Well, why I'm waiting on my cherry pie to get done, (don't worry, Mrs. Smith made it...) I thought I would update the blog.

Yesterday we saw some pretty big rains here in good ole Springfield...you can view pictures and videos of the floods around town at:

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=DO&Dato=20080613&Kategori=
NEWS01&Lopenr=806130804&Ref=PH

And just like last time we saw flooding, the basement of the BSU flooded again as well. Billy stayed the night on Friday to make sure the sump pumps kept running, but just as he thought things were okay and he could catch about an hour's of sleep, the breaker that the electric pump was tied into tripped, and that sump failed causing water to get into the basement.

He was able to keep it from rising as much as it did last time, but even just a little water can cause a lot of headaches!!

So while he was having 'fun' mopping up water today, Ashley, me and the girls drove down to my dad's place at the lake for a Father's Day visit.






I had not seen his new place and I think it's really nice. I hope to be able to go down again soon. Both girls had a good time, although Sydney wasn't feeling too well. I think they were all glad to just be out of the apartment!

Tomorrow is not only Father's Day but Danny's 24th birthday as well. I'll post more pics later. I will leave you with this video of Annabella making some funny noises and faces:

It's currently 11:45 p.m. and Billy & I have spent the last hour with his mother & step-father at the hospital as his step-father said goodbye to his only sister. She passed away suddenly earlier this evening.

It's times like this that makes you look at all the 'petty' issues in your life and wonder why they are 'issues' at all. God has a way of bringing that to our attention sometimes. Life is definitely too short.

A Wedding & A Birthday

This past Saturday was the wedding of our niece Tiffany to Jody Willis. Here are some pics:




Sydney & Annabella patiently waiting for the wedding to begin.
They had their wedding at an old mill north of town. This was the covered bridge overlooking a creek; it was very pretty.


Here is the mill; the straw wouldn't have been there if it hadn't rained so much the day before! But it would have been might muddy without the straw.

Chris and Ivan rolling out the 'white carpet' .

Sydney was the flower girl, but wouldn't walk down by herself, so Ashley got to be 'co'-flower girl!


The bride arrived in a good old-fashioned convertible.

Her proud Mom escorting her down the aisle.


As you can see, it was quite windy as well.
"You may kiss the bride!"

The wedding party on the bridge.

Cutting the cake. The girls caught the bouquet, however.....


The groom had a little trouble 'flipping' the garter....

First time........
Second time.....he finally just picked it up off the ground. Chris....he just stood and watched.


The whole wedding party for a final picture.
Getting ready for the 'rice-rain'.

Then on Sunday....we celebrated Sydney's 3rd birthday!!!

Annabella looking as cute as usual.


The castle cake made by her mother; I thought it turned out pretty good!!

Sitting in her new chair.

And playing in her new Dora tent.
She had a very nice party and received lots of neat new toys and clothes. She is getting to be a big girl!!

No A/C, but lots of tree frogs....

I have noticed something about this spring that I haven't noticed before in our neighborhood....lots more TREE FROGS!!! Some nights you would think we had this big pond in our backyard with hundreds of frogs chirping away. And the main reason I can hear so many frogs is that we have our doors open because our A/C needs to have the freon recharged. So we haven't been running it very much in the past week or so. We do have an attic fan, so that helps draw in the nice cool night air once the sun goes down. And it's been quite windy here anyways, so we have a nice breeze coming through the house right now.

But that does mean you hear a lot more outdoor noises than you normally would, the frogs being one of them. This was taken from our patio door:


They are much louder outside of our bedroom window, but of course when I went to record, the frogs decided not to chirp!! And it's getting late, so I will try again another night. But at least I figured out how to add video!!