I was able to get out and go walking this afternoon. I got off to a later start. Lizze needed to talk because she's struggling with the loss of her grandmother. I imagine many of us can understand what that feels like. 😔 The boys had a good day at school. Elliott was so distracted this morning that he put his pants on over top of his shorts he wore to bed. Rather than ask to use the restroom and take his shorts off, he instead chose to roll his pant legs up to his knees because he was too warm. Sometimes I wonder what goes through his head.. 😂 As for Gavin, I haven't seen too much of him today. He's been in his room, doing God only knows…

I'm not moving a whole lot this morning. Yesterday did me in and my back is done and will be for the next couple of days. There's a reason I no longer do manual labor and it's called an L5/S1 left sided herniation. I'm debating as to whether or not to call my PCP and ask for a Medrol dose pack. It's a 5 day prednisone cycle and it's the only thing that can reduce the inflammation, aside from time. I haven't done this is a few years but I may cave in and make the call.

I'm completely exhausted and going to bed a couple hours early. Before I do that, I wanted to share some pictures from today's storm damage clean up and say thank you for the help we received today. First of all, thank you to everyone who showed up today to help with what turned out to be a monumental undertaking. Everyone who has seen the tree in person was shocked because the photos simply don't do it justice. The boys and I began cleanup around 11 am and my Dad, sister, a family friend, as well as my aunt and uncle came over to help. We finally finished up around 5:30 pm and everyone was completely exhausted. The kids were a big help. There were a few hiccups but they did…

About noon tomorrow, we're going to be picking up a chainsaw and getting the tree in our yard cut up. This has been a frustrating process because we don't have enough of a payout to take care of everything that needs to be done and we've had so many distractions. My Dad and I are going to get this part done, so State Farm can come back out and evaluate the damage to the house without the tree being in the way.. At the end of the day, the bottom line is that we will fall well short of the funds needed to get everything done. As a result, we're going to focus on the absolute most crucial repairs and that will be the damage to the side of the…