Too Close For Me!

Last night we had a tornado go right by our house! Jeff & I knew there was potential for tornadoes, but let's face it, the weathermen seem to exaggerate the danger sometimes. We watched the storm as it got closer to Wichita. We had already sent the kids to bed.....on the second floor of our house.... Not too long after that, we realized we should really get down to the basement, so we got the kids back up and told them they were going to watch a movie downstairs, just to be safe. Lily & Riley bought it....Zach was harder to convince that everything was fine. When it seemed like it as going to head straight for our house, Jeff & I went downstairs too & turned on the radio. We all huddled in a corner and put a blanket over us. Then the power went out and we heard a loud, rumbling sound. It didn't last long at all. Jeff & I looked at each other like, "Was that it??" We called my sister to see if that was it, if it was past. It was. We didn't really think it had hit our house, but it hadn't been too far from us. Jeff & I went upstairs to see that our street was fine. Insert sigh of relief here. We went outside where, in true Kansas fashion, other neighbors had gone out too. A lot of people had roof damage (just missing shingles, nothing too serious). We didn't have any roof damage thanks to the new roof we just put on in October, but we did have a few pieces of siding loose near the top of the house. Our power was still out, but we went back in, and tried to get the kids settled down enough to sleep. We just let them sleep in the basement because we had heard there might be more severe weather coming. As I was trying to calm the kids down (they were talking a mile a minute and asking tons of questions), I told them to say a quiet prayer of thanks to God for keeping us safe. Before the storm was bad, I had asked them to say a quiet prayer asking God to keep us safe. When I asked them to pray again, Riley said, "When I prayed the first time, I asked God to move the tornado just a little bit, to keep us safe." I didn't realize how astounding those words would be until we heard where some of the damage was. About 1,000 feet from our house, a tornado shredded several trees in the park by our house, downed fences, and snapped power lines in half. While there is minimal damage to the houses that surround the park (Thank God!), we really felt lucky that it didn't hit us at all. So Riley's prayer was answered, it was moved over, just a little bit.
Here are some pictures from damage around our house:

I'm pretty sure this is why we still don't have power....

There are several snapped power lines. We have a generator running a few things now, but hopefully the electricity will be back on soon.

We were very lucky. There were other parts of Wichita hit way harder than our neighborhood was. And there have been towns with much more devastating loss than we saw here last night.

It was just a little too close for my comfort zone. I have lived in Kansas my entire life, and I have never been as afraid of a storm as I was last night. I am so thankful that all of our families are ok.

Happy Birthday Riley!!

7 Things About Our 7 Year Old:

1. You are incredibly loving. You love everyone around you with your very big heart!

2. You are a great brother. You get to be both little and big brother to Zach and Lily, and you would do anything for them.

3. You LOVE the color blue! If it's blue, you like it.

4. You love Scooby Doo. You can watch those movies and read those books over and over.

5. You are so funny! You love to make people laugh, and you have the best giggle!

6. You are very sensitive. You get your feelings hurt easily, and you wear your heart on your sleeve.

7. You are very imaginative. You can tell us the craziest stories!

Riley, we are so lucky to have you in our family. I have loved watching you turn from that little chubby faced baby with those big blue eyes and impossibly long eyelashes into the sweet faced seven year old with the biggest heart anyone could have. We love you so much!!!

Happy Birthday Riley!!

Story Time!

My sister Amy is a librarian in the children's section at the Central Library. We love to go to the programs that the library offers. Not only are they fun and educational, they're free! About a month ago, two of Amy's co-workers asked if Zach would like to be a helper in one of their story times. Zach was happy to help. So, last night we headed over to the library. The program was called, "Not Your Average Story Time." The stories that they did were funny and were more hands-on for the kids than normal story times are. The first one was a story about a farmer who wanted quiet in his house. Some of the kids got to help out with this story, including Lily & Riley! Lily was a sheep and got to say, "baa!"

Riley was a bed and said, "Squeak!"

It was a funny story and the kids loved being a part of it!

After another story and a few songs, Zach got to do his part. He was in a shadow story. They turned the lights off and got behind a screen so all you saw were the shadows:

It was a story of a little boy with a tummy ache and his mom called the doctor who pulled all of these crazy things out of his tummy. Some of the things were a fish on a fishing pole:

and a plant!

It was really cute, and Zach did a good job being the boy. =)

Below is a portion of the story:

Thanks Aunt Amy for letting us come and be a part of the stories!

Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter weekend! It started out on Saturday evening. We usually go to Easter mass on Sunday morning, but Zach really wanted to go to Easter Vigil mass on Saturday. It is a loooong mass. We have never taken the kids because sometimes they don't last 1 hour, let alone 2 1/2 hours! But, Zach had been asking to go, and I didn't want the reason for not going to be because I didn't want to sit through that long of a mass with 3 kids. That's not really setting the example I want for my kids, so we went. We got the kids dressed up:

Mass didn't start until 8:00, because they start with the lighting of the Easter candle, then everyone gets to light a taper off of the Easter candle and then process into the dark church with just the candles for light. It is really pretty to see all of that candlelight. The kids really liked that part. Riley was the only one to fall asleep (mass got over at 10:30), but they were all really good. Jeff & I were pleasantly surprised. =)

Since we went to mass the night before, we (the kids & I, poor Jeff got up at 3:15 to start smoking the meat for lunch) got to sleep in a little bit. Riley was the first one up at 8:00, so we woke up the other two kids and went downstairs to see what the Easter Bunny brought them and to find eggs!

Later on, my family all came over for a yummy lunch and another egg hunt!

It was a lot of fun!

I think everyone had a good time. =)

String Easter Eggs

The kids made string eggs yesterday afternoon! I had made a version of these when I was in grade school, and have wanted to do them with the kids for awhile now. I finally got brave enough to try them this year. =) I remember making them with a sugar water mixture, but I found this glue version online and thought we would try it out.
The first thing we did was go to Michael's and pick out stringy yarn for the kids' eggs. Zach chose a red & white variegated one, Riley chose a pastel rainbow one, and Lily chose a pink variegated one. We cut the yarn into strands (we did long ones at first, but they ended up being too hard for the kids, so we made the next set we cut shorter), poured bottle glue onto a paper plate, mixed in a few drops of water to make it a little less thick, and blew up some balloons:

Then we drug the string through the glue and wrapped it around the balloons.

Zach did his almost all by himself. He had a hard time at first with his string because it kept falling off. We discovered that he didn't have a lot of glue on his string and he wasn't wrapping it tightly. After we fixed a few strings, he got the hang of it. I'm glad he did, because he was getting so frustrated and wanted to quit. I think he's glad he stuck with it though after he saw the end result.

Riley only needed a little bit of help from me. He was really good at wrapping it, he just had a hard time with those long strings. It was easier for him when I cut shorter ones for him.

Lily loved doing this. I wasn't too sure how she was going to like glue all over her hands. She did run to the bathroom several times to wash her hands off in the middle of wrapping her balloon, but she didn't seem to mind too much. I helped her, but she did wrap several strings by herself and put glue on almost all of her strings.

It took us about 45 minutes to wrap the balloons. They probably could have wrapped them more, but they were starting to get bored with it, and I didn't want it to not be fun for them.

When they were done, I tied one end of a string onto each balloon and the other end to the light over our table so they hung down. I also put newspaper down for the glue drips.

We let them dry from Friday afternoon until Saturday morning. The strings were hard, so we knew they were ready. We got a needle to pop the balloon. Zach was first. He was so excited to pop it!

When it popped, it took some of the string with it, and I was worried that it didn't work, but we just pulled the balloon gently away from the string, and carefully pushed the string back out to the shape it was before we popped the balloon.

Then Zach pulled the balloon out of the top of the egg:

Riley was next to pop his balloon:

I love the looks on their faces!

After we pushed the strings back out to make an egg shape, we set them on the table.

They all turned out pretty good!

They all did a good job, and I think they turned out pretty well for our first time. If you are going to try this, make sure you have enough glue on your strings, and wrap the strings tightly around the balloon.

Good job Zach, Riley, and Lily!!

Dying Easter Eggs

We dyed Easter eggs yesterday afternoon.

The boys are really good at this now. They don't need/want help at all. They also love to use more than one color on each egg.

Lily still needs a little bit of help, but she does pretty well on her own too.

She likes to use one color per egg.....and likes to take it out immediately. We have to talk her into leaving it in a little bit longer to make it darker.

She was done way before the boys were. =)

She did her eggs (7) and then wanted to do the boys eggs too since they were only on their 3rd or 4th egg each. We told her no. :0)

They all did a good job! This year there were no spills, no crying, no fighting, and only a few cracked eggs. This was the most relaxing egg dying experience we've had with the kids! Hopefully we can continue this trend next year. ;0)