Ask For a Little Storm...(and a big vacation photo post)

Well, I finally got my awesome storm last night....on what's considered the last day of severe weather season. The lightning started a good hour before the rain and continued well after the rain slowed. The rain came down in sheets. We lost power for just a second so that wasn't so bad. We also didn't get any hail, which was good. We did, however, get some really nasty wind. Enough wind that it blew my hanging flower baskets down. And those suckers can take some wind. I thought about pulling them down but didn't want to be touching a bunch of metal in a huge lightning storm. Luckily, they don't seem injured, so that's good. I saw Jacob in his room just watching the lightning from his bed. It was cute. I joined him for a while and we 'oohhed' and 'ahhhhed' at it all. He asked me to wake him up if the storm got cooler. LOL!

While we were on vacation, they came and inspected our fence around the pool. He left us a note asking if we could get the fence just a smidge closer to the house and that otherwise, we're good. Sweet. Now I can get on with my life.

We got back from our Oklahoma trip on Sunday evening. We were barely in the garage when the kids' friends were asking if they could play. They were certainly missed while we were gone.

The trip to Tulsa was surprisingly easy. Especially since there are no interstates between here and there. We had to take 169 Hwy all of the way. Fortunately, not only was it four lane for a good chunk, it was also 65mph. Nice. We also only hit about 5 towns before Tulsa so we didn't have to slow down much. There's not much in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma...lots of hay, wheat and little oil pumps. That was the funniest thing. We also passed signs for Independence, KS and I realized we're not that far. I'm so going before the summer's over.

In addition to the water park, aquarium, Build-A-Bear and other stuff we did, we caught up with Mike's great-aunt and two cousins, who live in Tulsa. That was really neat. Of course I took a few hundred pictures (literally)...

Daniel at the Air and Space Museum. They had a hands-on portion that they loved.
Jacob was the only one tall enough to do this. He was like an astronaut.
Hannah in a plane
Waiting for the movie at the planetarium
Okay...so on our honeymoon, we got to pet stingrays. I asked Mike to take a picture of me petting one. When the film came back, it was just my hand and the stingray. For ten years, I've been on Mike about that. Here, Mike tries to fix that wrong. Here's me petting a stingray. Of course, I wasn't paying attention to the stingrays and one of them put my hand in their mouth. It felt strange and squishy (not painful in the slightest) but it scared me enough to scream and pull my hand out abruptly and splash the heck out of Daniel, who was standing right next to me.
The kids and Mike pet the stingrays.
This was cool. They had a tunnel where the bull sharks would swim above your head.
The kids outside of the aquarium.
The Oklahoma Aquarium
At the zoo, they had a rainforest exhibit and there were tons of these little blue poison dart frogs.
There were also monkeys running around. So close we could have touched them.
The kids goof around at the lion drinking fountain.
These tigers were too cute. They had such a good time with this ball.
At the zoo.
We ate dinner at the most bizarre steakhouse. Before the steaks came hummus, pita and tabbouleh. Oh, and cabbage rolls!
Did I mention that dinner also came with a basket of ribs and smoked bologna?
Daniel in the lazy river at the water park
Jacob loved the wave pool. I have to admit that I did too.
My little Hannah was fearless. This slide emptied into a 9ft deep pool. The girl had no problem swimming to the side.
I couldn't believe Jacob went down this 7 story tall slide. Three times. That's him going down.
And at the bottom.
Here's Mike going down.
These slides were 5 stories tall. The kids loved it. Hannah comes down.
And Jacob
And Daniel. The yellow one was faster than the green one. The pink one was for the tubes...Hannah was mad because we wouldn't rent one and she really wanted to go down the pink slide.
Mike's cousin, Kenny, Mike's great-aunt Lorraine and his cousin, Robert with us in the background just after breakfast Sunday morning.
One of my favorite things from the trip. We confused the Garmin so much that it stopped telling what road we should turn on. Instead we got, "Left on road."
The kids wait for the Build-A-Bear to open. They were so excited.
Jacob stuffs his bear.
Hannah dressing hers
The kids with their finished products. Of all the things we did in Tulsa, this is the one thing they can't stop talking about.
Daniel is a happy boy.
This is the coolest sign. You'll have to click on the picture to make it bigger so you can read it. This is the border coming from Oklahoma back into Kansas. It says, "Leaving Cherokee Nation."

Bring On The Storms!

I woke up this morning to a thunderstorm. I love daytime thunderstorms. When Jacob got up he told me that he'd been up for a while, just listening to it storm. He's being taught right! LOL! It stormed and stormed until about 1:30. Lots of thunder and lightning and a ton of rain. It's cleared up a bit...enough for the kids to go outside and play.

I got the temporary fence up, for the most part, around the pool yesterday. I thought it would take more fencing than it did so I have a whole roll that I need to take back. I had called one of the code guys with a question last Friday and he called me back this morning. I told him that we'd almost gotten the temporary fence done and he told me that that was great and that that he would stop bothering me now. Yay! I have neighbors that are really mad that someone called the city on us. One neighbor, Aimee, really hates it because the people behind her are calling on them about once a week because of their dog. Oh well, Jacob2 hasn't been in the pool since the weekend.

I was changing the filter on the pool and putting in chlorine last night when I saw Guillermo running across the backyard. He was almost at my feet when I saw he had something dangling from his mouth. I took about 5 steps back and then looked when I saw that he'd dropped it. Of course it was a baby bunny. All cute and fuzzy. He batted it a couple of times and then picked it up again and brought it closer to me again. The look on his face was like "look what I got mom!" I told him to put the poor bunny out of its misery and to put the body in a place where the kids wouldn't find it (and I actually told him that out loud!) and went back in. So far, I haven't found the bunny and hopefully I won't.

Dreary Monday (and my 900th post!)

I had a great time getting my toes done and having dinner with Roxanne yesterday. I'm totally hooked on pedicures.

It stormed and stormed last night. We got the thunder and lightning about 45 minutes before any rain which was kind of strange. It was super windy too. The TV stations have learned their lesson (I think) about breaking into programming for random tornado warnings because they just kept the box up. Gary Lezak on NBC would come on during commercials. ABC was running the NBA finals and you could tell that it was killing them not to break in. I think they learned their lesson after the whole Grey's thing. Every two minutes or so, they'd play the *BEEP BEEP BEEP* and a big ol' scroll across the top. Why couldn't they do that for Grey's? Oh well. Katie Hoerner on Fox (people around here make fun of her for her scare tactics...she actually told people last year to get in their basements with hard hats on) was adamant that she would be on as long as there was a tornado warning in the viewing area and that those of us in the KC metro would have to suck it up. Oh well. Now, it's kind of cold and cloudy. Hopefully it'll clear up soon.

Daniel started Summer School today. He was so not happy with me when I woke him up. It was everything I could do to get him in the van. I picked him up an hour and a half later and he had the biggest smile on his face and wouldn't stop talking about what a great time he had. He's already done the assigned homework for Wednesday and can't wait to go back. He actually told me that he wished it was every day! Let's hope it stays this fun for him!

OMG!!!

Here are photos from hail round 4...

Hail piling up by a downspout

This was one of the first pieces I found...I thought it was big (it was wide but flat)...

But then these began falling from the sky. Perfectly round. (WTF is up with the wrinkles on my wrist? LOL!)

It's Been A While Since We've Had To Deal With This...

HAIL!!! THUNDERSTORMS!!! TORNADO WARNINGS!!! (Okay, we haven't had the tornado warning...yet)

Here's pictures of the first round of pea sized hail we had on our deck around 6:15pm Central time.

Round 2...again, pea sized hail around 8:25pm Central time. This time on the front walk.

Jacob holding one of the pieces of hail.

And we're not quite done yet. We've had Round 3 of hail but I didn't get pictures. It's been a while since I've seen hail that completely covers the street. Crazy! Boy, I hope Sue stopped ahead of this!

This Always Cracks Me Up

I love weather! We're supposed to get some storms this weekend, but the clouds are already rolling in. Here is the view out my front door...

And the view out my back door...

It's just so funny when there's such a difference! Maybe it's just me! LOL!