Tornado Outbreak

I have lots to catch up on, but we have had some scary weather here in the South during the month of April. Since I've lived here in GA (almost 7 years, can you believe it?) I have not had to experience so many tornadoes. It's not good for my nerves, I tell you that much. For those who don't know already the storms yesterday and last night were REALLY, REALLY bad. The system that came through GA last night had previously made an ugly mess in other states, particularly bad in Alabama in the Tuscaloosa area. The cells of storms moved through Georgia between 9pm-2am, which seems to be the trend. And normally bad cells break up over time… but the particular cell that caused so much havoc in Tuscaloosa keep its power and also created havoc in Northwestern GA. Miraculously, we totally got missed. There were lines of storms above and below us. The City of Atlanta and up through Roswell (where we live) and the Alpharetta area were in a pocket that never stormed up very bad, with no particular explanation. We did get some rain and lots of wind. But NOTHING compared to what the other poor people got hit with. This, however, did not prevent me from staying awake until 1:45am watching the news and weather coverage for fear that the storms would take a turn for the worst and come our way. I wanted to be prepared and not be lifted up like Dorothy and taken to the Land of Oz. Although, I guess I’d be fine with that as long as my boys came too, and there were no flying monkeys. I supposed I’d feel right at home with the “little people”…

Here are some bits of info just for the record:

1. President Barack Obama toured rubble-strewn Tuscaloosa neighborhoods on Friday, declaring the devastation brought by a series of powerful storms and tornadoes was beyond anything he had ever seen. 
2. About 148 twisters Wednesday left a swath of destruction across 13 states, killing more than 335 people in six states, including 250 people in Alabama alone.
3. TWC Severe Weather Expert Dr. Greg Forbes says tornadoes were reported nearly continuously from just after midday April 25 through about 5:30pm EDT on April 28. That's a roughly 76-hour outbreak!  According to Forbes there have been 194 confirmed tornadoes, and still 126 reports of tornadoes yet to be confirmed! (taken from www.weather.com)
4. The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center has said some of the tornadoes on Wednesday may have been more than a mile (1.6 km) wide with wind speeds over 200 mph. 

Check out this link and article, surprisingly from BBC. The first view you see to me was the most impressive video. You can hear the guy panting in the background he's so freaked out. Crazy huge tornado. It was a pretty stressful night, but I feel so glad we weren't hurt. Not sure what we would've done in our tiny bathroom if something that big would've come over us. Not sure we'd still be here!

I don't like tornadoes.
This was from an email my cousin Mark Collier sent us. He lives in Guntersville, Alabama.
"Yeah, we're doing great.  We had a tornado miss our house at around 6:30 AM, by about 100 feet or so, but it got our neighbors'.  One of them had part of their roof torn off, one had a shed obliterated and several of them lost many 200 year old oak trees.  We had another smaller tornado follow the exact same path at around 9:00 PM that finished off the roof started by the morning one.  In all, our town had 12 tornadoes last Wednesday.  Several sections of our zip code were flattened, and almost everywhere else, there was significant damage to trees and stuff.

We spent six and a half days without electricity, and two days with no running water.  I dammed up the creek to catch water to use for flushing the toilets, and we had a 50 gallon drum of drinking water stored in the garage.  All in all, with our church-inspired emergency preparations, we managed with no real issues.  We had enough to share with neighbors.  No one on our road was physically injured (miracle).  Several people in the next town were killed.

Celeste and the kids were caught in another tornado while in the car later in the day.  They were driving along, and golf ball size hail started hammering the car, so they pulled over into a gas station.  Sheet metal and lumber started falling from the sky.  I stood on my neighbor's back porch and watched that tornado go rumbling by, knowing my family was in it.  I've never said a prayer like that one before.

I spent six days cutting trees to help people get out of their homes, roads, and driveways.  Being prepared at home allowed us to help others who were either unprepared or unable to do the work themselves; testimony to the wisdom of the Lord and his prophets!

All in all, it's been an interesting experience that has strengthened us.  Just thankful none of us was hurt.  By the way, they really do sound like freight trains...."

Andrea!

My BFF from Utah Andrea came to visit us and I'm just getting around to writing about it so I hope I can remember all that we did. We had a lovely time, I remembered all over again how much I miss having that chick around in my life! We hid from tornado warnings- twice, we went to the Temple Open House (I'll do a separate post), we went shopping, ate, went to the Dogwood Festival down at Piedmont Park, napped, laughed, watched Season 1 of Modern Family... had a ball basically! It was just what the doctor ordered and I'm so glad we got to have her visit. Ben loved having her here too because she read to him a lot and brought him books to read, and played with him lots.
Photo time! (If I can get stupid blogger to work right!)

Hiding in the bathroom from the tornado... we look scared huh?

Temple open house

Dogwood Festival

Cute Andrea looking AMAZING!

Ben loved Miss Andrea!

I loved our visit!

Let the Good Times Roll..

Okay. I can't hide back the excitement anymore. I'm excited! I'm excited for this month, for May and for June.
There are so many things happening just this month that are all so fun and exciting! The Atlanta Temple is reopening after having been renovated for almost 2 years. I have been so blessed to have watched it's progress over the last couple years, as I drive by it two times a day every day on my way to work. I am pretty excited about the activities surrounding the re-dedication, and President Monson will be here to do it. I hope we are able to watch the dedication, I have never seen one before. We are going to take a tour prior to the dedication though, and I'm pretty excited. If you're not a member of our church and would like more information, you too can visit the open house before it is dedicated. Click here. It's been interesting not having a functioning temple that we can regularly attend the last 2 years, it'll be nice to be able to go back more often.
My BFF Andrea from UT is coming to visit this week, which makes me as giddy as a school girl. I miss living close to her, and am SOOOOO stinkin' excited she's coming to see us. The last time she was here was when we were married 4 years ago- so it should be fun! We are taking her with us to the temple open house tour.
THEN... my sister Delinda will be in town for a short visit for an art conference at Emory, so we will get to spend an evening with her as well! And my brother just called and he is probably coming again next week for work! And I may have a couple of photo shoots this month as well!
THEN... We're going to Destin, FL at the end of May and I have a wedding to photograph the week before that. THEN... like two weeks after that (mid-June), we go to Utah! YAY! We get to see all sorts of friends and family (I hope!). We start off seeing our friends the Christensen's in Vegas and then from there on out I'm not sure what the plan is. But I hope we can see as many people as we can!  I'm so super excited to see my mommy and daddy and to squeeze and hug them and kiss their cute cheeks, and go to my sister Shauna's resting place to see the new headstone we all chipped in for in person. AND of course, all my nieces and nephews.... oh and I guess my big brothers too!
THEN... no just kidding... but it will be the 4th of July soon after that and we get a day off for that. We plan on doing other various activities this summer. Hopefully some tubing in Helen? Or even white water rafting? Camping? YES PLEASE! We will be busy! But I think we function well with busy.

Tulips & Daffodils we planted as bulbs

Who knew ferns could be so interesting?

We have been tending to our yard lately. I took a special project on this year, the flower bed in the
backyard behind our bedroom. It has been covered with leaves for pretty much the whole time we've lived here and I just got sick of looking at it and decided one Saturday to clean it up. I've planted some bulbs that I'm not really sure when they'll come up; some bleeding hearts and some astilbe. I know you care right? But my point is, I'm excited to see how it all turns out to be, because it's mostly shaded so it should be pretty lush in a couple years with pretty greenery and the flowers from above said bushes I planted.

Our veggie garden is growing pretty good. I'm trying to feel as much motivation and excitement about it this year as I did last... I'm trying. We planted asparagus this year though, which apparently has to mature a year. We planted carrots and broccoli this year and no tomatoes. Ryan's parents usually have a forest of them (literally) and so I figured we'll just eat theirs! Our front yard looks pretty good too. Lots of new plants coming up from bulbs we planted, and we just put some new mulch down. It's getting warmer and warmer out and all of the spring/summer noises outside are getting louder and louder. We were just sitting out on the front porch saw some bats, listened to frogs and an owl in the distance... pretty soon we'll have lightning bugs! And boy, we're getting our typical stormy weather too. Last week there were severe storms (which translates to potential tornadoes here in the South) and tonight we're expecting another. Too bad they're in the middle of the night which prevents me from sleeping, because... well, I'm a worry wart. I love the Spring here in Georgia all except for the HORRIBLE pollen and allergies I get from it and the tornadoes, oh and traffic.

Pollen Eyebrows on my planter

Not my fav.
Well, I'm not feeling well tonight so I better get some rest before the storms come a brewin'.

The Raintree Circle House

I didn't sleep a wink last night. Okay, that's far-fetched... I slept some, but was awake at least once every hour on the clock for the exception of a couple. So in that time, I couldn't turn my brain off and for some reason got to thinking of our house in Flagstaff, AZ and just how much I loved it and how dear it is to my heart still. And how I should probably write a little about it for my future prosperity.
I in essence grew up in that house, more than any of my siblings did really. I lived there from 8 years old to 18 years old, and before that in Southern California. We built the house over in the Fox Glenn/Continental area (for those of you still in Flagstaff or that used to live there like me). It was my mom's "dream house". When she was a little girl in South Africa, she read a book by Enid Blyton and in it there was a picture of an English Tudor home that she'd always loved. Our home was an English Tudor.

Our Flagstaff, AZ home on Raintree Circle

 We had wallpaper in EVERY ROOM IN THAT HOUSE! We also had "Dusty Rose" carpet in every room except for the rooms my brothers had, and they were blue. My dad landscaped the yard beautifully, he spent ALL the time he could on that yard- front and back. There were 2 ponds- one in front and one in back, a stream with a bridge, a hammock in the back next to the pond, a veggie garden on the side yard with a stepping stone path to it, a compost pile, a beautifully manicured Clematis vine (you can see in the picture) that climbed the face of the house during the summer months, and the list goes on. I loved being in our yard. I loved sitting on the front porch there and looking at the beauty my dad had created. We also would go on a search for Aspen trees to plant out in the forest in my dad's 1979 Dodge Ram (with NO power steering)! He found one especially for me, and it eventually grew to be the largest in the yard (in my head anyway). For a long time we were the only ones in the cul-de-sac too, and my neighbors Jill & Beth and Michelle & I used to play house out in the pine trees and make rooms out of pine needles. 
The house had 5 bedrooms, 4 upstairs and my parents master was downstairs. There was a loft up above the garage as well In what was first my sister Delinda's room, there was a "cubby hole" in the closet that when you went in to it was the opening between the slants in the roof and the walls in the bedrooms on that side of the house. Delinda made it her little safe place I guess, she took pictures of surfers out of magazine and stapled them to the walls (if you could call them that) and had lots of hidden things in there. The surfers were because she missed life back in Cali I guess. It was mostly used for storage, but that was a fun little spot to hide in. I remember it being kind of dark and creepy but fun because it felt so "secret".
There was a window in the bathroom upstairs that if I got on top of the clothes hamper below it, I could crawl out of and sit on the roof of the house. I liked it up there. It was where I went to be alone and to think. Although not very safe, it was definitely quiet and private. I love the sunsets in Flag and that was one of the best places to watch it. It had a good view of the backyard and of the neighborhood below. I always went out barefoot so that my feet could keep traction on the grittiness of the roofing shingles.
We had seminary a few years up in that loft above the garage, dad put up drywall for walls and painted a scene from the Old Testament on it with Brother Dohrmann. We also used that for storage some years, we used it to do haunted houses, we used it to hide and roll up paper and light it on fire and pretend to be smoking (haha), we had a BIG table my dad built out of plywood that had different sections on it- and we found different kinds of rocks and each had their own section. Like turquoise or quartz or fools gold. That was probably the beginning to my interest in Geology and my short lived school career where I majored in it.
Flagstaff has a lot of skunks. And there were a few that managed to find their way IN to the house. There was a direct walkway from the front hall, in through the kitchen, through the laundry room out to the garage. In order to save money on air conditioning, dad would often open all the doors and windows in the evenings to cool the house down. Well... one night two skunks ventured their way on to our driveway. One got REAL gutsy and walked right on through the garage in to the laundry room and that is where he was discovered about to make his way in the to kitchen! I don't remember how, but my dad had to carefully remove him from the premises as to not frighten him making him spray in the house!!! He was successful, but I just remember how scared we all were he would, and how we laughed about it afterwards.
Our dining room also doubled as a library. It was basically floor to ceiling shelves of books. I remember using the set of Encyclopedias on the bottom shelf for book reports. Isn't that crazy? Our kids probably wont even know what those are thanks to the Internet. Speaking of the Internet... I had my first experience ever with the Internet in that house!
Mom taught piano and voice lessons in the living room. That is also where were almost always had our Christmas trees as well. You could kind of peek down from the stairwell above in to that room on Christmas morning to see what kinds of presents we got.
My brother Greg had a bad relationship with the stairs. He would frequently fall UP them! He didn't live at the house very long, he was a senior when we moved to Flagstaff and then went on his mission right after that and then moved to UT after that. But anytime he'd come home to visit or even when he did live there... we'd occasionally hear a few thuds and know it was Greg and the stairs having a fight!
Our family room had a wood burning stove that we used in the winter. I loved watching my dad make fires in it. And I loved listening to it. It was so cozy, especially on those frequently cold, snowy, windy days there in Flagstaff. It was a Country Blue color and very my mom's style. She liked the "country" theme.You can see a smidgen of it below. The dollhouse was one that my dad put together for me, it was almost a replica of our house.

Mom & Dad with the doll house he built me in our family room

I slept in every room in the upstairs by the time everyone else had moved out. I'm the youngest and Delinda is 5 1/2 years older than me so I had the upstairs to myself for a few years. My first room was in the front of the house, I got to pick out my own wallpaper and chose one that was pink with cute little hearts. I had a really cool window seat that doubled as a toy chest. The second room was even cooler, we changed it from a boys room (Greg's) to a much more feminine and older room with bedding that matched the valances and everything. I slept in the other two rooms, ending in what was once Delinda's room. It had wallpaper that looked like clouds. (I wasn't kidding when I told you that EVERY.ROOM had wallpaper!)
I really loved that house. I was heartbroken when my parents called and said that they were moving to Logan, UT and that they were selling. I often wonder what has been done to that house. I'm almost positive that the ugly (sorry mom) carpet and wallpaper were taken out, and that everything looks totally different. The front yard does anyway, no more beautiful landscaping- the new owners let the little Aspen trees take over the yard and you can barely even see the front of the house anymore.I loved that house as if it was a family member, I know that sounds weird... but it was such a huge part of my life and was always so super special to me. I know my parents both still miss it, maybe not Flagstaff itself but the house. I hope that the new owners are loving it and living in it as happy as we were.

3 years old...
As I've stated before, our little Dude has cracked us up on more than one occasion. He has been saying things like a big boy a lot lately.

For instance, we were all in our bedroom talking and Ben crawled up on the back of the bed and leaned over and said "mommy... I want muffins. I need a muffin in my tummy" and said it very matter of fact like.

He hasn’t been feeling super great this weekend, and now I believe him even more because I’m thinking I’m feeling like he was… but anyway, we were coming home from Nana’s house and he was watching a movie on his little DVD player. He said out of nowhere “mommy, my head hurts. I need some medicine to make it feel better. Okay?”

The door to the bathroom was just closed and Ben needed to pee (holding himself) and I told him to go and he said "It Smellllllsss", he has learned to be cautious of going in after his daddy!

He's been very defiant about going potty in the mornings. Not sure why. He's pretty much defiant to me when I tell him to do anything he doesn't want to. He'll listen to his daddy though, but sometimes he's not there to back me up.

He's learning about how Mommy's body parts are different than his and Daddy's... and that because of that, Mommy's are now "PRIVATE". hahaha We're now teaching him exactly what that means and now how to be respectful of that.

Our home teacher (for church) came over this week to visit. And Ben is known to be pretty shy at first, he has a hard time saying hi to people unless he knows them very well. When Jared was getting out of his car Ben yelled with excitement, "Oh I like him!!" and got really excited. When Jared was leaving Ben was standing on the couch and yelled to him "give me a hug!" It made Jared's night I'm sure and I was proud of him for being so bold!

I'm adding these as we go... whenever he says something funny I want to remember it and put in this post. This morning when I was getting him in to the car he said "Mommy, I want Daddy." Pause "I love him" pause "Mommy, I have a wiener and Daddy does too. You don't have a wiener. Boys have wieners." All I could say while laughing was "you're right!".