Sunday's are going to be a breeze

Church for the last eighteen months has been quite an adventure to say the least. In the beginning it was hard hauling in two infant car seats, 1 diaper bag, and Alyssa and Kelsie's church bag. Kevin had to work a lot of Sunday's and so it turned out that usually I just went to church with the kids by myself. I felt like the ward service project because I was constantly needing help at church. You could always hear when our family was at church by the way that Leah and Audrey would scream during sacrament meeting. Some weeks I had to resort to calling our old bishop's wife to see if she wouldn't mind picking up our older girls so that I could stay home and give the babies a nap. As the babies got a little older and weren't in their infant car seats anymore, things actually got a little bit more challenging. Now I had to carry both of them into the building plus all of their belongings. When they began walking guess what? They no longer wanted to hold still during our classes so we would spend our two hours of meeting chasing babies around the building. Good times for all. Now that Leah and Audrey are at the magical age of 18 months they get to go to nursery. With my older two girls, I think that I cried when I dropped them off at nursery for the first time, but oh how happy I was when I got to drop off my fifty plus pound of energetic one year olds. They were so happy to be there, and they have just loved nursery. I have been sneaking them in for the last couple of weeks to get them used to the idea. They didn't even flinch when I left the room, they are loving the nursery. The nursery teachers are great, and I trust them deeply with my girls. Last week they made Mother's day cards with their pictures inside. Leah's card was signed Audrey, and Audrey's card was signed Leah. It was pretty cute. I guess when you are not used to seeing them that they are easy to get mixed up. Anyway, church is going to be a breeze, and I actually will be able to hear what is being said during the lesson.

Tennessee flooding take 2

inside of the Opryland hotel

Downtown Nashville

Vanderbilt University downtown Nasvhille

Downtown Nashville

Hard Rock cafe Downtown Nasvhille

Downtown Nashville

This is like waking up to a bad dream, this whole flooding experience is so surreal. I find it odd that not only did we experience the worst winter storm in Tennessee but now we are experiencing the worst rain storm in Tennessee. There is something so wrong with this picture. I couldn't sleep last night and kept thinking that when we woke up, our house would be underwater. Luckily it wasn't but so many homes in our area and surrounding areas are.

The next county over is under a strict water conservation after one of the city's two large water treatment plants was shut down. These companies are completely emerged in water. They are asking residents to use half of their normal household water, and also asked that you didn't shower, wash clothes, or wash dishes. Can you imagine? Again, we are lucky because so far we have been able to do those things. With this just being the next county from us, I am not sure if we will be under the conservation soon.

The Cumberland river which runs through downtown Nashville has completely flooded, spilling water into Music City's historic downtown streets while rescuers using boats and Jet Skis plucked stranded residents away from their flooded homes.

The flash floods caught the city off guard, and thousands of residents and tourists were forced to flee homes and hotels as the river rapidly spilled over its banks. The rapidly rising waters led to the deaths of 18 people in Tennessee, including 10 in Nashville.

This is terrible you guys, and it's so sad to see all of the people who have been affected by this storm. One lady on the news said that she had recently lost her job, and now her home was completely under water. She also doesn't have any flood insurance which seems to be the case in a lot of these stories. What a tragedy for the whole state of Tennessee.

May 2nd just isn't our day

parking lot next to our post office

This used to be a sidewalk by the post office

coming into the grocery store where I shop

neighbors house that was affected by the storm

my neighborhood

my neighborhood

You know I am really starting to hate the date of May 2nd. It's my sister-in-law's birthday and I do like that. Everything else about the date is starting to really stink. You remember last May 2nd when I posted pictures of our basement flooding right? Well, can you believe that again our basement flooded on the very same day as last year? The day has been crazy and the weather has been even crazier. The morning started with a phone call about 5:30 a.m. from a sweet friend. She called to warn me that a tornado was heading our way in about five minutes, and told us that we should take shelter. Now that I think about it, I did hear the tornado sirens going off just a few minutes before she called. Because I have never heard them before, I didn't think anything of it. Immediately we turned on the news and saw that our city had cancelled the tornado warning but had issued a flood warning instead. Just what we needed...more rain.

Our crawl space is in a terrible location, and water seeps in just as fast as the rain is coming down, and when the rain is coming down by the bucket-fulls, not exactly a good situation. I cringe whenever I think about it raining because I know what disaster is going to happen next. You guessed it--a flood.

The rain continued to pour down. I am used to the Tennessee rain storms but this was unlike anything that I had seen. There was so much rain. As we continued watching the news, it showed city after city getting flooded, freeways were closing, and not only were freeways closing but people were also getting stranded on the freeways. Major streets were closing, homes getting swept away from the flooding, people dying, people stranded on top of their homes that were now covered in water, major power outages, lack of water at the emergency shelters, the list just went on and on. At one point the state of Tennessee declared a national weather emergency, and told people that they couldn't drive anywhere and were ordered to stay put.

Our house didn't float away in the storm, and thank heavens for that but our basement did flood. We stopped counting after we pumped over 350 gallons of water out. The carpet was replaced after our last flood a year ago, and we didn't want to have to replace it all again. We are going to try letting it air dry. We will see what happens.

I'm a little stressed right now as we are also in the middle of trying to get ready for our trip to Utah in less than three weeks. I feel like I have so much to do in such little time. We will be okay though and we will get through this just like we have gotten through everything else.

What a crappy day!