can I get a break??

So this past week, we were on the go ALL day every day. Or so it seems. From not having power and running around all over, Vacation Bible School, to Summer School, to grocery store trips, Target trips, baseball games, and playdates. I am a professional taxi driver. And much to my dismay, Mike went to help a friend do work on friend's house last night. This had been planned for months, to put on a new garage door for his friend. Since his friend lives 45 minutes away, he spent the night to finish up the work today. I played Supermom.

Yesterday the girls and I went to a family's house from our church. They have six daughters (5 are in school with our kids). Each daughter invited a friend from school, and Maddie and Kaycey were invited. While Cal was invited to come along, he was not interested in hanging out with 12+ girls, so he had a fun day with Auntie (my sister). Their house was quite a bit further away than I expected (not a big deal--just adds to my in the car time for the week!) After the swimming fun, we had to pick Cal up and race home, because he was having a friend stay over. They had a blast, as always. Apparently this is sleepover #28 for them (I really don't think they've had that many, but I'm not going to argue with them!) Baseball, baseball stats, nintendo, and giggles is all I heard till about 12:30am. Today they played baseball and decided to go swimming. Sadie and I sat outside by the pool and watched the fun. The fun came to an abrupt halt when Cal's friend slipped off the top step of the ladder, backwards to the ground. He hurt his hand, and I had a hunch that his arm was broken. His mom, who was at a tournament for his older brother, came to pick him up to take him for xrays. And yes, turns out he broke his arm. Not the break I was looking for : ( I feel so awful!! Please tell me I'm not the only one who has had someone get hurt in their care and it wasn't their own kid????

summer storms

And summer came in with a roar, literally.

Monday night, after Cal's baseball game, the skies were churning up a storm. Of course, being the weather freak that I am, I sat in front of the radar with my finger on the mouse to refresh any updates. I also get warning text alerts on my cell phone. The kids were playing, Mike was watching TV, and I was fixated on the computer screen. Mike decided to unplug the televisions since the lightning was just wild. There were tornado warnings just west of us, and just as I mentioned that, my cell phone buzzed with a tornado warning for our town. By the size of the storm on the radar, I knew this was something big. As we rounded up the kids, I quickly stepped outside to see if the sirens were going off. They were, but it was almost impossible to hear them because of the wind. Immediately the kids started downstairs, Mike grabbed some blankets and miscellaneous things to bring down, and I grabbed my laptop, and down we went. There are few times I've ever been afraid of weather. But this is one of those times that I was. The electricity flickered on and off at least a dozen times. There was a loud whirring sound, which Mike thought was the air conditioning kicking in. But I had turned every thermostat to off earlier. I kept a close eye on the radar, until the power went out. Then we covered our heads with blankets and hoped and prayed it would be over without our house blowing away! The kids, of course, were so scared, too. I heard a loud crash and was just waiting to hear the windows explode. Luckily I kept getting text alerts, and had people texting me to let me know the weather situation since we didn't have TV or computer, with no power. Around 10:15pm, our tornado warning expired, and there was just a watch. We went upstairs and the house was fine (what we could tell in the dark!) We stepped outside to find our rocking chairs (heavy chairs by the way!) thrown up against the side of the porch. We couldn't see much else outside, other than neighbors and their flashlights trying to check out damage as well. Unfortunately for our neighbors, when they are without power, their sump pumps don't run. When their pumps don't run, their basements flood. On one side of us they were bailing water with buckets, on the other side they were trying to get a generator running. (We have a sophisticated network of pipes and such under the house that allows most if not all water to drain to the ditch, being that our neighbors houses are lower than ours, and also theirs are 30 years old, they have water problems in heavy rain).

After attempting to survey any damage in the dark, we made the decision that without power, it'd be best to stay elsewhere since we can. So the kids and I went to my grandparents house. I was also in need of the TV to see what happened! I stayed up till 1am watching the breaking news of the apparent tornadoes that swept through the area. Several houses were leveled, many severely damaged about 20 minutes from us where they had an F2 tornado. Turns out the second tornado (an F1) touched down right nearby our house!!! The tornado that buzzed by us, caused damage to a nearby post office, littering the area with postal trucks, and ripping some of the roof off the post office. I drove around the next day to try and get some pictures of places near our neighborhood. These are enormous trees, just snapped and twisted like twigs!! I hope to get to the other town sometime this week for photos. I have a friend who lives there; her house was damaged but not leveled.

This first photo is from Cal's best friend's yard

happy summer!

If this doesn't say summer, I don't know what does! : )

Happy official first day of summer (& first day of summer school!)!

blue angels...

while yes, my kids have blue eyes and may attempt to be angels...we caught some real Blue Angel action down by the lakefront Friday.

I love, love, LOVE watching air shows!! Many years ago, while in 8th grade through high school, you could find me at EAA every summer as a member of Civil Air Patrol. Would you believe I once wanted to go to the Air Force Academy?? I'll have to dig up some old pictures of me and scan them....And just a few years back, we were invited by Make A Wish to come see the Thunderbirds practice for the air show. It was so cool!! After the practice, the pilots came around and talked to all the kids, took pictures, and signed autographs for them. Could this really have been FOUR years ago already?!?!?!?

It was really difficult to get good pics from this past Friday's show with some fog and low clouds, but hey, I tried.

summertime

I was an awful May blogger and journal keeper, so I am vowing to attempt to do better this month. So summer vacation has been alive for nearly two weeks. Let's just say there's only 77 days of summer left till school starts again...

But in between the arguing and teasing and name-calling and whining, there have been a few *good* blog worthy moments since school let out...

Getting their very own library cards.

A little baby with two little toothies...can you see them??

Cal made his debut as pitcher for his baseball team this past Monday. The game ended in a tie. Tonight he pitched and had an inning where he didn't allow a single run!! (His team also won 14-4 tonight)

(I have to make room on my computer to upload more pictures. We need another external hard drive!!)

Signed up for summer school today. While Maddie isn't able to take any classes until next year, the two older kids convinced her that summer school is so bad that they make you drink onion juice, hit your butt, and lock you in a basement. Maddie has politely declined going to summer school next year.