

 

 

Sunday morning, Daryl and Sarah met folks outside for a time of prayer and communion, rather than regular services in the buildings (there was no water or sewer yet). 

 

 And Grace's preschool received attention on the TV news - the kids lined up on the sidewalk with signs waving to the linemen as they head out from the nearby airport into town each morning. 

Our Beach Spot

Daryl has been going to Siesta Key Beach on vacation practically every summer he can remember. I've been going since I was in high school. We've kept up the tradition while we've been married - only missing two summers while we were in Kentucky and then 2015 when we moved to Fruitland Park. For the last three years our slice of heaven has been at Horizons West - unit 214 in the tower. We knew they had property damage after Hurricane Helene but we saw pictures this week after Milton. The fences are torn up. There's sand and muck in the hot tub and pool and the pool bathrooms and the tower lobbies. all the single story villas flooded. But all the tower condo units are intact with no damage. Grateful that the damage wasn't worse. We'll be supporting a lot of local island businesses as they come back over the next few months. And we're looking forward to being back in our favorite beach spot next year.

 

Furbabies

These furballs LOVE to snuggle and they did a lot of it with the hurricane.

 

 

Results of the Storm

They told us Milton was going to go north and hit Tampa. After we lost power and cell signal on Wednesday afternoon, the hurricane turned and came ashore 8 miles from our house at our favorite beach in the world. The roaring wind was pretty bad. We only found out we were the direct hit when we got cell signal back for a few minutes when the eye was right over us and we could make a few calls. We ran the dogs outside to potty while it was calm and still. Then the wind came back even stronger than before. It was 2 am before it let up. 

 

 

 

After the storm, the sun came out again. 

 

 

We walked around the house and this was our only damage - the top came off our royal palm and landed right at the base in the front yard. Daryl and Parker made short work of getting it out to the curb. With Ian (whose eye also went over us), we lost our front doors, had flooding in the dining room, lost our floors and our pool screens. We are so thankful that this was it.

We drove down to check out Grace Venice. The pumpkins had already been delivered and the patch set up. They took all the tents and tables down but left the big pumpkins out on the pallet. Daryl was worried they might float away.....but the church is evacuation level D and the storm surge didn't make it all the way up to the church. The pumpkins were all still sitting in the patch!

I waited in the car while the boys wandered through all the buildings to check for damage. They probably lost an air conditioner on top of a roof and there were a TON of branches down all around and some standing water in the playground. But no water intrusion - not even where someone broke out a window in the corner of the Fellowship Hall to get shelter from the wind.

Between Grace and the beach is the Venice airport. There were a few small planes that had literally been flipped upside down, like this one.

 

Then we drove downtown to check out my office and First UMC Sarasota. As we were driving up 41 (with no working stoplights) we got to a spot with cell signal and suddenly all our phones went off with missed calls and text messages! We knew downtown had flooded but had heard the flooding only came up two blocks to Palm Avenue and missed the church completely. Being surrounded by all the high rises ended up protecting it from the wind too. My office is on the second floor above the preschool and all our windows were intact. The church had NO damage! This was the office building one block over from us. Their wind damage was almost exactly the same from Hurricane Ian.

We went 48 hours without power but were so thankful for the generator that we bought right before the storm. It worked beautifully to charge the refrigerator, microwave, one small TV, the wifi router and our phones. Damage reports came in from the district... much less for us this time and mostly concentrated in Manatee county. The other districts were much worse with their damage. 

Prepped for Hurricane Milton

The boys helped Daryl get prepped for Hurricane Milton. Praying for everyone in the path of this devastating storm.