A Three Birthday Month

Birthdays

Timothy, Grandma and Elijah took another trip around the sun in April.  Each of their birthdays were celebrated with a special dinner and dessert.  Tim chose Huli Sue's and having brownies at home. Huli Sue's is a Hawaiin restaurant and our meal was delicious. Grandma chose dinner at home with homemade fried rice and Angel Food cake. Elijah picked Pack's Tavern, which is an old favorite restaurant and then having a donut tree in lieu of a cake. I absolutely failed to take many photos in April, including pics of two of the birthday people. 

Tim with his tiny coffee.

Grandma's presents 

Elijah's birthday donut tower.

Rebekah's Performances

We attended another fabulous show that Rebekah performed in. This show was "Slepping Beauty and Friends". It had excerpts from several Disney shows. Rebekah was the broom in The Sorcerer's Apprentice and an evil stepsister in Cinderella. 

Rebekah as a flying broom.

Her balance amazes me.

I can barely recognize her with the red hair wig!

College

Both Elijah and Rebekah had great semesters in college. They each did well in their classes. Finals ended yesterday and now we wait for final grades. We can already see that, once again, Rebekah  got straight A's. Elijah's teachers are a little bit farther behind in posting results. We know he is getting either A's or high B's in all his classes. Rebekah is taking the summer off from college but Elijah is taking two classes this summer.  

Elijah made this keychain in class.

Pets

I discovered this cat window bed at the Bins (a store filled with
Amazon returns at incredible deals). It is very popular with our kitties.

Recovery After Helene

Recovery continues in WNC despite the federal government pulling funds. Our state's request for continued help from FEMA was denied. DOGE withdrew the CDC, which had set up appointments in our area in order to do a risk assessment and advise our local government on ridding the toxins in our water and soil, determining the 200 plus families still at the highest risk of contracting disease from their flooded living conditions, and performing suicide risk assessment and prevention (suicide commonly plagues natural disaster areas after about six months ... I have already heard of one). We really needed these services, but the CDC workers had to turn around and go back.

The pictures below were taken on Easter Sunday. They are of a local park that, because of closed roads and piles of debris, I hadn't been able to access before. Before Helene, it used to be a beautiful tree-lined park where my kiddos learned to ride their bikes.  Now it is a desolate piece of land that is littered with shattered glass from the breweries upstream. Most of the trees were washed away. Two more bridges have been repaired and opened.  The Lowes store reopened on the seventh month anniversary of Helene. 

There are still mangled cars to remind us of that tragic day scattered throughout our region.

This path used to be a dozen feet away from the river. Now parts of it have been washed away and the river has spread out, altering the landscape. 

Bales of paper from a recycling center upstream still rest in a ditch.

Our city is changed. So many people have moved away. On our street alone, which has about 20 houses...two now stand empty.  I drove through another community recently with more than ten homes up for sale. Houses used to be in extreme demand and now they stand empty. We keep moving forward and hope that we will rise as a stronger, more resilient community.  It is going to take a long time.

Blessings,  Dawn