More pictures

Introducing LEO! Yes everyone we have a cat. It was a deal I (Sarah) made before we got married. He is cute some of the time, but since I am home more than Nathaniel is he wants attention from me. This usually means scratching at me and trying to eat my lunch. Nathaniel is very thrilled to have a cat, wish I could say the same. Sometimes he can sit very nicely and just purr, but then he wants to play and the claws come out. I am hoping my furniture is fine until we can get him declawed.

Nathaniel and I living through the flood. We are now able to take showers every other day, and I-380 and I-80 are all open again. Unfortunately that means that there is even more traffic on the roads. Our 10-15 commute to work has become a 45 min commute in stop and go traffic. We are hanging in their waiting for more bridges to open and for people to stop slowing down to look at the damage. Luckily most of the water is back in the banks so there aren't people stopping to take pictures. We are also down to only seeing updates on the regular news times instead of 24 hour coverage.

Just amazing how high the water got.

That Dairy Queen was one of the most popular buildings to show on the news. When the water was at it's highest it was up to the top of the awning.

There are supposed to be bridges in this picture, you can kind of see the light poles sticking out.

Where ground and railroad tracks used to be

Behind this railroad bridge is a bunch of boat houses that floated away and are dammed up behind

The Quaker Oats plant, we won't be smelling Lucky Charms for a while.

It really is hard to imagine from pictures how much water there really was. It was jaw dropping to see it in person.

Well that's all for tonight. I will soon put on some pictures of the house with furniture in it, but I need to get some cleaning done first.

Surviving the flood of 2008

We have had quite the experience here in east Iowa. Most of it started Thursday, I tried to get to school to tutor, and got one block in 5 min. I decided it wasn't worth it and turned around and came home. Out main street to the interstate is especially bad because it is the first open one past downtown where all the flooding is. So everyone on the south side of town takes that exit now, including police, fire men, and national guard. So anyway I came back home and Nathaniel decided to stay home from work until the road cleared a little, and then we lost power. So we were without power for about 3 hours in the morning. We played a lot of hand and foot (a card game for those who have never played). We got power back around noon, so we quick made some lunch and watched all the news coverage to see what was going on, and it was crazy to see downtown and all the houses just covered in water. There were refrigerators and couches floating down the "street". Needless to say we did not get out on Thurs. We again l0st power in the afternoon for a couple more hours. By then we were getting worried about the food in our refrigerator, but so glad that we had none of the problems others were facing. Then Thurs. night we are told that we only have 25% water capacity for Cedar Rapids and that we are to only use the water for drinking only. So we had the motto in our house "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down." We also got about 5 1/2 in. of rain that evening. It was amazing how hard the rain was coming down.

Sorry this picture is blurry but I was getting soaking wet, it is the water spewing out of our rain gutter.

Friday Nathaniel went to work at 6:30 to beat the traffic and I was home watching the news, still without using water. That night I wanted to go travel across the 380 bridge, the only bridge open in the town by this point. So we get on our road heading for the interstate and we get about a mile in an hour. By that time we weren't going to make it by the time it was dark so we turned around and went home.

So Saturday we went in the morning and this is what I saw.

Sorry, I will post more pictures later, the website is not downloading my pictures. So check in later for more pictures of the flood and the kitty.

So by Saturday night I was really wanting a shower. So we had a nice friend from church, who was not on a water restriction, lent us his shower. It was the best shower.

So that leads us to today. We went to church, without a minister, because he is in SD, so we had an elder read a sermon. We had a lot of singing and some testimonies from people, so it was an hour and a half church service plus a half hour after to explain how we as a church will be involved with all the clean up.

On our way home from church we notice even more devastation. On of the towers near the railroad tracks was cracking from the foundation shifting and corn was all over. It will be a long time before Cedar Rapids is the same.

But on the up side we are up to 50% water so we can shower and wash dishes every other day. YAYAYA! Really we are only supposed to use water on odd days since our house number is odd. That there was of trying to control the water. I don't care at this point. My kitchen is now clean again.

Flood

To anyone who is checking this, just a quick note that Nathaniel and I are fine. Our house is quite a ways from the flooding. We have been loosing power and it would take us a long time to drive any where, but we are thankful our new house doesn't even have any water in a the basement. We will post some pictures of our house and of the flood at a later date. Oh and our new kitty. Yes, we got a kitty.