Rain, rain and more rain....

Just a quick update.... I'm not intentionally taking a hiatus from blogging, but right now we have my niece, Madison, staying with us. She is Chris's daughter (Matt's brother who lives in Texas), and she's been with us since Friday night. Chris is on Ragbrai and Madison is hanging with us for the week. We're having a great time and making some wonderful memories in the process. I've got so much to blog about, but really don't have the time during the day. I'll update soon, but for now, I've got three kiddos to keep up with and little to no downtime, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

A little highlight for you....

Being from Texas, Madison isn't used to the Iowa weather -- as in huge thunderstorms...

With that being said, the second night she was with us, Matt and I decided to take the kids to TCBY for a little treat before bed. When we were leaving it started to rain -- really rain... So Matt and Madison ran to the car with Katherine, and then he started it up and came back for Caleb. As soon as Matt turned the engine on, Caleb started yelling, "Don't turn on the car yet! I'm not in yet, you MANIC Daddy". He was sooo serious, I just couldn't help myself..... I was laughing right along with all the people standing outside waiting for the rain to die down.

Since it was raining so hard, and Madison was about ready to pass out with fear, Matt took a quick route home, and came into the development on the East side. As luck would have it, we got 2.8 inches in about 20 minutes and the road was COMPLETELY flooded. Thankfully, we were driving my Sequoia so Matt decided to "go for it". Oh, I was sure we were going to get stuck.... Matt said the water came up at least 2.5 FEET, but probably more like 3 feet up the side of the of the car and the current was freakishly strong. Oh, and the best part.... there was a party in one of the houses along this road, and their entire front porch was crowded with (drunk) people cheering on the fools who dared to tried to cross! It was hilarious! They were yelling, cheering, fist pumping, and laughing their bums off at us!

Needless to say, Madison slept on our floor that night and has stayed since! LOL.

So the next night at 3:15'ish am, Matt runs into the bedroom and wakes everyone up. The tornado sirens are going off, and the wind is so strong that it's shaking the house and rattling the windows. We ended up having 85 MPH winds and when we woke up it literally looked like a war zone in our backyard. Trees were down, pools, lawn furniture and garbage was blown all over the neighborhood (Monday was garbage day so lots of people had their cans out the night before). It was crazy...... Poor Madison, she was ready to start sleeping down the basement every night during her stay!

Thankfully today was a rain free day!

I have a ton of pictures from today -- which I still need to upload and edit. We ended up going swimming and I think all the kids had a great time. It's so hard trying to find activities that both a 12 year old and almost 3 year old will enjoy! I'm pretty sure today was a success though!!

I'm off to bed! I'm one tired Momma!