pretending it's the 4th of july so I can spend it with Kent :).

The longest weekend ever.  Most of it was great. Except for the part where we didn't have electricity for almost three days and it was 100+ degrees every day.

We did still have a barbecue, though.  Kent had the weekend off (even friday!) so we decided to celebrate the 4th of July on June the 30th :)

Friday night we had a sitter planned- and were headed to pick her up when the crazy storm hit. It was NUTSO.  It came so fast and was CRAZY.  we lost power almost immediately- and I called Laney in Buffalo to have her check for a Tornado warning.  The wind was too loud to hear the sirens and we weren't sure what was going on!  The worst came right a first- and then lightening and thunder and rain continued for an hour.  We had to cancel the babysitter since the house was getting darker and hotter by the minute.

Here's the pile of trees the storm left in our backyard. We didn't get power back until late Sunday night.  There was another decent storm that came through Sunday evening and added a few limbs- but luckily didn't seem to slow down the line workers trying to get our power back!!  the poor line men were working 24 hours  a day in terrible conditions- I'm really grateful for them.

we're lucky the giant trees in our backyard didn't topple on to the house!  the top of this tree did flatten a house- and it was just down the street!  as we were driving around- we saw entire BLOCKS of power poles and lines lying on the road.  It was a pretty intense storm!

even without power we decided to have some friends over to celebrate our new grill purchase.  We are lucky we had an outdoor cooking source to keep us fed :) and we are really lucky for such great friends who offered up freezer space- and kept us cool and fed during our outage! I think the boys enjoyed no power because they got to hang out with pals!

Saturday evening we got out the slip n slide and had a lot of great food.  

we've been so blessed to find great people where ever we go.  Our kids always have wonderful friends! and we always luck our that they have fabulous parents :)

we did a lot of snapper poppers - probably over a thousand! and then we made the kiddos pick up every last one :)

and we did sparklers!  Zeb loved it- Ike didn't want to touch them.

I'm not sure if it's visible here- but Ike had a lot of fun in the water.  He wouldn't stop playing in it. and his skin nearly sloughed off!

Metta was overhot and tired (like me). We didn't spend much time that day at home because it was too hot- so she didn't get her normal naps or normal schedule.  It was rough on her.

and then kent finally got her to zonk. poor little ragamuffin.

we did more firefly catching! I'm going to be sad when they're gone!

and we watched the Huber Heights fireworks!  thanks, butlers, for letting us crash your yard to watch them!!   Definitely a great Independence Day celebration!!