sleep, monster jam, and helping henryville

Last night was the first night since Friday that Levi slept solid - all through the night. Since the storms, he had still been waking up a lot either talking in his sleep, or crying. On Sunday and Monday, whenever the news would show pictures of his school, he would cover his ears and look away. However, yesterday, he began to talk about it a little more. I guess everyone is different in how they deal with their feelings. I just have to let him do his own thing!
I will say that, at times, he is comical about it. He went to work with Eric yesterday, just for a break from being stuck at home. He told Eric that it was okay that his school was gone because he had learned everything he needed to know. "Dad, I know how to spell see... S E E, and I know how to spell like... L I K E, so I don't need any more school." Ha! If he only knew!

I did want to blog about this....

On Saturday, Eric and my brother, Travis, had already planned to take the boys to Indy. They were going to the Monster Jam again {Yawn!}, but this time it was "bigger and badder", in Levi's words. It was at Lucas Oil Stadium. I'm glad they got to go and have a great time!!!

I love seeing Levi spend time with his cousins! And, they do love each other so much. :) Makes my heart happy!

On Sunday, we had a b.u.s.y. day!! Our neighbor and friend, Todd, who owns Spin-Around-Sound that Eric helps with decided to host a donation spot for people to come and drop off items for the storm victims. He posted a little two minute video on Facebook. And, people, I cannot explain to you the emotions that chilled me to the bone on Sunday. I've never seen anything like it. His hope was to fill his two DJ trailers with food, water and clothing. The drop off was from 12-2, and before 11:30, his trailers were almost full. When I arrived at the middle school, the line of cars was wrapped around the parking lot and extended out onto the main road in front of the school. It was like the scene from Field of Dreams! If you host it, they will come. ;) Many, many people stayed to help load. We quickly saw that we would need more than two trailers, so people started contacting their friends to bring pickup trucks, trailers, and more! Then, they called the school to see if we could load buses. Below is a picture of what was STILL left to load AFTER we filled 6 school buses, 5 trailers, lots of pickup trucks, a large UHaul and a huge flat bed truck!!!

There were times when we were unloading cars and I would just start crying because I couldn't believe how many people wanted to help! They brought trucks full of diapers, baby formula, cases and cases of water, clothes galore, food, boxes of soap, toothbrushes & toothpaste. Our DJ guys and many other volunteers worked well into the night making sure every last bag and box was delivered directly into Henryville and Memphis. Several churches and the fire department were thankful for the donations. Eric said that as they were carrying boxes into the churches, families would walk up and graciously start taking arm fulls of stuff. LOVE this! Love that we were helping them directly. The guys also raised $6,000 in cash donations to go to help several local families. Amazing! I'm so thankful for this community. :)