Exactly 6 weeks after Hurricane Matthew came and took over, the Surfin' Spoon hobbit door has finally opened back up to all of our awesome customers! We are so thankful, so tired, but so thankful!! You know... a hurricane, a flood, drying a building out, and renovating has a lot of emotional and physical side effects (at least for a 7 month pregnant lady), BUT because we had an overwhelming amount of love, support, prayers, encouragement, help, and generosity from all of you, we are filled with joy and gratitude that we are officially open again!

The last two weeks have been daunting, exhausting, and tedious, but good. Thanks to many helpful and talented friends we were able to put the Spoon back together when she FINALLY dried out. Trent did some fabulous electrical work, Tom Lee and crew got the drywall back up, Brant helped Jesse install the ship-lap, James painted, painted, then painted some more and helped fix the deck, Rodfather washed lots of dishes and picked up hundreds of dollars and quarters for Surfing for Autism (I think we hit the $5,000 goal), my lovely sister-in-law, Rachel, helped me clean, Nancy and Jess babysat Bear, while Ryan, Glory, and Emma got the merchandise folded and put out, and there were many others that helped along the way... we can't thank everyone enough for all they did (love y'all). Then finally Thursday, November 18th rolled around and we were really hoping to get open on Friday. Well shucks, there was still just way too much to do; we couldn't make it happen. Saturday was gonna hopefully be the day.

The day before, and the day of our reopening was tough... we thought all of our machines were going to work. We were wrong. At about 4pm on Friday we tested them and it was pretty heartbreaking (we had to wait until the shop was completely clean and sanitized before we could turn them on- who wants sawdust and hurricane funk in their yogurt? Not me!). The machines (which we had just purchased this Spring) weren't going to work; thankfully they may be fixable if we can find the parts. However, long-story-short, miraculously Jesse purchased 5 new machines at the end of this summer at an auction for a great price, so we had back up machines ready to go... in a Currituck storage room. Thanks to our great friend, Mark, Jesse and he were able to load up his trailer in the dark and bring the new machines back to the Spoon, and then of course they had to take the old ones back. Did I mention they are really heavy, like 400 pounds? It was a looooonnnnng night. Jesse is looking super-muscular these days though, hahaha!

Saturday (yesterday) morning came. Jesse arrived at 7am to get the yogurts made while the rest of us finished the last bit of cleaning, sweeping, mopping, filling candy bins and toppings, cutting fruit, and frantically trying to piece the Spoon back together so we could open at noon. Thank the Lord... we did it! Yesterday was so incredible and seeing friendly faces and getting big hugs was worth every minute of reconstruction, blood, sweat, tears, and stress. We had a GREAT day. And the fro-yo was oh-so-delicious too (we let Bear eat two small bowls for all of his patience :)

There is no way Jesse and I could possibly thank each one of you enough for your contributions, whether you donated money, time, food, prayers, etc. We are so humbled and amazed at the love of others and all the kind words we received. Every single bit mattered and helped. THANK YOU!! I would love to be able to handwrite a thank you note to every person, but I'm afraid I probably won't be able to. Please please know how much we appreciate EVERYTHING! We love you.

Just a reminder... from this on October 9th...

To this on November 19th...

Details along the way... (that's "Chicken" from the book helping Bossman!)

I promise I was there helping (I just don't really love getting my picture taken these days... but I did re-cover some new stools and spruce up the place a bit)

I forgot to mention that we had a super-successful tent sale a few weeks ago too!! We donated 10 percent of the sales and online donations from you. We were able to donate over $2,000 to Mission of Hope- Haiti http://www.mohhaiti.org/, Cape Hatteras Methodist Men, and help some local families out!

And HUGE THANKS again to Mama Kwan's for the fundraiser that helped us buy our new freezer! Here's a pic of one of our favorite groms, Talon, that won the board they raffled off :)

THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts for being there for us during such a crazy time!! We can't wait to see y'all at the Spoon - HAPPY THANKSGIVING! We will be open all week 12pm - 8/9ish... except for Thursday.

Bear was especially psyched outta his mind to get his fro-yo finally!

A drawing we will always cherish from our precious niece, Emerson!