The Hood Experiment - Part I (pre-baby) - All Set..........Not So Much Anymore

I may have cursed us with the last blog posting......... the Saturday following Brett and I were doing exactly what we had planned to do the last few weeks without baby, watching TV and reading.  All the sudden we heard someone yelling 'FIRE' in our back alley.  I ignored the nonsense and continued reading.  After a few minutes though Brett decided to get up and check it out.  Well sure enough, the guy yelling was not lying; there was a fire at the neighbor’s house (about 6 feet away from ours). We quickly threw on some jackets and boots and grabbed Begley.  Below is the news clip of the events that transpired that night.  Our house (1824 N Wood) is the brown/khaki one behind the reporter and is mentioned in the newscast and article.


http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=7928286


So the excellent news is the firefighters did an amazing job and prevented the flames from engulfing our house entirely, the not so excellent news is the amount of water damage we incurred from them dousing our house for more than an hour.


I was convinced all would be fine (my zen bubble hadn’t popped yet); we could live in a BBQ scented house and just air it out.  The contractors can tear walls down around us, but we would stay.  So we did for a week and I continued to pretend the house was totally livable.... even though this is what it looked like (yes it was chilly also).  

After letting the house “dry” out for a week, the contractors came back to reassess the situation and delivered some not so good news, the damage was MUCH more extensive than originally thought.  It’s never good when the insurance adjuster needs to come pay a visit again.  As it turns out, we lost our entire basement and north side wall which includes the kitchen, our master bedroom, bathroom and guest suite.  Displaced once again, not even 15 months since the first fire..........(zen bubble popped)


We moved this past weekend into corporate housing in a downtown hotel off Michigan Avenue.  It is NOT home but the place is really nice and the location is great!  Begley however thinks the location totally sucks and doesn't understand elevators, revolving doors and lack of grass to do his business.  He hopefully will learn soon.


Baby girl is due two weeks from today.  We are very grateful she hasn't made an early appearance yet and gave us some time to get settled.  She will not have her nursery right away, but eventually will be back home and we'll have a great story for her when she is older.


Our next blog update will be welcoming baby girl and you can all meet her for the first time..............