So I still have a bit of a cough....and people feel the need to avoid me. Okay so it's more like a lot of cough. I have these coughing fits where I have to go to the bathroom so I don't scare people anymore then I already have. I don't blame them though. I'd be avoiding me too. It is coming into winter and it's going around and people don't want to get sick.

I've already passed someparts of my sickness onto my family which is unfortunate.

Well all the final stages of the house are happening this week and it's so exciting. 6 months of a messy flood destructed house. There was mould. I really should give you the story. I'll make it short and summarise as much as possible, but I can't promise.

Okay here it is,

When we were on travelling holiday at Christmas time in New Zealand my father recieved a phone call from my Grandfather. My Grandfather told him that if he was driving that he should pull over to the side of the road... Talk about going into panic mode. My Grandfather proceeded to tell my father that upon collecting our mail he had discovered our front windows had very heavy condensation on them. When he went inside (lucky he had a spare key) he discovered that the house was flooded. One of the pipes in the main bathroom has burst and it's possible water had been going for a few days. Water went through most of the house, but the worst affected areas were both bathrooms, the kitchen, my parents room etc. Water had also gone into mine and my brother's room. It turned out that not too many personal things were distroyed. Maybe a few Sweet Valley books and some legal documents. But we didn't really know the extent of the damage until we got back to our house 3 weeks later. All we knew was that the Insurance company was pretty much looking after everything. They had big dryer's in there and were drying out the walls and carpet. They had moved the furniture from the carpeted areas to tiled areas etc. It was quite lucky that it was discovered because if it had kept going, when we came back the house would of been unlivable and the house would of been riddled with mould. Such a blessing to have family.

We were quite nervous about what we would come back to. When we arrived home from the airport the house was a mess and we pretty much got stuck into moving furniture and doing some sort of clean up so that at least we could live in it and move from one room to another without climbing over mountains of obstacles.

Probably the worst thing we discovered was that the linen cupboard was the worst effected and this was bad because our photo and memory boxes had been on the floor. These were drenched with water. It was quite an emotional thing going through that stuff and seeing what we could salvage. The baby books and pre-school scrap books of us four kids were destroyed and certificates, mother's day gifts..etc. Alot of our photos were completely destroyed and this was very upsetting. However we spent alot of time prying them apart and I think that we managed to save the most important and rare family shots. We send all our somewhat salvagable photos to the print shop and they cropped, scanned and re-printed someting like 300 photos for us. At quite a large price but insurance covered it and was totally worth it for photos. I havn't seen them yet as they're still in storage.

Anyway all the carpets had to be ripped up, furniture was destoryed...walls ruined.

We had to wait a few months for Insurance to come through. But when it did we started ripping out walls, replacing walls, doors etc. The last few weeks the house had been painted. The painting is finished now and the tiler is coming today to repair some areas. Tomorrow the electrician is coming to fit of the fans, light switches, powerpoints, phone lines etc. Then I believe the carpet is going in thursday and friday. The friday afternoon/sat morning we're getting new furnture. Yay. new couches, new dining suite, new beds etc and then Sat we can move into our new rooms. It's going to feel like a new house which is exciting. Finalyl after 6 months we will have our house back to normal and better.

To be honest, even though this has all been very frustrating and hard at times. It's a blessing because the house needed a spruce up anyway and then this happened and Insurance had to pay for everything anyway. So it's amazing how God uses bad situations to make good things come about.

Anyway enough of me for now.