Horrific experience.

I was coming back home yesterday from Walmart and witnessed something horrible. I was waiting to turn right and a big black truck ran a red light and hit a motorcyclist. I wont get into any details but needless to say I was very thankful my children didn't see. I cried the whole way home and thinking about it gets me teary eyed. The scariest thing is...I was going to turn left to go to the dollar store but decided last second not to because Hope was going to be getting off the bus and I didn't want to miss her. Thankfully I listened to the prompting or my 3 youngest and I could have been included in that horrible accident. It just made me realize how your whole life can change in a half a second and how dumb it is to be so grouchy because my house isn't as clean as I want it. I am still shaken up about it and it is something I will not soon forget. Tell your loved ones you love them and give them extra hugs and kisses, I know I will.

First food.

We started to feed Trey rice cereal this week and he LOVES it! He ate the whole bowl. The girls would only eat a few bites the first time but he took to it like a champ. From the looks of things he needs some extra calories because he is severely malnutritioned.....ha ha! I wish I would have gotten a picture of his legs, they get stuck in the bumbo...lol. I love, love, love this chubby little man!!

I have a 9 year old!

Can you believe that we have a 9 year old!! I can't! This year for her birthday, I decided to let her have a sleepover with 4 of her friends. They had SOOO much fun! Some of the girls did not go to sleep until 4:00 in the morning. Needless to say, Hope had a 3 hour nap the next day. It was alot of fun....LOUD...but fun.

Mackenzie, Kinber, Malarie and Hope. Kendall had already left before I could get a picture of all of them.

This is the cake that I decorated in 5 min. (literally). It is made of fruit by the foot and fruit snacks. I was planning on making her a fondant cake for her real birthday on Monday and cupcakes for her class that day too, so I figured I was good. However, Ellie asked Hope the night before the party what kind of cake they were eating at her birthday party and Hope politely said....we are not having cake (pause) thats kind of weird not to have cake at your birthday party.....soooooo I hurried and whipped this up while she was at school. She was very surprised and happy about it.

Here she is on her real birthday with her real birthday cake.

My friend Annie and I made this cake. It was my first fondant cake ever and I thought it turned out super cute. Thanks Annie for the help!

Hope had asked for a scrapbooking kit for her birthday so she got it and some clothes from us. The Shaws and G. George gave her some super cute clothes too. She was in desperate need of some summer clothes. My Mom gave her the cutest little birthstone necklace with her name engraved on it and G & G Gladwell gave her a Visa gift card. She thought that was AWESOME and thought she was super cool using it too....funny kid! Thank you so much everyone. She LOVED everything!!

Happy Birthday Hopey. We LOVE You!!!

The Storm!

As many of y'all know we have experienced heavy rains the last 2 days which has caused massive flooding in the entire Nashville area. We all knew the storm was coming and even as it started raining early Saturday we thought nothing of it. During the Spring and Fall we have become accustom to storm watches, tornado watches, and even tornado warnings. Precisely in that order. I was scheduled to work Saturday night at the theatre so I left our house at 4pm. It is about a 30mile commute. I was only able to get about 10 miles out of town when I discovered the roads were closed due to bridges being flooded over and trees blocking the roads. After discovering that all other routes were either closed or too dangerous to cross I went back home.

I made a few trips to the grocery store to stock up on essentials. We've laughed in the past at locals who whenever they hear there might be snow they head to the store and stock up on bread, milk, and toilet paper. I found myself making these same purchases:)

There was a tornado warning in Fairview that night for about 30 minutes. We went to our tornado room (bathroom:)) and listened to the radio until they said it had passed. No touchdown of tornado was ever recorded. All they ever can do is monitor the wind speed and its directions mixed with the temperature and see if the formula could possibly create a tornado. Luckily there were none reported touching down in all of Nashville.

We finally slept listening to the rain pound down on the roofs and cement. I woke up at 5am. The news broadcasters with urgency in their voices were telling people to stay home. People the day before had drowned in their cars trying to pass through standing water, in many instances the road was no longer there and had lost it's stand against the force of water like so many other objects had.

Our church was cancelled and we tried to stay in touch with our friends and members by txt since we couldn't get enough service to connect a call. At about 7 or 8am I helped a neighbor who lives below us get his belongings off the floor. We tried stacking his furniture on objects some only a few more inches higher but anything was better than keeping them in their place. I tried to be the calm one as I spoke to neighbors assuring them we'd be ok. It was hard however when we"d see on the news of apt. buildings being evacuated & their cars were floating away.

We stayed put but didn"t know how the roads looked just past the trees. The rain drenched us like millions of hoses hanging strait from the sky with no break for breath. It was odd because when we would look outside thinking it wasn't raining it was actually raining like it typically would (which is still pretty heavy). As soon as the sky would tease us with a color other than grey we would see lightning and directly following it was thunder as to rip through the sky like a big bully.

We lost power around 8am & were concerned how long it would be off. The kids were awesome and only when the thunder would shake did they come to us for reasurance. This was surely the longest day of my life! Constant check ups on neighbors around us became habitual. Occasinally we would see someone outside as if they wanted to make sure it was not a dream and touch it. As some of our neighbors were leaving to go to close family the rain had pretty much stopped. This was 8pm.

We ventured out hestitantly to our friends Adrian and Annie who last we talked to had power. We took the food that needed to be cooked and our phone chargers. They did in fact have power. The rest of town was dark and doors left open to stores and buildings. It was like the town had been abandoned. Adrian was mostly upset the cable was not working:) We stayed there after eating and the kids played. We tried to make multiple calls but no success. AT&T had lost all connection and Verizon was very limited.

On our way to our apt. one of our neighbors gave us a few candles, we had only 1 flashlight. The girls slept to the side of the bed and Trey and us in our bed. We finally fell asleep with sticky skin around 10pm. Danyette woke me up at 11:20pm to turn off all the things that were on when the power went out. Not sure it was really happening I bounced through the place excitedly turning off tv's and lights. I turned on the AC and went back to sleep.

We are extremely grateful that we are safe and have power. It will be a long time before Nashville will be back to normal. Drinking water is safe and is expected to stay that way with conservative use. Fairview as a whole was not badly affected because we are not as close to rivers and streams as the other cities. The flooding experienced was directly from rain fall not stream or river overflow. Now begins the process of rebuilding and service. We hope we can help those so dramatically affected by this bastard of a storm!