Monday, May 31, 2010

Summer Beginnings

I cannot believe school is out! I am sure I say that every May, but this year went by so quickly, it feels like it should still be January! How is it June?!

The kids were so excited for the end. The last few weeks were busy spent doing fun things. Parties, Water Days, extra playtime, field day, etc. Every day was spent at the school doing something fun. Now it is all over. I am sad, but happy at the same time. I can't believe Sam is now a 5th grader. Weird! This is his last year at our school. Then he moves on to Middle School. Now that is huge! Avery is in first grade. He graduated from Kindergarten. I still haven't got the pics off my camera, so whenever I do that then I will post some. We will SOOO miss his teacher. We LOVED her and she was perfect for him. He even said he will miss her, which is a HUGE deal for Avery. He is totally boy and doesn't show love or sappy stuff EVER.

Usually on the last day of school we go to the drive-in. Welll, this year we went all out. I told the boys we weren't able to go to the Drive-in this year because they weren't playing any good movies. They were sad. I told them we were on our way to AJ's work to pick him up and we would figure out something fun to do. Well, we sure did. We drove 4 hours to Indiana and pulled up at this hotel with a water park attached. They couldn't believe it! They were so excited! So we went in, got all situated and went to the park. They loved it. They had a lazy river, water slides, and outdoor pool, basketball pool, and a water playground in the middle. It was a little bit annoying though that even though Avery can totally swim, since he was short, they made him wear a life jacket everywhere except the playground. Yeah, that didn't go over well. They had no swim test or anything to show that he could swim, so he had to wear it. needless to say, Avery spent all of his time at the playground. He was NOT going to wear that little baby life jacket! He still had fun though. He was sad that first night about the life jacket, so we told him we would find something fun for him the next day.

The next day we ate our free breakfast and started driving. We drove for 45 minutes and then Avery saw a Roller Coaster. he was like, "Wow! Look! A roller coaster!" We said that it was a grain carrier thing, not a roller coaster. A few minutes later Sam said, "No! Look, it is a roller coaster! It's Holiday World!" I said, "What?! Wow! I had no idea we were by Holiday World!" We totally passed the park and then turned into the parking lot across the street. Not until then did they realize that we were actually going to Holiday World! It was FUNNY! We got out of the car and then Avery started crying!!! He wanted to go back to the fun hotel! Crazy kid! Anyway, it was the perfect day. it was warm, but not too hot to walk in the park. It wasn't too cool to swim in the water park. The water was perfect. Everything was. We had a great time. So yeah, I am a bad mom. i didn't feel like lugging my big camera around, so we really didn't get any pictures. Oh well. The blog will stir our memories.

They had tons of fun, were VERY surprised, and everything went great. We loved it! What's weird is that you all know I am a BIG planner. I plan everything way in advance. When it comes to vacations though, I don't! We planned this all on Thursday night! Our vacations are always mini vacations that are planned at the last minute, and it doesn't bother me a bit. I don't even understand it! It's fun though!

Avery woke up yesterday with his eyes stuck shut! Our allergies have been SOOO bad, so we assumed it was just allergies. As the day went on though, they got worse and worse. His eyes were oozing constantly. YUCK! Sooo, it may be pink eye instead. Thankfully, AJ works for an eye surgeon, so he is already on drops, and should be doing much better soon. It may still be allergies, it is hard to tell the difference without special equipment, but either way we are safe. he looks TERRIBLE. his eyes are HUGE, bruised looking, oozy, and red. They were stuck shut this morning and it took me 10 minutes to finally get them open. He came down out of his bunk bed, walked across the whole house to my room, blind. he couldn't see at all. They were completely shut and stuck. Funny if it wasn't so sad. Poor kiddo!

We were going to have people over for Memorial Day today, but that is out now. Oh well.

Oh, I forgot. We also had our anniversary this weekend! Yesterday we were married for 12 years! Craziness! I can't believe it has been that long. I am old!

Okey doke, I suppose that is it for now. Summer, here we come!

Monday, May 17, 2010

Bad Timing

So the last few weeks have all been about bad timing.

I talked about the flood in my last post, which started out the bad timing of May.

The next week went ok, although it was all messed up because of schools being closed, etc.

The next week was going to be full of fun stuff for the kiddos.

Sunday night Sam started throwing up, got a fever, and felt terrible.

He was up ALL night long, which, of course, kept me up. We all know how I do with no sleep, um, not good! Anyway,Sam is in a club at school called the RAK Club (Random Acts of Kindness). Monday was their field trip to the Ronald McDonald house. They were going to get to skip school, go and tour the Ronald McDonald House, help wherever needed, and then go eat at McDonald's. Wellll, needless to say, Sam was still throwing up so he had to miss it. He was SOOO looking forward to it, too. :(

Tuesday, was Sam's last day of RAK Club after school and they were having an end of year party. Then right after that was swim team practice, where they were having a party to celebrate their great pizza sale success. The pizza sale that Sam won, and was getting a prize for. Well, he wasn't throwing up anymore, but was still sick, and still had a fever. No parties that day. He said" Why do I have bad luck! This is all bad timing!"

Wednesday came and went with no improvement and I started feeling yucky too.

Thursday, he woke up, no fever! He was getting ready for school, ate breakfast, then started feeling horrible again. Checked temp 15 minutes later, and the fever was back! I had an exam that morning, so I took that, passed it with flying colors (Woohoo!), then took Sam to the doctor. He had strep! What?! His throat didn't hurt! Weirdness. I never would have guessed.

Friday, went to school, only to have them call me by 9:00 to come get him. Ugh.

He missed the entire week of school. He missed all of his fun stuff, it made me have to reschedule stuff, and get on antibiotics for myself. Whew! When this kid is sick, he is SICK!

Saturday we had a yard sale. We did GOOD!!! We made over $500 on just stuff laying around our house not getting used. Yippee! Sam and I made some treats the night before, and Sam had his own little stand where he sold brownies, different kinds of cookies, and soda. He made over $50! Boy, was he happy! Avery lasted about an hour selling with Sam, so he made $7. LOL.

Now on to another bad timing episode.

we now have sugar glider babies!!! OOPS! Ben and Gwen are brother and sister. We went and had Ben neutered as soon as he was old enough. Well, obviously we missed by a day or two! He got neutered, everything went fine, then a few weeks later, we noticed that Gwen's stomach was big, and it looked like she had 2 little balls in it. We talked about pregnancy a bit, but dismissed it, because Ben was fixed. Well, the balls got bigger and bigger and then started MOVING! So yeah, we knew it was definitely pregnancy. We were worried because you shouldn't breed brother and sister, obviously. It usually will cause bad things to happen, and alot of times the mother will reject the babies or even eat them. YUCK! We prepared the kids for the fact that the babies may not last.

Well, finally on 5-5-10, they came out of the pouch. Sam heard a weird noise coming from the glider room and went in to check on them. He peeked in their sleeping pouch, and saw a tiny little baby! He was sooo excited. We worried about them for a few days, but they are doing great. No problems at all. They are so tiny and so cute. Their eyes just opened a few days ago. They are still staying in the pouch or riding around on mom and dad, but we can tell they are getting ready to start doing some exploring of their own. Our cage is big enough to keep all 4 of them, but sometimes it is not good to keep parents and babies together, so we may have to sell the babies later, but for right now everyone is doing good. I am putting on a slideshow of baby glider pictures (no, we haven't named them yet. We have no way of telling them apart!)as you can see, they are smaller than Avery's hand. These were taken Weds or Thurs, the 12th or 13th.

Click to play this Smilebox scrapbook: Baby Sugar Gliders
Create your own scrapbook - Powered by Smilebox
Create your own scrapbooking design

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Like Lightning

Wow! Where did April go??? It seriously only felt like it was one week long. Wow!

I don't know what we did all month, maybe because the month disappeared.

Sam got his cast off. His arm is doing good. Much better than his ankle. In fact, his ankle still hurts him quite often.

The end of school is almost here, you can tell by how busy we have gotten. may is always so out of control. Craziness!

The biggest news around here is... Nashville is a flooded, drowned mess.

Saturday, the 1st, it poured rain. All day long. Lots and lots of rain. Hours later, more and more and more rain. Lindsay tried to leave our neighborhood, only to find the road outside of it flooded. She turned around and went right back home. If you know us at all, you know that we aren't scared of weather and we do what we need to do. For her to go back home was a big deal. It continued pouring rain. Our little town was overrun with water. Flooding was happening all over. We turned on teh news. As we we were watching we saw cars on the major interstate that runs right behind our house completely submerged in water. Cars were just floating around. One whole side was completely covered up to the median. In fact, the water was pouring over the median o n to the other side. People kept trying to drive through. Crazy. Then, on live tv, we watched a building float right down the middle of the interstate! A building!! As we watched, it got pushed up against some of the floating cars. Within seconds it started collapsing in on itself, the roof ripped of, and the whole building dissolved and disappeared in to the water. It was amazing. It was scary. I don't think i will forget that for a long, long time. We started worrying about what was going to happen. Thankfully, we are on a bit of a hill so we were pretty safe, but it was supposed to keep raining the whole next day as well. We already couldn't get out of our subdivision. Where was all that water going to go???

We watched the news all night. I hate the news. I never watch it. This day, this terrible wet day, I watched. Til midnight. I watched all the stories of water pouring over roads and into houses. People who were told to stay home, were suddenly trapped with water surrounding all sides. Terrible.

Finally, we went to bed, hoping to wake up and the weather predictions would be wrong like always.

Sunday, church was canceled. We woke up to no rain. It looked like rain any minute, but it wasn't actively raining. Whew! I then turned on the news. We were tricked. It wasn't raining at our house, but it was raining all around us. Things were looking worse and worse. Homes were being evacuated. People were stuck in rising water. Every interstate in the area had parts of it that were closed because they were covered in water. People were stuck on the freeway with a flood behind them and a flood ahead. They had been stuck all night, with no way to get to them. Rivers were rising quickly and no end was in sight. Then the rain started at our house again.

It rained and rained and rained. The stories kept getting worse. All the stations were covering the downpour. People were having to drive in boats to rescue people. Boats in places that should have been dry land. It didn't seem too bad here, and we were all stir crazy so we went for a drive. The roads were pretty clear, except for here and there. We watched one car drive through a big puddle of standing water in one lane of the road and kill there car. AJ got out in the pouring rain to help them push the car. After that, things got worse quickly. Suddenly a place that we had just driven through had water rushing across the road. Police were rushing everywhere, trying to block off roadways. We almost didn't get across one section of the road leading to our neighborhood. The water was over the bridges alongside us. Water was up to people's doorways. I took pictures. They are on facebook if you want to look. My pictures don't even come close to the devastation that happened just miles down the road.

We got home and continued to watch the news. Continued to watch as whole subdivisions were flooded, trapping people inside. Watched as the water inched closer and closer to the cars who had been sitting for hours and hours on the closed section of interstate. Watched as the death toll went up.

Finally, the end was in sight. They told us the rain would stop. We went to bed.

School was canceled the next day. We woke up to bright sunshine, with not a cloud in the sky. Everything seemed normal. The road in our cul de sac was almost dry. Then I turned on the news.

The Cumberland river that runs through Nashville was beyond flood capacity. It had flooded dramatically. Downtown was underwater. Opryland hotel was under water. The Titans stadium was under water. Streets that our main tourist spots were under water. The river was still rising.

We still had not received help from the government. No one but our citizens were helping. In fact, we barely made the national news. Nothing. But we watched as volunteers, regular people that lived right here, brought out their boats and started rescuing people. Hotels full of people were evacuated 4 at a time. Pregnant ladies in labor were airlifted from their rooftops. Countless homes were lost, either swept away or completely under water. The aerial views of the area were astonishing. Whole sections of cities were under water to the rooftops. The water continued to rise. Barricades kept moving up and up and up as the water inched its way through the streets.

Flooding in Nashville. Who would have thought. Yes, we have rivers everywhere. We also had flood plans in place. Flooding might occur, but never even close to this capacity. Decades have passed since seeing a flood even close to this magnitude. Sadness. Most of these people didn't even have flood insurance. In fact, they couldn't even get it because they weren't in a flood plain. They lost EVERYTHING and have NO WAY to replace it. Many are even out of jobs because the business they worked at is now under water. They have nothing. Nothing. No one could plan for this. No one could forsee this. Sadness.

Finally, a few of our counties will receive assistance from the government. A few. Almost every county in the middle Tennessee area were affected by this, and only a few were deemed bad enough to warrant government aid. Opryland alone, has over $75000 in damage. I can only imagine the other historic landmarks that are ruined forever. Many businesses won't even be able to open for months. MONTHS. We, thankfully, did not get hit as hard the 2nd day, and our baseball fields are still completely under water up to the rooftop of the consession stands. Yes, that isn't as important as Vanderbilt Hospital who's first floor flooded, or the news station that still can't broadcast in their building, but when does or community get to fix all that went wrong and with what? As of yesterday, 15 roads were still closed in our county. Parts of the road we travel down everyday have chunks missing. I haven't even seen the hardest hit areas of our city.

We finally went back to school today. Most counties still are not able to have school because the roads to get to them are under water.

I feel so sad. I am awestruck by the severity of this, that happened right in front of me, right in the place I live. I am thankful that we Tennesseans did not just sit by and wait for help from the outside. We jumped in, drove our own boats, carried out unbelievable rescues, waded through stinky, contaminated water, all to help our fellow citizens. We didn't wait, we took action. I am proud of this place we call home.

What we can't do is provide the financial assistance needed to help all of the people affected. What we can't do is give back the lives that were lost. many lost so much themselves and are still giving in any way we can. Thankfully, we were personally affected, and actually aren't particularly close to any of them that were (at least that we know of), but whether you know someone devastated by this or not, do what you can to help out. Take food to a shelter. Help someone tear up their stinky, wet carpet. Send money. Whether you are in this area or not, help is needed. These lives need to be rebuilt. Find a way to give.

I will even help you by giving you a way to make a donation so that it helps right here in the Middle Tennessee Area.

Flood Relief- The Tennessee Emergency Response Flood

To mail a donation by check, send to:
The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee
PO Box 440225
Nashville, TN 37244

Help, however you can. It's important.