The Great Storm

We have been offline for a few days because our Internet was knocked out by the huge storm we had here on Monday night.
It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen or heard.

It started to rain about 10pm... Anders was sound asleep. The rain started to get heavier & heavier and then it started to hail, so I went around the house & closed the curtains in case a window broke. Better to have glass in the curtains than all over the room. The hail continued & I went downstairs to see if Anders was awake--I thought there was no way he would sleep through the storm. It was incredibly loud! As I put my ear to his door the hail was pounding so loudly that I thought to myself "I'm not going to hear him crying, even if he is awake!"

Joel and I stood in our front window & watched. I wanted to go outside, but it was so intense, we couldn't even stand on our porch for fear of being drenched and hit with hail. We couldn't even see across the street! It was the first time I thought we might actually be in a tornado. Then the power went out. Then just as quickly as it started, it ended. And we went to bed. Anders never made a peep! Amazing!

Our neighbor- hood is a MESS. Trees down everywhere, people getting estimates on their roofs (rooves?) for damage. Crazy. We were only without for about 4 hours, while others in our area were without it for 2+ days. Joel cleaned off our roof & our neighbor's with their leaf blower. Our gutters were FULL of debris. Our yard was too. Thankfully, we had no branches down in our yard--some people in our neighborhood lost huge trees. This picture is from 2 houses down...

The only thing that was completely destroyed is my garden (as you can see in the picture above). I'm pretty sad about it. It was really looking nice & full this year.

So, that's the story. Pretty amazing weather. I can only imagine what Noah felt like on the Ark!

This is the same house pictured above from a different angle. They had quite a mess to clean up. It's pretty amazing this branch didn't fall on their house!

These two pictures are from down the street at our local elementary school. This tree looks like it just fell over, roots & all. They chopped the tree off and left the big stump. I don't know what they will do with the stump--it's huge!

Since I'm So Far Behind...

I'm realizing that there is just too much for me to blog about, and I'm running out of time today!

But I wanted to get a few more pictures posted.

So I will steal from my mother's blog! My mom has posted some of the pictures we had taken of our family when we were all together....

You can check them out here.

A Bit More About Haiku

Recently I have been asked about how Haiku & Anders get along. I'm always a bit surprised by this question because the truth is, if the answer were anything besides "great", one of them would have to go.

And I don't mean the cute kid.

Actually, it really is the truth--Haiku & Anders are already best buds. And this picture shows about what goes on in our house every minute Anders is awake: Haiku is pretty close by, "supervising".

She watches over him, just like a loving mother, and tries to avoid him grabbing her tags. But when he does grab them and gives them a good yank, she patiently waits (and gives me those puppy dog eyes crying "help"!).

They are perfect for each other.

It's been a while...

It has been 43 days to be more precise. A lot has transpired since my last post, so I will start at the beginning, which is a very good place to start. (can you name the movie?)

We've long known that we need to do a better job about exercising Haiku. 1) Because she is much, much better behaved when she gets regular exercise. 2) It's good for us to get out more. However, neither of us is able to run (much less walk) enough to meet the demands of a Labrador puppy. Yes, she is 3 years old, but she still has the amount of energy of a young pup.

Joel had been brainstorming on what to do and finally arrived at the decision he needed a skateboard. Not just any skateboard, a long board. This, he decided, was the answer to our problem.

Haiku can run while Joel boards. It's easier on the knees for Joel. And, it looks pretty cool, too.

So, with the help of some birthday money from family, Joel now has a skateboard. Oops. Long board. There's a difference, I'm told. I just know it's longer. You'll have to ask him for more details. The point is, we have a happy dog, a husband who doesn't have any aching knees, and a wife who is enjoying her dog again now that she's mellow again.

Why didn't we think of this sooner?