Car Crashing into our House Update

So it has been a couple of weeks since Thanksgiving.  So far, we have been visited by a structural engineer, two city inspectors, contractors and assessors.

Here's our living room right now.  As you can see in the right side of the picture, the wall has no longer been merely boarded up, but framed for becoming a "real wall."

This morning a city of Greensboro inspector came to check over the work.  We have been so blessed and impressed with how quickly the city has been to check over work.  And Paul Davis Restoration (PDR), our contractor, has been great to work with and accommodating to do the work around our family's needs.

It looks like we will only have to move out of the house one more time (when they refinish the floors) but that will be longer than the original hotel living of six days. I think we may move between two hotels just so we can bother the maximum number of guests and hotel employees!  (Just kidding!)  But it does look like we will be back in the living room and dining room sometime mid-January.  As far as the outside masonry - no idea how long that will be.

Here's some other photos of our lives right now. This pile of broken pieces include a cedar chest that has a rug full of glass laying across it.  It was a really nice cedar chest filled with baby blankets made by my mom, my grandma, my great-aunt and my great grandmother.  Those precious things were the hardest to see amongst the rubble.

But PDR is doing their best to clean them and we will be keeping them (and not using them on future babies just in case of glass embedded somewhere).  The white object is a stand we used in our wedding (almost 12 years ago).  Neat thing though...the table (it's hard to tell it used to be a table) is also laying halfway on the bottom of the lamp was directly in front of the window.  It was (obviously) completely shattered and the items on top of it were thrown across the room.  Everything in the corner (from the table to the cedar chest to the globe) were damaged or completely obliterated.  ...except...

Here's a photo of our living room about 10 days before the accident.  We had decorated for Thanksgiving and Gracie wanted to take some photos.  Isn't that awesome?  It has definitely helped with the insurance situations.  If you look in the right hand corner, you'll see the globe, lamp, glass top table and cedar chest that you see the parts of in the above photo.  Notice right behind the lamp, you'll see our wedding picture.

Our wedding picture.  It was on the table.  It must have been launched into a pile of baby blankets,the loveseat, into the pile of dirt from the peace lilies that sailed across the room or some other soft place.  It's scratched up but not broken.

I don't know what to say - but it makes me happy to see our wedding picture still in tact.  In spite of being in direct harm, God chose to keep it unbroken.  It's just a photo.  But there is something extra sweet that it was protected.

God protected our family from physical harm.  He protected the gentleman in the SUV from injury.  He has blessed us with insurance and favor from city officials, contractors.  He has poured our blessings, prayers and gifts from neighbors, friends, church family, home school community, family members and fellow Cru staff.  We are extremely grateful.

Thank you for your prayers.

Love, Carra

P.S. Next time, I'll try to share how we are making our den into living room and dining room among it's previous roles as home school room, play space, my office area and meeting space.