Family Time

We had such a fun family day on Saturday!  It was much needed after Daddy has spent some time for work out of town and Mom and the kids have been hitting homeschool hard.  We were all ready for a break and some time together.  We went to The Great Plains Nature Center.  It is such a fun place.  It is absolutely free and has a fun visitors center where you can learn all about the plants and animals common in Kansas.  There's a large fish tank, shells, rocks, antlers and furs to feel,  and there was even a working beehive on display for the kids to see.  After the visitors center we took a walk on the trails they have going through the property.  We made sure to grab some turtle food on the way out for the turtles that swim through the river.  Here are the "big" kids feeding turtles with Dad.

Noah enjoying some sunshine in the stroller.

After the nature center we decided to grab a late lunch before making the drive home.  On a whim we decided to go somewhere nice since we don't really get the opportunity to have a babysitter anymore.  We figured since it was an odd time of day the restaurant wouldn't be too crowded and the kids wouldn't be too much of a nuisance to anyone.  Carraba's it was.

The kids were fabulous.  We had such a fun time and enjoyed some great food.  But the best part?  While we were eating, a couple stopped by our table on the way out to compliment us on how cute the kids are and how well-behaved they were.  I really appreciated it and made sure to tell them.  But we were in for an even bigger surprise!  After they left, the waitress came to tell us that they had ordered an ice cream sundae for each one of the kids!  That's FIVE ice cream sundaes folks!  I was overwhelmed and even shed a few tears.  For a mom who is used to stares and often even rude and impertinent comments, this was a very welcome surprise.  I wish I could somehow find them and thank them for their generosity.  I really can't wait to pay that act of kindness forward someday.

Summer Thunderstorms

We have had some crazy crazy weather since we've lived in Kansas, including quite a few thunderstorms and even a small tornado.  But the thunderstorms of this week take the cake for sure.  Monday night we had a whopper come through.  It came with heavy winds, hail, TONS of rain and strong straight line winds.  Within minutes you couldn't even see out the sliding glass door to the backyard, and water was pooling underneath the door seal.  The storm was blowing directly at the back of our house.  The kids were starting to get upset, having never seen anything like that, so we took them downstairs and turned on a movie for a distraction.  The movie was of course, on the laptop because power had already gone out with the storm....another reason they were upset.  The storm only lasted a few minutes, but when we looked outside we saw things like this:

and see those HUGE hay bales in the distance?  You know how heavy those are right?!!  Also notice how high up the hay bale the fence in the distance goes.  Well, several of those hay bales were blown across the highway, (where you can see they had been neatly lined up) OVER the fence, and one even rolled all the way across that huge field.....

to the edge of our backyard.

The damage at our house was very minimal.  We are lucky that our house faces the way it does.  We only have three windows on that side.  Two of them were broken.  The only one that was actually a window to the inside of the house was double paned and only the outside pane broke.  Plenty of water came in under the seal there too.  This window was to the garage.

Then after that was broken the force of wind through that small window did this to the garage door.  The car only has one teensy tiny chip in the windshield.  I was scared to look and see!

That was all the damage at our house.  We were so, so lucky.  Neighbors had roof damage so badly that water was rushing in; broken car windows, trees and limbs down everywhere.  This small pile of limbs in across from us was nothing compared to what we saw later all over town.  And entire [HUGE] trees were uprooted.  The pile of wood you see in the distance was our neighbor's playhouse.  You can also see their trampoline and swingset damaged in this photo.

More trees down, water EVERYWHERE,

and see that pile of stuff on our neighbor's garden?  That was the roof from the high school.  The elementary school pictured in the distance also lost large pieces of roof and had damage to the inside.  It was CRAZY to see the debris everywhere.  There were entire fans blown off the roof of the high school, and parts and pieces from the roof scattered for blocks.

 The kids were pretty dramatic about it all.  Drew saw the damage and said, "Mom!  Our house is BROKEN!  The engineers are going to have to push it over and build a new one!"

And I have a new respect for the linemen at the utility company.  All told, we were only without power for a few hours, even though they had to work in rain and darkness to get it back on.  I was worried it would be longer.  Wichita had a crazy storm a few weeks before that knocked out enough lines, some people were without power for four days.  Our landlord was fabulous as well.  He was over within an hour of the storm and back the next morning.  I was only expecting him to call someone about the garage and windows, but he insisted on sweeping off the roof for us and raking the grass and sweeping the driveway for glass and other debris.  I would have gladly done the cleanup, but he took care of it!

The next night we had another one come through, but it wasn't near as bad.  It was mostly lightning and a lot of rain.  Problematic for those who already had roof damage, but at our house the kids slept right through it.  Here's to new experiences!