a walk in the park

It was one of those perfect summer nights. Warm and sunny but without bugs or humidity so we took a picnic and played at the park. We played ball with Sam, tag with each other and watched the girls swing as high as they could. It's one of those great nights that really make you smile- made all the better by a stop by the Connetts where Nessa had just baked her famous chocolate chip cookies. YUM!!

Things we love:

The new vent in our bathroom. Gone is the old popcorn ceiling which couldn't be washed and hated the humidity our bathhroom often had when a family of 5 (including 3 daughters!!!) all shared the same shower.

Emily's new chalkboard which covers the access door that Shawn needed to make so that he could access the roof to install the vent work to our new bathroom vent. This was a huge project that turned out so well

New clothes all handmade with love. Shawn's mom has been sending our family care packages. Each one is addressed to 1 family member and contains a beautiful gift that she has made for them. In this picture Charlie and Emily are both wearing new dresses that she has made and Shawn is wearing one of the 4 new ties she has made for him.He loves that they are all long enough, something that many store bought ties are not. Lily's the next to receive a package which is already on it's way so we'll update this post with a picture of her when it arrives.

Lily's dress has arrived and it too is beatiful!!!!

Thanks to Shawn for all of his hardwork on our home and to Shawn's mom, Kathy for sharing her great skills with our family. We so lucky to have both of you!

4th of July

And here of course is the 4th of July. We started with the annual parade, went to a BBQ and ended with fireworks. We hope the you had as nice of a 4th as we did.

3rd of July

One of the great things about living in a small town is that you can choose to do things your own way. Our town chooses to celebrate the 4th of July over several days. So, we were able to have 2 nights of fireworks and several days of fun including all 3 girls dancing on the 3rd for the community. Here are so pics of the 3rd. And, I would have to mention that Lily is a darn good driver- it scares me a little bit.....

stolen from Dawn's blog

okay i liked tghis idea but I had a ton of trouble trying to copy and paste so now I am handwriting it.....

So the 1st 5 people who respond to this post will get something homemade from me. I get to choose what and I get up to 1 year to do it- but I promise it will be sooner than that b/c I'll forget if I wait that long. I get to choose what it is and if you are one of the 1st 5 people, then you have to do the same thing for 5 people on your blog.

2nd Oh crap moment of Dog ownership

That Sam is still alive is due to Shawn's great sense of self control- and his desire not to have our daughters in tears for weeks because he killed the dog. This evening Shawn took Sam for a bike ride. We did this last weekend with Shawn holding on to Sam and pulling Lily in her bike trailer and it was a great experience. Tonight Shawn went alone with Sam and they rode quite fast. At on point, they were going REALLY fast and Sam saw a rabbit. Sam chased the rabbit even though it caused him to pass right in front of Shawn's bike and continued to chase the rabbit even as Shawn started falling on him. Shawn hit the payment with his chin and arms and damaged his bike as well. Sam, however was not at all hurt and in fact continues to chase the rabbit. Shawn had to walk the bike and dog about a mile to get home.

He came home as I was return from chasing down the women who brought Charlie home from camp because 1/2 our stuff was still in the van. Shawn's car was so full of camp stuff that I could not get him to the ER until I moved some of it. Even though that took a minute and he was in severe pain, Shawn refused to go to the ER until I took pictures of him. (the pre ER pics are the ones w/o bandages). The whole time we were at the ER Shawn kept telling me that I would need to take post pics and blog this ASAP. Since he is in considerable pain, I readily agreed.

So we are home now and he's doped up on vicodin and ibuprofin and luckily didn't break anything. Still he's probably staying home from work tomorrow since both hands are bandaged and his chin is so nasty. BTW- the black eye is from earlier this week from a basketball game.

Special thanks to Sarah who dropped everything to come over and get the kids to bed. I told that she could leave right away since Charlie was there, but when the ER told us that it looked like tornadoes were on the way, we asked her to stay until we were done. (And it's kind of freaky to have the nurses pulling out all the flashlights) and then she came and jumped Shawn's car b/c I left the lights on. I owe you big time.

And yes Nessa, I totally know you would have come but you've just moved and got hurt last week yourself so we asked Sarah.

Tornado

Yesterday was quite an exciting day for us. We went to check out a friends new home. They wanted Shawn to check out their fireplace. With no radios or TV, we had no idea how bad the weather was getting until the sirens started going off. We decided to head back to our house with our friends since this was their 1st tornado. As we came upon the track near our home, we could see the cloud rotation, which appeared to be very near to our home. We realized that we really couldn't head to our house at that pointed and started heading to the home our friends were currently renting. Then, as the fast moving clouds passed in front of us we again headed to our home.

We spent about an hour in the basement in the dark before it was clear for us to come back upstairs. During that time we had 4 kids (9,4,3, and a baby) and upto 6 adults and a dog hanging out listen to our weather radio. This was a pretty scary time as the last NWS kept announcing that there were tornadoes touching down in the NW. In the end, the closest one was more than 2 miles away, but having seen the damage it is really scary.

We're happy to say that as of last night their were no deaths or serious injuries, though we have heard the police, fire, and ambulance sirens pretty regularly through last night and this morning.

Also, Charlie, who was away at Girl's Camp for the 1st time, called early this morning to let us know she was okay and to check on us, and that based on the NWS predicting more storms this evening, camp is ending early and she'll be home tonight.

As special thanks to the Connett who came to check on us when we didn't answer any of our phone (because I promise they really never rang)... It's wonderful to have the kind of friends that go out in a storm to make sure that you're okay.

Here is a link of some of the damage that occured. Thank you Brad (Weber) for sharing the pics you took. Our new camera should be here sometime today........