Lightning

Our house got hit by lightning two weeks ago . . . it tripped all the breakers for the upstairs and cost $920 in damaged parts on our A/C.  It also ran thru our cable line so we lost phones, modems, routers, cable boxes, the DVD player, messed up the picture and sound on our TV, and then last but not least my computer died a few days later.  I guess it had a few extra sparks left in it to last a couple of days and then died.  So we've been really busy the last couple of weeks dealing with the insurance company and checking out equipment and buying equipment, etc.  Today is the first day I feel "normal" again when it comes to our stuff and where it all goes.  Luckily my hard drive was still good so I've been spending time copying data over to my new laptop.  So glad it's not all lost!  It's amazing how much I rely on my computer to know what to do each day!

In the midst of all of this I took the girls to go see the Peter Pan play at the local children's theater.  We had gone to a tea party about a month ago to meet the cast and then got to see the play last Wednesday.  The kids in the play did a good job and Emily enjoyed watching the play.  Abigail lasted until the last 20 minutes so she did good too.  She didn't watch a lick of the play but spent her time eating snacks and digging thru my purse and playing with her diaper bag . .. but hey . . . it kept her on our row until the end.  Right about the time I took this picture of the girls waiting for the play to start, one of the pirates yelled that there should be no flash photography during the play . . . so he told me I had to walk the plank : )

Last Wednesday was such a rough day for us.  Emily was SO GRUMPY that day and had several run ins with her friends and with me.  Everything made her cry and she even caused our neighbor to want to go home because Emily was being too bossy with her.  I was pretty stressed out about all of this because I was trying to figure out what was wrong with her, how best to handle it, and how to teach her how to treat her friends, etc.  But this weekend Emily and Abigail went to stay with my parents for the weekend and since Emily has been back she has been a complete angel.  No meltdowns, she doesn't fight me on stuff when she doesn't get her way, etc.  It's a mystery to me.  I guess kids have their bad days just like adults do . . . and maybe the change of scenery for a couple of days did her some good.

Speaking of the kids being at their grandparents, Joe and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary last Friday.  We had a weekend to ourselves and it was SO NICE!  We were busy shopping to replace damaged equipment from the lightning, but still had an enjoyable weekend together:

We saw a movie in between computer shopping on Saturday and went to the water park together on Sunday afternoon.  We had a great time riding all the water rides!  We hadn't been there in over 10 years and at first I was anxious about getting on all the rides because I assumed I was too old to handle it : )  But we saw lots of people in their 50s and 60s having a blast so I overcame my anxiety and had a great time!

When Emily and Abigail came home on Monday they were sweetie pies and made coming home an enjoyable evening together.  That afternoon, Emily told me she was an artist and wanted to paint some flowers.  So I set her up in the kitchen and was very impressed with her drawings:

I also captured her on camera the other night in her life jacket.  She LOVES wearing this jacket when we are at home.  She played in it and had it on during dinner and put it back on after her bath and kept it on until bedtime!!!

We are looking forward to a quiet enjoyable 4th of July!!!!