Storms, Floods, and Friends

What an adventure Jason and I are having here in Iowa. It is so funny because if you knew me when I was little I was terrified of natural disasters (examples:earthquakes, tornadoes, fires......) and since we have lived here I have been through an earthquake, tornado warnings, and floods. I doubt I would have ever thought I would experience those things in Iowa. The flooding is crazy here! I remember when I was in Jr. High the Snake River flooded and there was water all over....but never like this. The River flooded again and it I think has come more into downtown Davenport than in the spring, but in like Iowa City and Cedar Rapids and all of those places it is crazy. I heard at work the other day that the bank in downtown Cedar Rapids the water is up to the top of the teller windows which is about 59 inches. It is insane how water and natural things can destroy so many things and change people's lives forever.

Last Thursday night we had the craziest storm I have ever been in. I was literally shaking. Seriously, it was insane. I was soooooo scared. I have never seen rain come down so hard and so much at once, I think they said it had rained like 5 inches an hour. When it storms here the clouds get all freaky looking, like they move really fast and they are BLACK. The lightning that night was everywhere-not just on a specific side of the sky, and it never stopped and the thunder too........it is so loud it shakes the windows in our house. We were at our friend's house and when we decided to leave the tornado sirens had just gone off-those are really erie sounding too. There was a tornado sighting that night in Bettendorf (where I work) and I swear I saw it when we were heading home. You know in the movie Twister when they are at the drive-in theater and the lightning hits and you can see the outline of the tornado in the light? Well that is what it looked like to me, the lightning hit and we looked in that direction and there was this huge wall of black cloud in the distance-it might have just been a cloud but it looked like a tornado. When we got home we seriously were glued to the tv-our power only went off once and we were in our basement (which flooded-luckily we have a pump) moving all of the stuff so it wouldn't get wet. Anyway, even though I was freaked out it was pretty cool to experience a storm like that.

The past couple of weeks have flown by, we have been pretty busy with school and work. Girls Camp was last week and I was so excited to head up on Friday night, but they cancelled it and had the girls come home early because of the storms and floods. I am so glad though I had the chance to help plan it-it was a lot of fun and the girls are great in the ward. We have hungout with the Walls a lot in the past couple of weeks....we like them so much! They are from Poway, California so it is fun to talk about the familiar places to them in San Diego I have been from visiting Alsups. Jason and I are loving having a yard and deck in the back, we have barbequed a few times and we like just sitting out on the deck and hanging out.

Also, I have a friend from college named Hayley who has a little business that makes the cutest little clothing items for kids.....she is so creative and her little girls are some of the cutest I have ever seen (they are her models)! Check it out!

Here is the blog: http://shoppoppyseeds.blogspot.com

And she is on Etsy too: shoppoppyseeds.etsy.com