PSU Homecoming Parade

Here in Pittsburg it seems like almost everyone lives and breathes Pittsburg State University. I have NEVER seen a place with more university school pride then Pittsburg and that's saying A LOT because I grew up in Provo, UT, home of the BYU Cougars. It's football season around here and every Saturday the whole city wears their Pitt State gear to show pride for their home team. This last week was an especially fun one because it was homecoming week and with that brought the Homecoming Parade on Saturday. We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning to get ready for the parade. This year my girls got the opportunity to be in the parade. Elise and Julianna rode on the Y Academy of Dance float and Ashlynne danced with the Elite Drill Team. My boys got to watch from the sideline and collect gobs of candy that was tossed at us from the passing by floats....I think it was a win-win. To top it off Pitt State won the Homecoming game 69-6! Not bad Gorillas, not bad! Sadly, Jeremiah had to miss it because he was working on Saturday.

Ashlynne, Elise, and Julianna all ready to head over to their parade float.

Julianna and Elise riding on the float

Elise

Thank goodness for Brinton who helped me carry our chairs out to the parade route

He's so buff.....

Me and my sweet little Aidan Bug

Y Academy of Dance Float "Embrace Your Inner Sparkle!"

Drill Team - Ashy is the one with the glasses in the front

Ashlynne and Brinton

Ashlynne after she was done in the Parade

Aidan. He LOVED the Marching Bands!

PITT STATE CHEERLEADERS

PITTSTATE MASCOT GUS THE GORILLA

Brinton and Liam watching the Parade

Julianna


Liam and some of his candy loot


No Kansas parade is completely without a John Deere tractor? Right?! (this was one of like 15)

Wave goodbye, till next year!

A big tornado hit Joplin, MO....(Part II)

8:48 pm Monday Night about 27 hours since the tornado hit Joplin, MO.

Jeremiah returned late last night and cried as he told me of the massive destruction he witnessed. Buildings turned to rubble, steel beams twisted and mangled, cars piled up 3, 4, 5 high as if someone picked them up and plopped them there. They went to the hospital first to see where they could offer their help. Unfortunately, there wasn't alot of organization and it was total chaos. There were some firefighters standing outside trying to figure out a plan of action, they directed them to the command center around the other side of the building. As Jeremiah and our friends walked toward where the firemen had directed them, they were met by a nurse who instructed them to help move some patients from the upper floors of the hospital. They moved quickly to remove patients most obese, some amputees, some wheelchair bound, it was a devastating site and a difficult task. When he returned home he was overcome with emotion for the tragedies that he witnessed in Joplin.

Today was an interesting day. Waking up this morning to hear that the death toll had risen to 89 people was kind of sobering. I knew that it would wind up being pretty high. We were listening to the police scanner app on my iphone late last night and heard them order 20 body bags....I began to sob, I had to stop listening and just go to bed. This is all too much.

Aidan had an appointment at the surgery center this morning to have tubes placed in his ears. As I drove there I couldn't help but notice how quiet the streets seemed, how dark the clouds were. The procedure was quick and we were on our way home just an hour and a half later. As we left the surgery center the sky was so dark it looked like it was nearing night time not 8:30am. Thunder was booming across the sky and as I walked to my car a light rain began to fall. I looked toward the West and all I could see was this huge wall of dark clouds...I panicked. I couldn't find my keys fast enough, rain was falling and I was just so nervous that another tornado was soon to come. I can't believe how nervous I was, it was ridiculous how I was acting. Cursing my keys for being lost in the diaper bag, frantic, praying...this is how yesterday's tornado affected me...and as I drove home I had more than one thought that I should go pick my kids up and just keep them home with me the rest of the day. I had to fight the urge several times to drive over there. Even after I was home I sat there with my keys in my hand waiting for the thunder to roar and give me an excuse to scoop up my babies and cuddle them at home with me. That reason did not come. There was no huge impending storm...my imagination was just running wild with the maybes. Every cloud looked suspect, every raindrop was one step closer to disaster.

We went to Freddie's for lunch today. Usually it's so busy with people and noise, today there were still a lot of people but everyone seemed to speak in hushed tones. The news was broadcasting reports of the devastation on the TV's in the restaurant and it seemed that the tornado seemed to be on everybody's mind. Everywhere we went it just seemed like everything was going in slow motion, like everyone was just moving a lot slower and taking in everything....even Walmart, crowded as always, just seemed to be a little quieter today.

The radio stations have been taken over by the news reports still pouring in. The death toll has risen to 116 and I expect it to continue to rise. Right now Joplin is a huge mess. People we know have lost their homes. Our Stake President has lost his home.We have lost our Stake building (a "Stake" is a group of congregations in a geographical area, in our case we belong to the Joplin, MO Stake. The Stake Center is an LDS meetinghouse designated in Joplin where all the congregations can meet together for conferences and any other stake business) The High School has suffered massive, massive damage and our Stake Center was just across the street from it. Following are some photos I gathered from various sources on Facebook to showing the High school and our church. (I believe these photos were taken by Carmen McIntyre Borup, if I am wrong please correct me...)

The High School






JOPLIN LDS STAKE CENTER





The Steeple...




Interior of the Joplin LDS Stake Center












I love how the painting of the Savior washing the disciples feet was left unharmed and is still hanging. It's amazing...it's a wonderful reminder to me that I must go forth with Christ-like love and serve the people of Joplin.


I personally have not yet ventured to Joplin nor do I plan to at this time. I'm sure that in the coming weeks and months I will be there frequently helping to clean up and rebuild where ever I am needed.

If you want to help, here is a fantastic link that lists all the places you can take supplies, all the fundraising efforts, etc.

I'm sure there will be more to say in the coming days...

A big tornado hit Joplin, MO today....

At around 4:30 I was awoken from my Sunday nap by tornado sirens. My husband was gone home teaching and the little boys were napping, the other kids were quietly playing downstairs. I picked up the baby and headed downstairs. The weather appeared mostly calm, and with the exception of that blaring tornado siren at the end of our street there didn't seem to be many signs of an impending tornado or even an impending storm. We don't have a basement so the last time we heard the sirens we gathered in a storage closet under the stairs. This time I really didn't think much of it and we just gathered in the family room to watch a movie and wait it out. The sirens continued, it rained slightly, there was some wind but really it was just a rainy day like any other.

When the tornado warning was over the girls went upstairs to play in their room. They turned on the radio to listen to a cd and noticed that the news was on the radio. Ashlynne came downstairs and said something about the news saying for everyone to get inside. She was kind of panicked. I told her the storm had passed...it was nothing. Then we all started to listen and realized they were talking about Joplin.

First we heard the Home Depot was gone...then we heard the new Walgreens was gone...then there were reports of cars overturned, trees coming out of cars, neighborhoods leveled...

From there it all went so fast! I ran downstairs to get online and check to see what I could find out. We don't have a tv so the computer was all I could use. The new reports weren't coming in fast enough. I could only get the information from twitter updates that were showing up on Google when I searched for JOPLIN TORNADO. Some of those updates said that the Hospital was on fire and that it had taken a direct hit. Another twitter update directed me to Weather.com where they had live feed of the tornado aftermath.

All I can say is WOW. There are absolutely no words to describe the devastation that was unfolding before my eyes. My heart was heavy, we all gathered around the computer to watch the live feeds from Weather.com Jeremiah received a phone call from a friend from our church and they decided to mobilize and get over to Joplin and help anyway they can. He quickly got his boots on, grabbed a hard hat, some bottled water and a jacket. Then as a family we knelt in a circle to pray for the people of Joplin, to pray for their families, to pray for Jeremiah and those that would go with them. The spirit was so strong in our home at that moment I knew that Jeremiah would be guided to help those that needed help.

I've been monitoring the damage in disbelief all evening. My only sources have been the radio, weather.com and various news reports on the web.

You hear about things like this on the news and you think wow, that is so sad and your heart goes out to them but the truth is those places are just a name, a location on the map. I don't think I ever fully understood the hearbreak caused by devastation such as this until it happened in my own backyard. Joplin is where I go to shop for groceries. Joplin is where I enjoy spending time eating, shopping and chatting with my best friends. Joplin is where just a few weeks ago we celebrated my sons 10th birthday and where we took the kids to Chuck E Cheese. Joplin is where our Stake Center is and where I've gathered for Relief Soceity meetings and Stake Conferences. In a matter of about 5 minutes that Joplin changed forever.

It's 10:08pm and Jeremiah is still gone. I received a text message from him around 9:00pm saying "No Voice. Check Email" Apparently there is little to no cell service out there and he was able to just send quick email updates through his phone.
First was an email at 8:06pm which said, "At Hopsital, There is no voice service" followed by, "...we are almost to the devestation"
The third email he sent said, "Cleared last patient off of the 6th floor"

It's now 10:14 and I just received a message from him stating that they have finished at the hospital and are heading towards Range Line. I'm not sure what that means at this point but I know that Heavenly Father is with them.

We have also received some emails about a few girls on Ashlynne's cheer squad who live in Joplin. One has lost her home completely but is safe with grandparents, the others house has received extensive damage and her fathers office was flattened, but they too are safe. Please pray for them!!!

I will likely write another post to update later....

It's a twister, it's a twister...

Last Sunday night we were enjoying a quiet evening at home when all of a sudden I heard a noise. It reminded me of the high pitched humming noise our water pipes used to make when there was low water pressure or the valve wasn't open enough. At first I thought "Who is turning on the shower?" but knowing that everyone was in the living room I brushed the thought away. A minute later the sound came again, however, this time it sounded distant over the noise of the kids. I again thought, "What the heck?!?!?" and I asked Jeremiah where the sound was coming from. We muted the television, attempted to mute the children and listened carefully to the annoying noise that began to fill the room. Tornado Sirens! I didn't even realize it was raining or "storming" and yet the Tornado sirens were going wild on a Sunday Night. The kids went from quiet normalcy to loud, freaking out-edness (I totally just made up that word)

Our home doesn't have a basement and every room has an exterior wall so we didn't know where to go. We quickly realized the only choice was the closet under the stairs. It's a long, narrow closet and could easily fit all of us somewhat comfortably. We listened to the sirens continue to whine and the kids became quite nervous. We said a prayer and we talked for while, telling silly joke to lighten the mood. We sang songs, Brinton read a comic book and the girls played with their dolls. Jeremiah had the satellite view of the storm system pulled up on his iPad and we were able to follow the activity. We listened to the radio reports for over an hour, cramped inside that little closet.






In the end it was all hype and no tornado (which is a good thing) but I'm grateful for the time we got to spend together in that little closet. Crazy as it may seem it was actually fun. I now highly endorse squashing into a small space with your family at least once a month. I guarantee it will lead to some fun memories. :)

Snow is falling and falling and falling and....

Today was a snow day.

Tomorrow will be a snow day.

It's pretty likely that Thursday will be a snow day.

We are "snowed in"

Here is what it looked like at 9:30 am. That bike is there to measure how much snow we've got. (not really. Julianna didn't put it away yesterday, so now it's being used to gauge the snow fall.)


Then at 12:30pm...

Lastly, at 4:30pm

It doesn't show signs of stopping.

Oh yeah, did I mention I have 3 sick kids? Aren't snow days so much fun?!?!

Here is a little video someone from the newspaper here in town took of our storm:

Wierd....

Last night we had the STRANGEST clouds in the sky...have you ever seen anything so wierd looking????? It actually kind of freaked me out so I had to grab the camera. Kansas is a very interesting place...

And the rain came tumbling down.....

...The rains came down and the floods came up, the rains came down and the floods came up, the rains came down and the floods came up AND MY BASEMENT WAS FULL OF WATER!!

So part 2 to last nights post the thunderstorm continued throughout the night. We got roughly 5 inches of rain last night in a short period of time. We also got a little bit of hail but it came and went just as quickly as it started.In our house we have an unfinished basement where Jeremiah built some shelves for our food storage and emergency essential stuff. We also have alot of our moving boxes still down there that have yet to be unpacked. I had this feeling that I should bring some gallons of water down there in case we had to spend the night down there. But I was relaxing so I kept pushing it off. It was nagging me so much that I needed to go to the basement that I finally got up. As soon as I opened the basement door I could hear running water so I called out to Miah to see if that was normal. He jumped up so fast and ran to the basement where water was pouring in from the window well. He had to run outside in the pouring rain to check from the outside to see why it was leaking and he told me to stay downstairs and start moving the cardboard boxes out of the water way. Well he got locked outside and he was pounding for about a minute before I realized what the sound was. I ran upstairs to let him and when we got back to the basement there was even more water...we couldn't move the boxes fast enough! We got them moved out of the way as much as possible and tried to direct water to the drain in the middle of the basement floor. I guess that our Sum Pump decided to take a dive on a night when we needed it most!! So now we have to figure out why and fix it before the next storm. Following are some pictures and a short video of what my basement looked like last night...(the video is sideways...can't figure out why it rotated!!)






Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

Welcome to Kansas weather....

Tonight I had a neat experience after going out for a fun family dinner. All day today the weather was hot and sticky, however, when we finished dinner it was raining so hard outside there was very little visability. Since we had gone in seperate cars I was forced to drive the van home in the nasty weather. Having learned to drive during the winter in Utah I can say I am an ok "weather" driver but living in Vegas for the last 8 years with no weather has really had an effect on my skills. Needless to say driving home tonight was scary at times because at one point the rain was coming down so fast and so hard that my wipers couldn't clear it fast enough and I couldn't see the lines on the road!! Add to that thunder, lightning, dark ominous clouds, tornado warnings on the radio I was spooked! Add to that Jeremiah driving in a seperate car with 2 of my kids and I had no idea where he was...even more spooked!!! I really don't like for our family to be apart and especially not in this kind of weather. I wound up saying a prayer and asking that the we be guided home in safety (I forgot to mention that I really didn't know where I was going cause we were fairly far from home) Just as I finished my prayer the rain let up a bit just enough for me to find a street I was very familiar with and get home. To my great surprise at the same time I realized that I noticed Jeremiah was in the car right in front of me! It began to downpour again shortly after but I have no doubt that it was an answer to my prayers that lifted the weather for that short moment so that I could be guided in safety back to our home. Right now it is still pretty nasty outside windy and thundery but I am happy to say no tornado warnings!!! :)

5 things I love about Kansas...

1. The view from my kitchen window



2. I have never seen so many beautiful birds in my life and they all hang out in my backyard! We have Blue Jays, Cardinals, Finches and a whole bunch of others that I have no clue what to call.


3. We buy our organic, no hormone local milk in glass bottles at the grocery store. That in itself is awesome however the even cooler thing is you can buy milk in different flavors! My two favs are rootbeer milk and the pic below is orange dream...its tastes like an orange creamsicle!


4.Steve & Barry's at the mall!! Everything in the store was $8.98 and it has great great clothes for the whole family! (I think that the norm prices are everything under $20) And not cheap clothes either...Sarah Jessica Parker has a clothing line there (her stuff is so cute!) and so does Amanda Bynes! Besides where else can you get a pair of perfect fit like a glove totally in style cute jeans for only $9???? (Vegas girls I checked and it looks like you might be getting one soon at the Loma Vista Shopping Center...wherever that is)




5. Everyone is so incredibly friendly here! The principal at school knows me by name (the first time I met her!) She asked about the baby, Elise starting Kindergarten, told me she was proud of Brinton's improvement in reading...are you kidding me? When have you ever known someone so involved? People at the store say good morning, people driving down the street wave...its all so...ummm....midwestern!