HOLLAND — It's been six months since the tornado crashed into the Reed family's century-old farmhouse, but they talk about it almost every day, Nancy Reed said: "We still tell the story all the time."

They haven't been able to escape the storm's impact, at work or at home. Nancy provides day-care in her home, and her husband Jeff Reed teaches and coaches at Norris Public Schools.

Though the tornado did the most damage in Hallam, it regained its F4 strength east of that town, toppling walls at the Norris schools and then heading toward Holland, an unincorporated southeast Lancaster County crossroads of about 100 people.

Several families, like the Reeds, had major disruptions to both home life and work. The town, school and rural areas east of Hallam are still coping with the destruction, though residents say life is slowly getting back to normal.

Around the community this week people planted trees, continued home repairs and moved back home from summers spent at rental houses or in extended-stay hotel rooms.

The renovation work is being done with the help of millions of dollars in federal and state disaster grants and loans, said Cindy Newsham, with the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency. The money helps cover what applicants' insurance plans do not.

"This is the long-term, not-as-exciting part," she said, "but this is what's getting their lives back to normal, or as close to normal as we can get them."

FEMA, with contributions from Nebraska, approved around $820,000 to 504 applicants throughout the counties touched by the tornado for help with rent and lodging, minor home repairs and replacement of personal property. 

The Small Business Administration approved about $9.2 million in loans to 156 applicants for rebuilding homes and businesses. And FEMA, Nebraska and applicants together provided about $16.9 million in public assistance, for power lines, roads and school repair.

The stories of destruction, coping and rebuilding are coming to a end for many families, though for others the work will continue well into next year.

The story the Reeds tell starts with a party for 19 people. They came home from church that Sunday, two days after school let out for the summer, and started preparing a chicken dinner for family friends and their children.

The original idea was a camping trip, but as the weather got worse, that turned into a backyard picnic, and then an indoor picnic, and finally the group abandoned partying altogether and took shelter in the basement.

"The barn was completely destroyed, and about a third of the house blew away," Nancy Reed said.

Rescuers found the group and helped them from the basement, shaken and facing months of upheaval to their lives. They didn't sit around and lament the loss, Nancy said: "We started making plans almost immediately."

At home, Nancy put her business on hold until the family bought a new, ranch-style manufactured home. Now she's back, with eight children to look after. At night, she and Jeff work on the house. This week, he put a drop ceiling in the basement, and he's looking forward to the day he can get grass growing again in the muddy yard.

At work, Jeff has been teaching art in portable classrooms, changing his lessons to easy-to-carry projects — lots of drawing, calligraphy and cartooning assignments. After school, the football team he coaches made do this fall with makeshift dressing rooms.

"The students, they've been great," he said. "They've done what's expected of them, and they haven't complained."

One of those Norris students is his daughter, 12-year-old Taylor, the eldest of the Reeds' four children.

She said she's dealing with the storm pretty well. It helped, she said, that her parents talked to her and her siblings about the storm.

"Sometimes we talked about how we felt, and how scared we were."

One of her younger brothers was especially worried whenever thunderstorms rolled in over the summer, their mom said. He would hide out in a basement closet, and had trouble sleeping.

It also helped, Taylor said, that in the family's new house, she and her sister Caroline, who is 4, don't have to share a room anymore. Taylor chose light blue paint for her very own bedroom, but did put her sister's soccer picture up on her wall.

The family is close to finishing the work, six months later, and ready to relax and enjoy their home. Some of Taylor's friends, who were at the Reed house for the party the night of the tornado, were among 13 girls who came back for a sleepover last week to celebrate Taylor's birthday.

They didn't get any more sleep than they did back in May, but finally, staying up all night was fun again.

Reach Barbara Nordby at 473-7242 or at bnordby@journalstar.com.