God's Hand of Protection

Last month our area got hit hard with a severe storm - "our area" being pretty specific. A storm hit my parents house in north Dayton and a storm hit my sister's place just a few miles away. But THE storm hit our house and nearby surroundings very signigicantly. We think it was straight winds which can do as much damage as a tornado. Below is proof of that. And our house wasn't the worst I saw. Massive trees were uprooted and a roof of an apartment building was torn off (which was about a mile from our house). We thank God for his protection!

On this particular evening, Jake and Lydia had their last swim meet. Jake left after his first heat (with previous permission from the coach) because basketball camp was starting. We got through probably 3/4ths of the swim meet when they had to have all the swimmers exit the pool due to lightening and thunder. We waited the 1/2 hour and they called it. Dan had left with Claire to go pick up Jake. Since it was the last meet, the kids all lined up for their ice cream sundaes. Just moments later, the pool manager ran up and told everyone to take cover under the shelter. It hadn't started raining yet, so most people had stayed. About a minute later, the swim coach ran up and yelled to the volunteers, "Quit passing out ice cream...we have to get everyone out of here." I looked up and agreed wholeheartedly. The dumping of rain looked imminent and I've never seen clouds so low before and in such a swirly fashion. Of course, when the coach made this announcment, the purpose of it wasn't to induce panic, but that is exactly what it did in Lydia and her good friend, Holly. Holly was in line with us and I made sure she found her family before we booked it out of there. As we ran to our car, Lydia asked if we were going to die. It was the first of 4 or 5 times she asked. Tornado sirens started going off, so when we arrived home (thankfully, it was a home meet so we were right around the corner), we went down to the basement and prayed. Still no rain...just very windy. I called Dan and asked if they were going to wait at the church till it past. He said, "no," much to my dismay. Lid and I stayed in the bathroom for a bit then we went upstairs to the living room to wait for the others to get home. I started to read to Lid to distract her. Didn't get too far. The rain decided to pour and the lightening, thunder, and wind picked back up. And of course, the power went off. Right when we lost power, I saw lights in the driveway. What scared me was that I also saw tree limbs falling everywhere, including all around the van. I wasn't sure if Dan was going to stay in the van or make a run for it or if they were trapped or what. I was going to run outside to help (don't know what difference I would have made in hindsight). I told Lydia to get under the table. She begged me not to leave her. I told her I would be right back...I just needed to see if they needed help. I started to open the front door and then Dan made his move. He was carrying Claire and Jake was running close behind. Everyone was safe inside the house. During of one the lightening blasts, I heard Dan say, "whoa." He showed me our neighbors partially fallen tree with leaves just inches from our living room window. We hadn't even know it, but God also protected Lydia and I inside the house. We had been reading on the couch with our heads and backs to that very window. Dan went back outside to go check on our neighbor next door who is a single gal. When he was out, he noticed our trampoline had been carried across 4 lanes of traffic to the people's house acoss the street! From the pictures below, you'll see it didn't fare too well.

This was in the backyard. Big limbs had fallen on the patio covering, as well as a couple of them impaled in the ground (don't have pictures of those).

Downed power lines in the back yard.

Ironically, our power company would not hook the lines back to the house. If there had been something "live" or "hot" or whatever the term is, I believe they would have. We hired a man in our church who is qualified in this area. We still have to cut down a hanging limb and hopefully, insurance will cover the cost of a new trampoline...then our back yard will be as good as new.

While God is always good, I am so glad our family was under His hedge of protection this particular evening!

The Day Our Friends Were A No-Show - Part 2

I had good intentions of finishing this post earlier. However, I did not take into account a hubby being out of town for 2 weeks and a son recovering from surgery which equals one mom being exhausted and celebrating an early bedtime each night (which is usually when I can grab a moment to blog). Below is how we finished our day at Youngs, sadly without the good company we were expecting. But we did have a fun time as a family so that definitely counts!

At the kids last day of school picnic, they had Mountain Dew as a choice of beverage. I noticed on the back of Jake's MD can there was a coupon for one free game of golf or a free cone at Young's Dairy! That discovery resulted in Dan picking out cans from the trash can. Once he left, I took over. Yes, kind of gross, but we scored a deal! How often can a family of five go mini golfing for free? Better yet, go mini golfing for free and get free ice cream? All we paid for was the gas to drive there! And guess what? We collected enough cans to do it again! I think they expire the end of this month so we better plan that outing soon. Jake takes his game of Putt Putt very seriously.

Kids on a stump...don't ask about Jake. I have no idea?

Had to get our tractor shots.

Time to feed the goat. I had loaded my pockets with dimes for animal feed. But my kids had to resort to scooping it off the ground since they uped the price to a quarter.

Not sure why, but one thing Claire is always excited about when we go to Youngs is getting to wash her hands outside in the handwashing area. Seriously, that was one of the things she mentioned when we said we were going. Funny girl.

Jake's picture pretty much sums up what we did next.

The Day Our Friends Were A No-Show - Part 1

Earlier this month, we headed over to Young's Dairy to meet our good friends, the Murphy's. (Jim and Dan were college buddies). We have had fun over the years meeting up with them and Young's is usually our meeting point. They moved overseas last year and Jim teaches at an international school, so we were looking forward to catching up and getting an update on how their year went. Dan and Jim passed e-mails along and a time and place was set...or so we thought.

We were to meet them at noon and have lunch together. We pulled in right about noon and waited....and waited...and waited. We each passed the time in different ways as our hungry stomach's growled away. Lydia was glad she had a book in the van!
Jake had to resort to a little of this...

And Claire found some pretty flowers to smell. I thought the flowers were a decent background for a picture so I asked Claire to smile. The ornery little girl gave me these instead...

So, Lydia posed for me!

And guess who came around after watching her big sis!

Shortly after I took these pictures, I sat back down at the table and said,"You guys did say "noon,"right? Dan shook his head yes. "And it was supposed to be today, right?" Again, Dan shook his head yes. Then he got out his phone and re-read those e-mails. We were at Young's 2 days ahead of schedule! Ha! When we realized this, we quickly headed in the lunch line and filled our bellies. Then it was off to the putt-putt course, visiting the animals, and ice cream. Will post those pictures next time. Just had to share that little funny story.

Fun at Jungle Jim's

I was mean tired driving home from the Louisville zoo last month. We were about 50 miles away to Cincy when I was so wishing that we were 5 miles to HOME. Then I had an idea. The kids were oblivious while I was on the phone with Dan. We crossed the bridge into Ohio and drove past the city. I got off at the West Chester exit and pulled into a hotel parking lot. "What are we doing here, mommy?" "We are going to stay here overnight." "No, really... what are we doing?" "Really, we ARE going to sleep here tonight." I might have well said we were on our way to Disney - that was the hollering and celebrating going on in the back of the van. Who knew a sleepover in a hotel was so exciting!? Score, Mom (and Dad, the hero, who had found us a decent place on Priceline). The kids were happy to not cut our trip short and I was happy to have a bed sooner than later. We checked in, went across the street to get some snacks, Jake watched some basketball, and then we were all out. The next day we swam in the pool before checking out. Since we were close, I took the kids to Jungle Jim's. I don't know what they were imagining in their heads after my description, but I did remind them it was a glorified grocery store. That didn't matter. We spend 3 + hours there...THREE HOURS. They wanted to check out every single isle with all the different ethnic food options. We bought some fun, different food, sampled several things, and of course, had fun with the camera!

A Trip To Elizabethtown

I got some catching up to do seeing as the summer is more than half way over. Figured I would show a few pics from the beginning of summer when we went to go visit the Rebilas family in KY. Not too many represented...I wish I could say it was because I just forgot to take pictures. It was more like I was too miserable to take pictures. If you remember from an earlier post, the pink eye bug had hit our household (at least the women folk) HARD! I would have post phoned our trip but I thought my pink eye was starting to go away with the left over drops I had from Claire...or Lydia...one of the two. Sadly, it got much, much worse. I even ended up going to Becky's doctor and got a stronger prescription of drops.

We were planning on staying through Wed. but ended up leaving Tuesday when Claire started getting her 3rd round of pink eye. It was enough for me to be crazy about handwashing & disinfecting everything I touched. There was no way I could do that with Claire. But before we headed home, we went to the Louisville zoo. I think it was a record for heat that day, of course. But the kids and the moms still had fun! Here we are at Wendy's for dinner before we drove home to Ohio. (**with the fun memory of me throwing my keys in the trash and an employee fishing them out for me. I was going to do the dirty work, but he insisted. I thought, "how nice of him." Then thought how amusing it was that he then asked me to mention the whole incident to his boss right then and there. I waited while he retrieved her and told her "this man needs a raise" and explained what had happened - although I did leave out the part about him asking me to praise him in front of her). =) We discovered this little message...although Drew was not the author of it...
Ethan was! What a sweet boy!

Claire and Sammy had quite a little connection going on. It was cute to watch. Sammy just looked at me funny when I told her to "have her home by 8:30."

Random Thusday Thoughts

* It is 9:38 pm, but it feels like 1:30 am. Why, then, am I taking time to post? Because I have the memory of someone 3 times my age...at least that is the way it seems sometimes. I know if I don't write down my thoughts, they will be lost in the abyss of forgetfulness.

*Claire is...well, Claire. If you know her at all, that about sums it up. She has quite a little spunk to her personality and the girl makes me laugh. Here are a couple recent funnies from her little 4 yr. old mouth (with some background info as well, so it makes sense).

- I love Mandesa! I've gotten the chance to hear her live twice at Women of Faith and I love her! I was given an album of hers for Christmas. I thought the kids would enjoy listening to it so I let the girls borrow it one night for their music. Big mistake...(just jokin')... Jake never got the chance to get it because Lydia has claimed it. So, the other night, Claire saw me turning on the little boombox and she said, "I don't want to listen to that Aunt Lisa!" Guess he needed a change of pace.

- While on the Mandesa theme, there is a song on the album where the words start off as "How Much? (referring to God's love for us). The "How Much" part repeats itself a few times, almost like a chant. Once Claire asked me why the song said, "Ham-ich," which is her word for sandwich!

- Claire is in the L-O-N-G process of learning that she is not the center of attention at all times...imagine that!? With this comes learning to wait her turn to talk when Daddy and I are talking or one of us is talking to Jake and Lydia. So, she has heard the word "interrupting" a time or two, you could say. Not long ago, at some mealtime, she was talking and got extremely frustrated at her siblings. She finally had enough and proclaimed loud and clear, "YOU ARE UPTER-ROOTING ME!"

*Before we left to visit friends in Kentucky, Lydia asks, "Do they speak English there?" I guess that is up to one's interpretation. Although, I'm not one to poke fun since I had a thick, Carolina accent when I was young.

* Claire has been on a kick about asking people if they live in America. She hounded two older girls the other day at the library about the matter.

* I have developed a love/hate relationship for swim team. I love that Jake and Lydia are learning how to swim. I hate the time commitment for it. Ok...so hate is a strong word. I dislike it very, very, very, very, very much. Practice is every morning during the weekday. That's not so bad. It's the stinkin' meets. There are so many swimmers, so many teams, swarms of people, and from the time we have to be there to the time we get to go home, it takes about 4 hours; longer if it is a home meet. I asked J & L if they wanted to do it next year and they both said "yes." We shall see.

* The street department for the city of Kettering stole my kid's library signs. Really? Jake met his goal of reading 30 hours last week and got his Library Champion sign for the yard. Lydia met her goal this week and I took her Tues. afternoon to get her sign. Wed. morning, I saw a truck stop on the side of the road, pull up the signs, and throw them in the back of the truck. I hurried the kids, who were all eating breakfast, out the door. We were going to go get our signs back. I have to believe the guy saw us and then quickly drove away, leaving me shaking my head and my kids disappointed. Lydia was quick to remind me that we could go and get another sign, but I told her we were going to complain. The whole thing just bothered me. No knock on the door and definitely no hanging around when the mom and kids come out to find out what's going on. Well...the reason was that we are not allowed to have the signs on the city's property, which is between the street and the sidewalk. They have been put there the past 2-3 years, but apparently, they are trying to really "clean up" the city and two signs whose purpose is to encourage kids with reading is offensive to the eye??! Our signs were returned and now they are on the non-offensive side of the walk.

* I have been pricing room darkening curtains. I wish I knew how to sew and could just make some of my own. Oh, why didn't I pay more attention in Home Ec. class?

Cake Hobby

So, it's been a while since I posted. Summer vacation started with a bang with 3 plus weeks of pink eye. Loverly - huh? We were pink eye free until about 4am this past Sunday morning, when Claire came back in my room complaining of her eye bothering her. Poor girl...this was her 3rd bout with it (with Lydia and I also catching it, despite my coming just shy of using Lysol as a perfume). Claire's problem is linked to a recurrent ear infection...so hopefully, when her ears get checked next week, she will be in the clear or else it's off to the ENT for her. We have also been busy with a trip to KY to visit friends (next post), VBS, and swim team.

Wanted to post some pics of the cakes I have made so far. Dan gave me a cake decorating class certificate in February and I started that 6 week class in April. I had so much fun and was happy to learn some new "tricks." Here they are in order... First cake made was for my sister's b-day.
Design transfer cake...donated to the Family Fun Fest at school, during which there is a cake walk. How fitting!

This was not part of the cake assignment for the class, but I did make this cake for Dan's b-day. Go Colts!

Not a huge fan of clowns, but week 5 was learning how to make them. They were kind of fun!

We celebrated early for my nephew, Matthew's, b-day while he and his fam were in town for Memorial Day. I'm sure he would have gone for a Star Wars themed cake instead, but he was a grateful recipient anyhow.

The last class was learning how to do the basket weave cake. My weave does not look the greatest mostly because I was rushed and I had the wrong tip. That would be my only complaint about the class...I felt rushed. But then again, I can be a bit of a perfectionist in certain areas. I was the last one to leave the class every single week. But I was also enjoying my "free time."

And this cake had nothing to do with the class either. Just felt like practicing. I made this sheet cake as an appreciation to the VBS workers. Our theme was kind of a western one so this was my attempt at a bandanna pattern. I do need to work on my lettering, that's for sure. And that's all for now!