It's been a month from...well, you know!

First it started with this:

Our dishwasher broke and leaked water all over.

The week before I had our carpets cleaned, but I had called them back to treat the worse area again for some spots that had reappeared. So that night when the carpet was still really wet, I thought it was from being cleaned so I called the cleaners out again to vacuum up the water. Still soaking wet.
Without realizing it, both days I had ran our dishwasher.

Then 3 days later we realized it wasn't coming from the carpet cleaners, but from the dishwasher, so we pulled back the carpet. This was Saturday morning.
We called the insurance company, and by Sunday afternoon, we still hadn't heard back and our house was starting to smell like mildew. So Clint being frustrated and worried that the carpet was slowly turning into a health hazard, he decided to cut it out.
Leaving us with this:


The insurance lady came out on Tuesday and did some tests on the walls/floors and called out a water abatement company. That left us with 6 giant fans, a dehumidifier, and an air purifier in our house for 3 days. Yuck!


About a week later, the insurance claims adjuster came out and told us that they would pay for the damages. Took measurements and sent off a sample of the carpet and pad to be analyzed so that the insurance could tell us how much to pay us for replacement. The lady told me that she wished we hadn't cut out the carpet because they would have cleaned it. Our thoughts were that the carpet was beyond being cleaned and that cutting the carpet was the best decision Clint made. Clint and I had also decided that we wanted to replace the carpet with hardwood. But I'll get to that later...

While the insurance lady was at out house I received a call from Clint. He said that his brother was in the hospital due to an intense headache. The hospital did an x-ray and found a mass in this brain. Mission Hospital was sending him to CHOC (Children's Hospital of Orange County). So Clint quickly came home and went to the hospital.
The Doctors at CHOC said that Jack had a tumor in his cerebellum and that they would operate the next day.
Jack had been dealing with sever leg pain and just a few months before started to come down with migraines. Migraines tend to run in the family and so no one thought to be alarmed.

Here are some pics of Jack post op. The awesome mo-hawk and a picture of the back of his head. We tried desperately to talk the nurses into shaving his entire head, but I guess they were too busy.



After many hours of worry, Jack came out of surgery great. I'm very impressed with him! Well, proud of him actually! I look up to him for finishing up with school work for the year despite being in a massive amount of pain from his legs and his head. He finished up with his junior year of high school just a few days before being hospitalized! That takes some guts! And to know that he did all of this not only with pain, but a brain tumor. Jack, your an amazing young man and I'm proud I get to call you my brother-in-law!

To show you all that Jack is recovering well, here are some pictures from last week:


Clark showing his Uncle Jack how to ride his bike:


Jack riding bike:



So now that you all know that the amazing Jack is on his way to recovery, I can finish my story about our floors.

Once Clint and I decided to put hardwood in the house I called 6 different flooring companies and had them come out to the house with samples. We narrowed it down to two companies so we had them come back. The one that we picked, almost didn't get a chance to meet with us because he originally was scheduled on the day of Jack's surgery. Boy am I glad the guy called me back! He was able to get the floors we wanted even though it wasn't one of the samples he brought with him.

So then this also left us with the decision of what to do with the horrible fireplace in our house.
This hideous thing:
We knew that with the new floors we were going to have to at the very least rip out the hearth.
Check!

And since the flooring guys we chose were the least expensive we were able to get the front of the fire place refaced. Here is the progress.






And as Clark says, "Ta-DAAAAA"


Ah but the saga doesn't end with the pretty fire place... our floors are held up at the port in Los Angeles. I guess some security thing happened and they decided to x-ray the 80 containers that came in yesterday. One of which has my floors in it! SO SAD! This leaves us waiting until they are delivered. I thought that by Friday we'd have pretty floors and a beautiful fireplace, but we are stuck waiting again! RATS.

So I'll keep you all posted on the progress of my not so great, but great at the same time month...