Let's Go Up North!

On Sunday morning, I received a text from my step-mom that began...
"We are in a horrible mess.".

She wasn't kidding.

My brothers apartment had flooded due to the sump pump going out in a weekend storm. Standing water left the whole bottom floor of his building destroyed. We needed to save as much of his stuff as we could and get him out of there. 

Eliot, Elise and I drove up on Sunday afternoon.

On Monday, we moved everything out of John's apartment. Part of it went to the garbage, part of it went to his garage and the rest went on a trailer to dad's house. We also spent a few hours doing 19 loads of laundry at a laundromat. Eliot is now ready for the college scene as he is a pro at running any machine in the place.

The week continued with more cleaning, organizing, 

and lots of various decisions to be made.

 However, we managed to find time to swim... 

Worked on more than one 500 piece puzzle...

Celebrated a milestone birthday...

And visited a very familiar place...

It wasn't a good reason to go up north,
but it turned out to be a week filled with hope, family and many memories!