House, FAY and some pictures

Many of you asked for pictures of the house we are renting so here it is. I took these last night before the storm began. I will get inside pictures once I am done painting.



Fay has now passed on and the house still remains looking the same. Most homes here are one story ranch style homes and ALL are built out of concrete blocks. It is against code to build out of anything else as all structures must be able to withstand a category 4 hurricane. Most of the homes are stucco finished but I think it is funny when someone puts wood siding on the outer parts of a concrete home. Especially since the siding does not stay in very good shape. What is rather interesting is that it is against code to build a structure out of wood, but you can have a mobile home or MFH at your own risk. I would guess insurance rates would have to be outrageous! They set up shelters at the local schools and I would assume that these folks are the ones who might weather the storm at the shelter?

The storm that just passed by our area was really no bigger than a good old Tri-city wind/rain storm WITHOUT the mudd! I guess there are other areas throughout the county and other counties that have lost power though so some areas got a bigger brunt of the storm than we did!

We are still getting some rain but I guess that will continue into the night.

Here is the back of the house. Back in Tri-cities we might refer to this screened in area as a back porch but as I have been corrected many times, it is a Lanai here in Florida. NOT A PORCH? Floridians are so funny! OH BROTHER!

I threw this piture of my neighbors house in so you could see what hurricane shutters look like. In order to pass code you either have to have stubs on the outsides of your windows for shutters OR hurrican windows that can withstand debris and huge wind gusts. We have hurricane windows on our home so we had no need for shutters. John got to go over and help him put them up. We met them before this and they are very friendly although they think we are pretty unusual for having more than one child, me staying home and not working AND to top off the weird factor, we homeschool. John got some opportunities to witness to him while they worked and the kids played.

There are several other homes in the neighborhood, however they are abandoned and owned by the bank.

Here is an amazing tree that caught my eye. It is places at the entrance to a cemetary by John's academy. It is very huge and as you look at the close-up shot of the trunk it has many, many trunks. It was just really neat picture to me of growth through adversity. Each of those trunks are so crammed together you know each has to share its nourishment with its neighbor as there is cement & asphalt surrounding it. As you can tell from the picture above...... they have grown together to create this huge HEALTHY tree. Many times, we as Christians chose to NOT grow through adversity and then wonder, when the 'dry times' come, WHY we are so dry? Refusing growth is a way of refusing the Nourishment that only the Lord can give. This can also lead to withdrawing from fellowship & putting off time spent with the Lord....... At which point we become parched. It is so awesome that when we realize how far distant we have become, God is always faithful to pick us up, dust us off and help us look up and grow towards Him so that we don't get parched.

I have learned here in Florida to keep my camera close by since there is just so many neat things to take pictures of. When we take walks along our developement there is still so much untouched land so there are armadillos, raccoons, turtles, bunnies...... If I get some pictures of these as well I will pass them along! HUGS TO ALL!