OT: ?Update on my MIL's House

wow... we so need to make sure we scan our layouts!!! so sorry she lost so much....

That is so sad that we do not think of when we are havig to leave somewhere to take keepsakes. I will always have my two special books from my RCS family!!

Anyhow as we know material things can be replaced (?) and they are safe. For the water to be that deep that far away, it goes to tell all of us how bad it really was.

Prayers and thoughts for all MC!!

OKC Dave

Oh M-C, I cannot imagine how awful it is to lose so much . My heart just cries for all of our fellow Americans. I think I would hate to lose my scrapbooks most of all. I am glad you scanned and saved the albums. That will be of some comfort to her. I daily keep all of those brave people in my thoughts and prayers. Agroup of our Ky Wildlife division just got back fron being there and you could see in every face the tragedy and heart break. They were all really moved by it. I don't think anyone has ever seen such devastation. Here's hoping that cleaning up and rebuilding will go easily. I will keep you all in my prayers.

Hugs, Sabrina in Kentucky

Brain cells come and brain cells go.... but fat cells go on forever

oh wow MC I'm sorry to hear this and yes thankfully you scanned it all. Copies are better than having lost it completely. Thats just terrible.

Oh my goodness M-C! I'm so sorry for your poor MIL! Money can't replace the sentimental value of treasures like those. Keeping her in my thoughts.

Judy, SA

I'm sorry to here your MIL's house was nearly destroyed. I realized last year as my house became wet and ceilings collapsed destroying some of my belongings that even though it hurt to throw things away that I loved that it didn't destroy my memories. It just destroyed my mementos that I thought I needed to jog my memories.

I have an inkling of what your MIL is going through and your thoughtfulness to get her the copies of the albums will warm her heart as she goes through this rough time of reclaiming her house.

This may sound weird, (but M-C I know you'll understand afterall who took pictures of their own car accident? :) is your MIL going to take pictures of her house and surrounds? There will come a day when everything is in order and people won't believe that the house once was under water.

Lynne

It's not weird, I thought of it, well maybe that doesn't speak to it not being weird, lol. However, I didn't dare ask her or my SIL as they were showing great signs of being wearry when they called. I imagine that there are pictures taken for insurance purposes. When the time is right, I'll ask and perhaps create a before and after album. I have a feeling that I'm going to have a lot of work to do with pictures in the near future!

M-C

thoughtfulness

Yes, wo am I and while we all consider scanning at low DPI just to share, 72 dpi works for showing on the internet, it really is not enough to re-print. I'm really glad that I scanned at 200-300 despite the size the files are.

M-C

Your SIL and family are in my prayers and thoughts. I can't even begin to imagine. Glad to hear that you scan the LO's though. When we first heard about hurricane Katrina and the flooding I thought oh my can you imagine if something like that happened here (mostly likely not but you never know) all our pictures of Dylan would be gone forever. We have them stored on disk and on the computer but they would vanish and be gone though. So we put the disk in a lockbox.

Chrissy

It turns out that my BIL emailed me today. He has the albums and pictures and asked whet he needed to do. So I told him to just freeze everything, pack it up with some dry ice and send it here. They say that you should freeze anything that you can't air dry right away. Hopefully the mold will not have started breeding on there, but the odds are against it as they say it starts to grow within two days.

I think that I have a huge, time consuming job ahead of me, but if I can save most of it, and scan it and perhaps recreate some stuff, maybe I'll be able to give my MIL some of her memories back. I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with all of it, but at least I have the scraproom to spread everything in. They say you should also rinse the pictures... hmmm sounds tricky with paper that is already wet!

M-C

mc, because of the bacteria and all involved, rinse them first with a mild solution of bleach water.. VERY mild and rinse again immediately with fresh water then air dry... stuff can be ironed flat... but protect yourself and use rubber gloves.. there is some nastiness in the water....

I'm so glad they found them... I hope you can salvage them!

It turns out that my BIL emailed me today. He has the albums and pictures

I recently did the weird picture thing myself.. since this happened with the hurricane I thought it would be a good idea and took about 40 pictures of inside my house.. then put it all on a disk and placed it with my important papers. I labeled it the "contents of our home". Took close ups etc.. some of you may do this for insurance reasons all ready but I don't think it would hurt for any of us to keep a yearly disk of our belongings for several reasons.

Oh wow MC. I was expecting them to not be able to find them. Good luck salvaging what you can. (I know, lots of help huh?) You definately have a major job ahead of you, and I know you'll do your best to save your MILs memories as much as you can.

So glad he found the pictures.....Good luck on the monumental task of recreating her memories!

This is an excellent idea whether you live in hurricane country or not. As some of you may remember last November I had a bad roofing job and it pretty much ruined all the ceiling, some of the walls and some of my belongs with water and collapsing ceiling damage. Where the contractor was pretty good at repairing and replacing 95% of what was damage. There were a few things that without a picture of it BEFORE it was damage they just wouldn't take my word it was damage. Blamed it on the contractor that built the house. So, pissed me off, but what am I going to do I have no proof.

So, everyone go around your house like Michelle and just take pictures. Hopefully you'll never need them.

Lynne

We do this every year but also take video and burn it all to a DVD and put it in the safety deposit box. If we ever had to leave the area we'd go there to get our important papers first, we also gave a copy to our insurance agent. She was tickled we'd done it, then when we went in again with this years she swapped it out with last years. It's a great idea Michelle!