July 4, 2012

Parades are a great Fourth of July tradition, and Centerville puts on a perfect one!  It has all the essentials of a wonderful parade:  flags, veterans, bands, kids, clowns, horses, and floats.  This has become one of my favorite Independence Day activities.

 I have lost count of how many days we have had temps this high!  Except for the guys grilling, we spent the afternoon in the air conditioning playing games.

Glowstick Glasses--what fun!



The Fourth is not complete without fireworks!

July 3, 2012

Hadley and Daniel had fun opening wedding gifts that arrived today.  Instead of gift wrapping as the sender requested, Target stores placed the large size gift into this red gift bag.  Daniel tried it on to give perspective as to just how large the gift and bag really were.  It was a very exciting gift.  Dr. Ruckman, the Chair of Sinclair's music department, sent them a stereo system they had registered for--dreaming to get, but really not thinking they would receive.  What a great surprise!

July 2, 2012

Today some of our homeschool co-op group and friends took a field trip to Cincinnati Museum Center to spend A Day in Pompeii.  It was very interesting to see all the artifacts that have been uncovered from the 12 feet of volcanic ash and lava and to learn about life in 79 AD.  It was very sad to think that this was not just a story but that this happened in a real place to real people.

July 1, 2012

It was another day that was too hot to do much, so after church I spent the afternoon organizing all my notes for the wedding.  It is a little overwhelming to see what all still needs to be done.  Notice the tabs I made for the notebook?  How do people live without post-it flags?  They are one of my favorite things!

June 30, 2012

I spent much of the day working on this shower gift for Hadley.  I don't want to add a photo yet in case Hadley views my blog.

June 29, 2012

Today was actually cooler than yesterday when temperatures hit 105 degrees.  Calleigh, Riley and our EBC teens were at a youth conference and spent the day of 105 at Kings Island!

Today Hadley and I were on our way to the Gammies to work on some wedding preparations and we noticed the sky behind had turned very black.  We only had a 20% chance of some thunderstorms and did not think much of it. It was 102 and just miserable.  We stopped for gas and while Hadley was pumping the wind picked up and the sky darkened.  Daniel called and said to hurry and get to his house because a bad storm was hitting.  Right as Hadley's receipt began printing the gas station lights flickered and they lost power. We hurried toward the Gammies.  A jeep with no cover sped around Hadley where there was really no room to pass, but since he was being hit with all the flying debris, we understood.  Hadley made a turn and a large tree had fallen across the road and she had to turn around in someone's yard.  We made it safely to the Gammies, but heard the next day many reports of damage and that our area had over 82,000 people without power.  The Holtreys still had no power three days later when they left for a vacation.  We only had one service on Sunday as the church was without power until early Sunday morning.  It was quite scary to hear the stories of damages and power failures, though last I heard there were very few injuries and no deaths reported.