Evacuation and other Excitement

At the Goodland museum Cop Exhibit

Eli the Cop

Evie the Cop

A couple weeks ago, my mom and I were working in the basement when we heard a lot of pounding.  I went outside and saw a backhoe hitting the pavement in the bank parking lot next to our house with its digger.  I got Eli and we sat and watched the backhoe for a while.  As it turns out, whacking the pavement with a digger isn't the proper way to remove a section of a parking lot.  Because we had to evacuate soon after.  It seems they broke a gas main right there.  My mom's house was in the evacuation zone also, so we all ended up out of the streets (for 5 whole hours).  We went to the local museum, then out to dinner and finally over to the Methodist church which was setting up for the "evacuation victims."  It was so surreal.  The pastor came over and asked us how we were doing, in such a nice and sympathetic tone.  He asked how the kids were holding up, too.  Our two crazy kids who had found another kid to play with and were having a ball, they probably thought this the best day ever.  Yeah, I think they were fine.  And we had only been out of the house a few hours, we weren't like those poor people on the east coast right now.  The Red Cross came and asked us to fill out paperwork with blanks like "Pre Disaster Address."  It was so silly.  These resources are meant for people in way worse situations than leaving their homes for an evening, I mean some people take longer shopping trips than our evacuation.While the Red Cross was explaining that they had set up hotel rooms for us, the gas company people gave the all clear, so that was it.  That was our entire harrowing evacuation story.

The children's section in the upcoming bookstore!

In more exciting news, we are making a lot of progress right now. Three weeks ago, I called everyone on the list of licensed contractors in Goodland for the fourth time.  And one actually came out!  He built the dividing wall between our living space and the store!  Now you can really see how the spaces will look.
And some students from Northwest Technical College are coming out and running all of our new wiring as well as bringing the old wiring up to code.  We only pay for materials and the students get real world experience, so it is really great.  Now if we could only think of a good bookstore name... Got any suggestions?
 

And we finished our penny floor finally, here is our bathroom floor.