The Storm

May 25th we had a major storm come through the area.  We had met Ryan and Ken (who was up for business) at Bob Evans for dinner.  Ryan had decided that we were going to stay and "wait out the storm".  We sat around and chatted and had dessert.  The little old lady who works there as a hostess kept pacing back and forth between the hostess stand and the windows and stopping at our table occassionally to look at the radar on Ryan's phone.  She was a nervous wreck.  She walked outside to get something from her car and came back in saying that the tornado sirens were going off.  There was still nothing happening outside though.  Living in Xenia, we take all severe storms pretty seriously.  As we sat there, we could see the dark skies getting closer.  Then the hail started.  After about 30 seconds of hard, pounding rain that seemed to only be getting worse, I picked up both kids and headed to the little entrance area of the restrooms while Ryan tried to explain to Ken what was going on.  Within a minute, I think everyone else in the restaurant joined us.  Ken was then getting quite nervous.  Ryan was glued to his phone while trying to hold Zoe and the little old lady was scaring everyone by freaking out.  The lights kept flickering until finally going out. The whole thing was over as quickly as it came it seemed.  The restaurant manager came and said there was a power line down in front of the restaurant - which just happened to be right in front of my car. We went around and looked out the windows and it really looked like it had snowed. By this time, Zoe was extremely scared and Jack wanted food. We went out and drove home and took in all of the damage.  There was a lot of flooding in the roads. Several big trees and limbs down. Power lines down. Leaves covered everything. It was quite scary really.
Once we got home, I got the kids out of the car while we were waiting on Ryan to get home.  Zoe came inside - I was thinking she was checking on Buckeye.  When she didn't come back outside for a while, I came in to check on her to find her huddled under pillows on the couch.  Poor little lady was super scared :(
I got her calmed down, but she had no interest in coming outside with us to check all the damage to the house. 
We luckily didn't lose any trees. Our screens were all torn and shreaded. My hostas looked like I took a pair of garden shears to them and chopped them like tossed salad. We still had golf ball sized hail in the yard an hour after we got home. After further inspection and an insurance adjustor visiting, we had about $27,000 worth of damage including a new roof, metal wrapping, gutters and down spouts, and a new roof. We received some checks on some of our other properties and let's just say we have a lot of work ahead of us!
Now, Zoe continually talks about the "Big hail storm" and gets nervous whenever she hears the word storm. Hopefully this fear doesn't stick with her because I'm afraid there are many more storms coming her way!

I have some other pictures that I took on my phone, but can't seem to get them on here right :(

Deja Vu

Since Jack is now crawling everywhere and in to everything, I decided to show him "the cabinet" that Zoe always played in.  These pictures sure brought back some memories :-)

These are Jack at 9 months...

These are Zoe at 18 months....

Congrats Harrison

Harrison graduated co-valedictorian of his class this year.  He gave an awesome speech that completely reflected his personality, beginning with his own version of some Jeff Foxworthy jokes.
We were able to do a lot of people watching since we arrived early and really had a good time :-) Zoe was unbelievably well behaved and sat very quietly the entire time.  At one point, she decided to do a photo shoot of those sitting around us....those pictures are posted at the end here :-) Jack slept the whole time in my arms - boy was my left arm asleep by the time the thing was over!
One highlight of the graduation was watching the graduates walk in.  They were supposed to be walking to the beat of the procession, but they couldn't quite get it together. We also really enjoyed how Harrison wore his cap - put it on like a baseball cap and pulled his bangs back. Overall, it was a very short and sweet ceremony.

Guess who is....

9 months and crawling!!! YAY! He finally figured out how to go forward! Jack was a very cranky baby for a few months when he could push himself backwards but not crawl forwards.  He would see something he wanted and move the wrong direction to get it. Some other 9 month milestones include:
- Some more teeth popping through. He now has a total of 6 teeth through. 2 on bottom and 4 on top.
- Eating more solid foods. Some favorites include peaches, pears, and sweet potatoes
- He does lots and lots of "talking"
- He can clap "on demand"
- He sometimes will give a wave
- He is in to everything!
- Zoe is still his favorite person alive!
- He gets super excited at Buckeye's every move.
- He is sleeping through the night - in his own bed! :-)

Chicks!

The classroom eggs/chicks seemed to be much later this year than normal. I felt like I was cramming everything in and didn't get to do half of my normal projects with the eggs. However, with this years class, I'm surprised I had any eggs hatch (we ended up having 8 out of 12 hatch, which is really good!). Each year, I've taken Zoe in and let her touch and hold the chicks, as much as it grosses me out. Zoe wasn't quite as interested in them this year, but Jack had a blast trying to figure out what the little thing was doing while it hopped around and made a ton of noise.  As you will see, he was a little rough with it too :-)

 

Bubbles

Mother's Day wasn't all that exciting this year....actually, it really stunk most of the day. Zoe worked her magic and made a few minutes of our together time outside make the rest of the day disappear. We took some bubbles outside and she had a blast playing with them!