Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful....And it was just our anniversary!

Gosh, I have lots to update on....

Let's start with the night of my last post.  Due to flooding, the last 2 days of school were cancelled so  the kids got out for Summer break early.  It was actually sad for us because there was no time to say goodbye to teachers and friends, and all of the end of year parties were cancelled.  I am SO happy it's Summer Break, but sad for the anti-climatic ending!  We are safe where where we are located, but the schools are not as lucky :'( 

We trekked up to the school that evening (even though it was closed) to get our annual "jump pic" since they didn't get to do it on the REAL last day of school (since they didn't know it would be their last day) and then went to get them their end-of-year slurpees.  The flooding hadn't hit the school building *yet* just the parking lot and field.  Lucy's teacher said the school staff spent the day moving everything they could onto high shelves in their classrooms to prep for what might come- desks, chairs, everything they could stack they did.  When we left the school we drove past hundreds of people sandbagging houses and buildings and covering all doors and windows with Visqueen :(  We saw countless houses evacuating and people trying to get all their belongings into the back of trucks before the flood reached them.  It was so, SO sad.  The community banned together, as we always do, and actually had to turn away volunteers that night because they were at max capacity. I am so thankful for this sweet community of mine.

Anyway, the Arkansas River is what is flooding because we have had SO MUCH RAIN.  The reservoirs can't hold it anymore so we are seeing historic flooding.  They have to let it out of the dam at a rate that allows slow flooding because if they don't let it out, the dam could actually break and then there would be catastrophic floods.  It's just awful.  Running trails are completely submerged with sinkholes everywhere.  Houses are destroyed. The water is flowing FAST.  Someone fell into it the other day while trying to take a video and sadly they died.  They got swept away immediatley! We had helicopters, drones, police, firefighters etc. looking for the body but it was nowhere to be found.  The reservoirs started letting water out of the dam at 165,000csf (cubic square feet) but they had to raise it to 200,000csf after more rain, then 215,000, then 250,000 and they said with the rain we are supposed to get tonight it will reach 300,00csf.  That will be the highest rate they've ever released water in history and it will be the worst flood Bixby/Jenks has ever seen.  It hasn't flooded this bad since 1986.  This is just devastating! I live in Jenks, but we are part of the Jenks AND Bixby community (our kids go to school in Bixby) because we are right on the border of Bixby.  It's kinda like Eagle, ID and Meridian, ID- they're so close together that it's all one area- if that helps give you an idea of it all. 

In the midst of all this, Shawn and I celebrated our 9th anniversary!  It feels weird that we have only been married for 9 years.  It seems almost like I've been with him my whole life because we've been through so much together.  Our lives have shifted so much and it feels like he's been with me forever.  We hired a babysitter and with money from my sweet Mom and Nana we were able to go out to dinner first, and then axe throwing later!  You might think that's weird, but Shawn and I love trying new things and this was one of those things we really wanted to do!  It is SO much fun! I'm absolutely terrible at it, but we laughed and laughed the whole time!  That man of mine is a gem! 

I asked Lucy to take a picture of Shawn and I for our anniversary.  She did, then she disappeared for 15 minutes.  When she came back she had a full face of makeup on and said "now can me and YOU take pictures together Mommy? I made my lips red so we could match since I'm your anniversary baby." I know she wasn't born ON our anniversary, but it was her due date so we call her our Anniversary Baby :)

Ok.... Last weather update on here.  This is a doozy!  I'm copying and pasting what I wrote on Facebook Sunday morning so that I don't have to re-type it all.

"Storytime:🌪
This whole story takes place from 12:28-12:38am.
Last night I was just drifting off to sleep at 12:28 (you know when you’re in the middle of sleep and wake) when my phone blared the “severe weather alert” sound. Right then, my bed started lightly bouncing. I thought “oh great, we are in the middle of another earthquake- that’s what the weather alert is all about.” I picked my phone up and instead of an earthquake, I saw it said Tornado warning. I noticed Shawn wasn’t in bed with me so I went out to find him. It was probably 12:30 at this point. Shawn’s on our back porch, it’s pouring rain and thunder and lightening everywhere and an eerie feeling in the air. We look at the sky and it’s this greenish haze that you see when the weather is right for tornados. We start panicking because the wind suddenly starts whipping. People told me our city wasn’t in the path of tornados but this didn’t look good. We run through the house and out to our front porch to look and Oh. My. Gosh. In between the flashes of lightening that would light up the entire sky every 2-3 seconds we see this MASSIVE black mass coming out of the sky. Every flash made it look bigger and bigger and blacker and blacker. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was frozen. It took my mind a few times of seeing the mass to realize what I was actually seeing. I was seeing a TORNADO. It was incredible. It wasn’t like what you see in the movies when you see them form out in a field, and it wasn’t like I saw it ripping through the ‘hood. I saw it off in the distance just coming out of the sky. This was at 12:32. Shawn said “get the kids, go to the closet!” Our closet is a central room on our ground-level with no windows so that’s the safest spot. He grabs the girls, I grab the boy. They’re all disoriented from being woken up like this but we all go sit in my closet. Our phones are blaring alerts, the tornado sirens are so loud, the wind is howling, the lights are flickering, Lucy’s crying; it was not fun. We sit for a minute and I’m shushing the kids so I can hear what’s happening outside. Then I pick up my phone. It’s 12:38 at this point and I open my phone to see if there are any updates. Sure enough: the news says a tornado touched down in Jenks in 12:34am moving at 55mph (but with winds at 101mph). News everywhere saying “TAKE COVER. TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN IN JENKS. THIS IS A LIFE OR DEATH SITUATION.” It was over by the time I opened my phone.
We are ok. It hit 2 miles from my house and was only an F1 tornado; no damage to our house or yard at all. Half our city is without power and lots are without sections of their roofs. The most damage we had was that our grill got blown into the middle of our yard and our dart board got blown off. I’m literally shocked right now that I saw a tornado with my own eyes. Shawn said that the bed bouncing was because of the pressure building up inside our house and causing things to move and shake. At one point he tried to open the back door but it was getting sucked close. It was terrifying and amazing all at once! I’ve ALWAYS wanted to see a tornado in real life and I finally got to even if it was just the formation/growth of it. I am so thankful we are okay and our house is ok. It was an eventful night, to say the least!"

And, because I have nothing else to add to that (other than, as weird as this sounds it was one of the most incredible things I've EVER seen) I'll end on a happy note! I think we clocked in close to 20 hours poolside over the 3 day weekend and I don't think my kids fought even ONCE!!!!!!

Happy Summer! And, please continue to pray for my community because the floods seem never-ending! and.... P.S....this meme ;-)

Field Day, Awana, and Piper's Recital!

I feel bad.  We had so many events planned in May, and although I was stressed that I was gonna be oh-so-busy, "Central Celebration" (which is a grade-by-grade celebration at a big city park down the street from the kids' school) was cancelled both on Monday for Piper and Tuesday for Lucy.  We have had some pretty big thunder/lightening storms so everything was cancelled.  I feel sad for the kids because this is something they look forward to all year! School was actually cancelled today because there is so much flooding by the school from last night.  We had SOOOO much rain and pretty epic storms for 15 hours straight and some of the roads going into school were blocked off and closed. So they had to cancel school because of the flooding.  I hate that they didn't get to do all their fun things but at least they did most of it.  Tomorrow is the last day of school so let's hope it is open!  I don't know what will happen if it's not- they still have to empty their desks and all that!  

Despite the last 48 hours, here are all the updates from the last week!

Awards ceremony for my little “Sparkies.”🏅✔️

One event down, 6 more to go! 

Two things: Piper INSISTED on dressing fancy for her last Thursday of kindergarten (heels and all!👠💁🏼‍♀️). And Sully found these big strawberries growing in our garden that are probably the biggest ones we’ve ever had!🍓They were delicious!

Back to back Field Days for Kindergarten and 2nd grade! 4 hours in the sun was a lot for Sully, but thank goodness the kindergarteners let him join in on the fun! We are so thankful for Mrs. Sumler! {And we’re also so thankful for sno-cones to stall his meltdowns🍧}

On Saturday my Pi Baby danced her heart out with a hip-hop routine (usually she does ballet) and, as usual, I cried😆I LOVE watching her perform!💙🥰🖤Her 

{P.S. I can’t even with Sully’s seersucker sports coat and hush-puppies😍} 

P.P.S.  Her class danced to a song called "Wild Side" and her teacher, for 3 years in a row, was Ms. Molly.  We LOVE her!

This is obviously not a dance picture, but it cracked me up because Sully was NOT about to let any of the cake-batter go to waste.  I was cracking up and knew this was blog-worthy!

So now tomorrow is mine and Shawn's anniversary AND the last day of school- we have NO time to celebrate, however we have a sitter coming on Friday night so we can go out and celebrate 2 days later.  Then the pool opens this weekend and I feel like THAT will be our Summer kick-off!

PEACE OUT SCHOOL YEAR!

Lucy Turns 8!

Does it seem weird to anyone else that I have an 8 year old?  I remember a few years back when Lucy was still 4 (what I consider a toddler) and my friend had a daughter turning 8 and I thought "Wow! That sounds SO old! I can't even imagine having an older child."  And now here we are!  I think about her life in 2 different ways.  Sometimes I think about it and when I go back to her early days when we were living in Boise I think "HOLY COW that seems like eons ago!" and then sometimes I think about it and I'm like "wow, it all went fast enough that the years are blurring together."  The phrase "the days are long but the years are short" certainly applies here. 

Lucy is a very up and down child.  What I mean by this is she is constantly challenging me daily with her sass and fits and "tweenage attitude," but she also really, truly has a huge heart.  She cares about others' well-beings more than a lot of other 8 year olds.  When someone is sick, she wants to make them a get-well card (or in my Mom's case, a get-well banner, haha), she always wants to make sure to write "Thank you" cards after receiving a gift, and she loves to try to comfort her little brother when he is sad by asking if she can rock him to calm him down. A perfect example of how big her heart is, is this: Saturday (her birthday) was also Piper's dance recital.  We let Lucy open her gifts before the recital so that if she got something she wanted to bring with her to hold during the recital she could.  Well, one of her gifts was a card from her Aunt with a $5 bill in it.  When we left for the recital I said "is there anything you want to take with you?"  She said "I want to bring my birthday money so that I can buy Piper a gift." See, outside of the recital,  in the lobby, there are always gifts you can buy for the performers- flowers and other trinkets.  So when we got there she looked all around at everything she could buy.  First she chose a big stuffed animal that she wanted to buy for her so badly, but it was $20 and she didn't have enough money.  She was disappointed but she was set on making sure she continued her search.   The lady behind the counter showed her where all the $5 gifts were and she studied them all very closely.  At last she found a little ceramic pig with a tutu on it that she said "THIS.  This is something Piper would LOVE.  She will just love it!"  I said "baby, are you sure you want to used your new birthday money for this? You don't want to save it for something to buy for yourself?"  She said "no, I want Piper to feel proud of herself for dancing today, so I want to buy this special present for her."  I literally started crying at the sweetness of it.  Her birthday, her money, and she wanted her SISTER to be the one who felt special.  

When she's alone with me, life is easy.  One-on-one time with her is my favorite.  When we are alone she treats me like I'm her best friend ever. She wants hugs and kisses and wants to hold my hand everywhere we go.  When she's about to have a melt-down when we are alone together I can usually calm her down and reason with her before the tears start.  For whatever reason, this doesn't work when she is around her siblings, but one-on-one time is pretty nice with her. She's at the age where we are able to start having some more grown-up conversations about things.  It doesn't all have to be sugar-coated the way talking to a toddler is.  She's simply starting to grow up.  She still has her innocence in terms of the tooth fairy (which visited her the night of her birthday!) and Santa Claus, but she won't let me do her hair anymore (something that has been extremely hard for me to let go of), she WORSHIPS Taylor Swift, she wants to constantly wear clothes I would never dream of picking out for her, and makeup and keychains and sharpie drawn on her nails consumes her.  She's over the stage of dolls and barbies, but still asked for mermaid swimming fins and walkie talkies as gifts, so there is some "child" left in her.  I just feel like she acts more like an 11 year old than an 8 year old with the things she is "into" right now! I know I was most certainly still playing dolls and barbies well into the 4th grade!  She's outgrown all of that and is only going into 3rd grade :( 

At least she still loves to draw me pictures and make me cards.  She thinks about me all the time and she is a total Mama's girl.  While her baby and toddler self treated her Daddy like a total celebrity, these days she's all about her Mama.  Of course her and Shawn are close, but I think between my 2 girls, she will be the Mama's girl while Piper is the Daddy's girl. She loves me and I adore her.  She was my first true love and there is something really, really special about that. A forever bond that could NEVER be broken- even on her hardest days!

This year she chose to have 2 of her "BFF's" spend the night instead of having a party.  But you know me, I still like to decorate a little for my babies so they have something fun to see when they wake up!  She asked if we could decorate with emoji's (and if I'd bake her an emoji cake) so that's what we did!  This poor girl has been waiting for a Saturday birthday since she was in Kindergarten, and she finally gets one and it also happened to be on the day of Piper's dance recital.  A recital that was at 2:30 in the middle of the day.  I am so sad that Lucy's birthday had to be shared with Piper but we made the most of it!  

She had breakfast in bed (the night before she specifically chose out the shapes that she wanted us to cut her french toast out in in the morning), we took her to a "salon" to get a hair cut because she wanted that done SOOOOOOO badly!  She's been begging for that for months! Great Clips is a salon in her eyes ;-) and then we let her open her presents before the recital (I will do a separate Recital post later).  We picked up a couple of pizzas later that night and her cute friends Camden and Lillian came over. The girls had a blast giving themselves manicures, making slime, coloring, telling scary stories, watching a movie with TONS of buttery popcorn, sliding down the stairs in sleeping bags,  smashing a piñata, and being cute little 8 year olds who decided to sleep all in the same bed because they were too scared after their ghost stories to sleep separately ;-)   Crushes haven't started yet, they all still believe in the magic of holidays, and even though Barbies are a thing of the past, I think this year is going to be a great one.  The age of innocence is still alive.  

She thought cutting 9 inches off was a good idea.  I struggled with it, but I didn't want to stand in her way! She wanted it cut and I let her choose the length because I promised myself I'd never be the Mom that forbade her daughters' to cut their hair.... however, I like longer hair so it was hard for me to watch! I definitely saved some for her baby book!

She asked me to bake her an emoji cake which was so incredibly easy! I am thankful for easy cakes:)

They all said prayer before bed, which I just love.  Everyone here is Christian and prayer is said before every meal and before bed every night, no matter where you are (at almost every birthday party we have been to it is said before the kids eat their cake and pizza!).  It's definitely something I wasn't used to witnessing in public before I moved here but now I see it as the norm. It's one of the things I love most about living here. 

Anyway, it was a really good day.  Everyone was happy despite the rainy day and the crazy packed schedule.  It was a sweet day for all! 

And all of a sudden I have an 8 year old.... It was September 2010, around 5:00am, when I found out her heart was beating next to mine. And I loved her from that exact moment until now, and every heartbeat in between <3

It's great to be 8 and I love my little 8 year old more than all the leaves on all the trees!