The girls and I completed the 124 mile virtual walk around the Ring of Kerry and got our medals! Well, I got my medal anyway. Not sure if the girls did yet.
AND we decided to do a free virtual walk on our own for the next one. I had a foldable Ireland map from our trip in 2005 so I glued it to a big piece of cardboard and stapled some progress charts on the bottom. The girls and I are doing County Clare now and it's 180 miles (approx) around. We'll be virtually walking past Father Ted's house in the burren. :) We loved that show!!
Anyway, as of today, I'm 37 miles in, Meri is about a mile behind me and Maddy is about 35 miles ahead of us. We're making more tracks!
Discovered that now that school is back in session, Maddy is a steps powerhouse... I'm going to have to step up my walks to catch up to her just two weeks into this!
On other notes... Derecho is a big jerk.
As a true Iowan, I of course took pictures out our windows during the storm. our eyes were glued to the random things that blew up onto our deck. Hey! Who's screen door is THAT?!
Crops around us were pummelled. Some have recovered but a lot has not. So sad for our farmers!
Personally, we got nailed. The winds picked two of my trees up out of the ground and slammed them on top of each other and smashing my front picket fence.
Another tree in the back yard is leaning against the other apple tree currently. We still haven't had a chance to get it removed. But we will.
Here is a neighbor's lawn chair from 2 blocks west of us. Landed in our front yard. A few more yards and it would have been through our dining room window!
Blessings abound!
We also lost so many shingles that the insurance company has agreed to replace our roof! No word on when that will get done yet. And as Robb likes to say, we didn't exactly LOSE our shingles. We knew exactly where they went. Our back yard and the neighbor's yards... We'll have a new roof in a couple weeks!
We lost several sections of our deck railings as well. So I'm in works with my sister, who's husband and son do construction work. They're going to come stay for 4 days and replace all the railings. WHEW!
I just placed an order for 384 spindles... it's a big porch/deck.
Ryan, Jen, Robb and I worked hard on cutting up the front yard trees with hand saws as our chain saw is electric... :) No electricity! uggg... But we got most of the branches cut off and hauled out to the yard waste place on the edge of town when a neighbor said to just drag it to the curb and the city will pick it up. REALLY?!!!.... Will they REALLY?
And then while Robb and I were over at Meri's helping her with two huge branches that fell onto her yard, (thankfully the house and garage were untouched!).
Our neighbors came over to our house while we were at Meri's, with chain saws and cut up the trunks for us! The pieces were hauled to the curb. Wow! I was so surprised I forgot to tell them about the apple tree in the back yard! oh well. As I mentioned, it'll get done...
I went with that crew to another neighbors and helped with the clean up there until Robb called to pull me back to reality at our house. It was a LONG day...
Since our power was out for 4 days, due to the storm, the house got hot. I ended up opening the fridges and freezers, finding homes for all our food on Wednesday. The next town mostly had power again and a couple friends had room in their freezers for me. Whew!
Nighttime was a pit of sweat and lack of sleep. Since we were headed to Maddy and Matthew's that Thursday anyway, we decided to leave Wednesday and drove part way, getting a hotel for that night. Got a LOT better sleep with coolness! ahhhhhhhhh.
Had a great time with the kids and the pups.
Maddy had lots of work to do to get ready for her kindergarten kids and Robb and I helped.
Leon didn't help much, but found that making birds out of Legos is pretty cool. Matthew had a book!
We took "the girls" (Daisy and Zola) to the dog park with Maddy and Matthew. Had a wonderful time!
Such a fun place to take pets!
A friend of ours from college lived nearby so he came over for dinner one of the nights and we had s'mores by the firepit.
I didn't get a pic of Dave tho! Shoot. Oh well. here is Matthew and Leon telling stories around the campfire.
We told ghost stories and Leon slept really close to our bed that night in the guest room. Probably a mistake... I told the one about one of my first babysitting adventures.
Whew again! That was a long one. More tomorrow on other things that have happened lately. Trying to pedal as fast as I can under the water... :)
I hope Derecho wasn't as jerky to you.
1 comment:
Ack--freezers of food and no electricity. I am glad you could save it. Hopefully, we don't have heavy winds here from the hurricane. Maybe that won't happen again soon. A tornado threw a huge knife into our yard several years ago. But, there were no chairs or screen doors.
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