Stormy day

We had quite the evening last night, but I'll start out with some Macey stories.

Macey took 3 steps by herself yesterday. She's been cruising around for at least 3 or more months. As soon as she started crawling she also started pulling up. She has become a pro at basically running along the furniture and going between them. She'd been standing alone as well and will slowly sit down from there. I had a feeling she would be taking her first steps soon, but she's a little strong willed, so it also wouldn't have surprised me if she was stubborn and kept on her current path. We had tried to help her out with walking before, but she wants to do it her way and on her timeline. If we give her our fingers and go walking around with her she's fine, but the second you take your fingers away and try to encourage her, that's it, the games over and Macey is not a happy camper. Also, if Sean and I sit on the floor facing each other and one of us tries to get her to stand up (again, trying to help her along), she will refuse to put her feet down. Only on her timeline and only by her choosing. Why would I expect anything else from her?

Last night was one big adventure. We had a series of thunderstorms come through this area. The first one was the worst one. We had gone to bed, but were watching the 9pm news. I told Sean that he needed to bring the dogs in. He looked at me, then put his head back down on the pillow and dozed back to sleep. The storm that was headed our way had some tornadic activity and the part of the storm that was indicating that type of activity was headed right to us. I finally told Sean that the storm was a pretty big storm and that I was headed downstairs and told him that I thought he should do the same (as well as get the dogs). He got up then. The hail started first then a few minutes later the wind and pouring rain were outrageous. The rain was going in circles and wind hitting the house was unbelievable. Once it had passed we went outside to assess the damage. One side of our fence is completely down. We have what is known as a "friendly" fence (friendly in the sense that both neighbors lose the same amount of land due to the way it is put up). We've had storms come through and knock one panel down randomly. This storm snapped the posts holding the fence and all of the panels are laying in the same direction. The across the street neighbors have a trampoline in their back yard (our house looks into their back yard). It was picked up and over their fence (our fences are at least 6 feet tall, if not taller) and thrown to our side of the street and ended up 3 houses down from us. One of the poles from that trampoline embedded into another neighbors house and went completely through the wall, into the interior room. Fences are down everywhere, trees are on top of houses, toys are in yards that they weren't before., general chaos. Two more storms came through after this one, but were not as bad. They were still severe thunderstorms, but nothing close to the first one. Macey was asleep before the first one came through, but once the loud lightning started, she was up. She finally went back to sleep around 10:30 or 11. We're happy to only be dealing with a broken fence.

Today is my brother's 18th birthday. Happy Birthday Micah! You're still my favorite brother. :-) He'll also be graduating high school at the end of this month.