celebrations

In all the craziness of the flooding and our crazy busy lives I forgot to write about how wonderful my friends and family are that wished me happy birthday and celebrated with me! my sister nichole surprised me by coming into town (really she was coming in for another reason-but made me think it was about celebrating with me). Saturday night Nichole, my dad and his wife Natalie came by to have a little celebration with me...a couple of friends from school stopped by too! kim, rachel, myself, miary, and shawnean....rachel and i...... This is chris and my friend rachel's daughter murray-i think her baby mohawk is the cutest! There were kids like crazy running everywhere and enjoying the clubhouse..can you imagine this group in a few years from now (t-r-o-u-b-l-e!) we snacked on appetizers and enjoyed cupcakes from the cupcakery-absolutely delicious (and when chris picked them up there was no name-dropping molly-hahhahaa) it was a fun evening and i think everyone had a good time-my dad and bradley had a bet going to see who would stay up the latest...at about 1:30 in the morning when my dad and natalie headed out bradley crashed hard on the living room floor. The next morning the kids let me sleep in a little (since we didn't get to bed until almost 2 a.m.)-if you call sleeping in 7 a.m.-we had church...and then they made me coffee and gave me my presents-they gave me a big flash for my professional digital camera and an arm to support it (think of uncle david's big flash) and a few new memory cards-i know this may not sound exciting, but I am very excited....besides the girls surprised me the night before with a big gift card to anthropologie..to get my shopping fix! after church we went to lunch and then my family came over for an assortment of delicious desserts for provisions (carrot cake bites, chocolate/caramel tarts, lemon bars, and a keylime pie!) the weather was beautiful and i recieved some wonderful gifts from everyone-thank you all so much for being so sweet to me!..it was so funny-all alayna wanted to do was smell the candles i got! my mom got me some fabulous stuff for my bathroom(monogrammed soap, a beautiful jeweled butterfly hook and a "j" tile) and my mother in law kathy got me the bowl i had been wanting from southern living! is it beautiful or what? Thank you all so much for celebrating with me and making my weekend special!

hurricane ike....

as the weekend neared and we were closely watching all of the hurricane coverage of ike (trying to map out our plan of games-to-be-played) we were much anticipating all of our kids games being cancelled due to rain from ike. we were delightfully surprised when the weather forcasters were wrong friday evening and we got to enjoy a beautiful night at ballwin ballpark watching bradley play baseball. we awoke on saturday morning early, yet again, surprised that lainie would be able to play in her 9 a.m. soccer game and as the day progressed we waited for the skies to open up...but they didn't and we had another beautiful evening at ballwin ballpark where the A's had a fantastic game and continued their winning streak beating the team they played 15-8...bradley played first base and had a great game! we layed our heads on our pillows and the last forcast of the evening said we would be getting some heavy rain in the morning and it would all move out by noon-with the heaviest to the north and west of st. louis. i was awakened this morning early b y chris letting me know we had water and mud trickling into our basement playroom and that he had to get out the door for praise team practice before church...as bradley and i picked everything up off of the floor i found myself complaining a bit about what a mess we would have to clean up later...bradley gently reminded me that we are blessed beyond belief compared to the people who have endured the hurricane full strength and have water completely filling their homes-our little trickle that was heading to the drain in the floor was nothing....bradley and i got ready for church and headed out the door only to be met by our neighbor who had already tried to get to church-no such luck-and told us that manchester rd was shut down in both directions by our house-our only chance out was the street behind ours and we could take that the back way by the kids school and out to brentwood blvd......bradley and i pulled out onto manchester and could not believe our eyes...a car was sitting completely covered in water. i immediately called chris as the water was creeping nearer to our street and told him he would have to leave church immediately or he would not be able to get home. i then drove to church and met chris (worried that his volvo could not get through the fast furious river forming on manchester). it took us 6 minutes to get from church to home and in that time manchester flooded at the street behind ours and we just got through and up went the barrackades. we went in, changed clothes and went to survey the flood..never since we have lived in brentwood have we ever seen anything like this...we have talked to neighbors who said it was not even this bad in the flood of 93. they had to bring in john boats and rescue families from apartments down manchester from us-1 man jumped out of a 2nd story apartment (he thought he smelled gas) and had to be rescued as he was being carried away in the current. an eighty year old man had to be rescued from this car 2 blocks from our house-right near the intersection of hanley rd and manchester.

so, as we walked around in disbelief, i couldn't help but pray for mot only these owners of cars and businesses around us that were totally destroyed by water, mud and foating debris (such as trash dumpsters and trees), but also couldn't imagine if this is what we endured as remnants of ike-what have the people on the coast endured...
notice the mums and plants floating down manchester away from the nursery by our house. the 24 hour access picture is a 24 hour fitness center-completely under water..


the rain finally ended around 11:00 this morning and the waters finally went down around 1:00 this afternoon...the streets are filled with mud and debris and to this very minute people are cleaning out their businesses down the street from us...it is going to take a very long time to clean all of this up. we took a few pictures around town when we got out to go and pick lainie and tristan up from my moms house. for all of you who are familiar with the area of manchester rd where the trainwreck is..there is a lumber business there and pallets of lumber floated down manchester and behind businesses and landed themselves in brentwood park...ALL OVER the place...on the railroad track that runs through there, on the bleachers where we have sat and watched bradley play ball for years-the field he played on last year is still completely a lake, the steps we walk up to the fields are completely washed out and i felt a little guilty for taking pictures as i turned and saw a guy taking trash cans full of water out of his car-it was completely filled with mud and water-totally destroyed....the clean up begins.....


the car that was totally submerged...when the waters went down...

the shower...

i think i am coming to understand why they call this past weekend "labor day"....everyone looks forward to having an extra day off and relaxing and eating bbq...we ran around crazy, busy all weekend-and when we had down-time i felt like i needed to catch up on everything i had let fall by the wayside last week.....friday night we shopped for lainie's friend logan's birthday gift-i did take the kids to dinner at nachomama's-yum (chris was at the cabin for andy's bachelor party). no sleeping in on saturday-up at 7 am-getting ready for bradley's baseball tournament that morning and dropping lainie off at the party. out to ballwin for the game-then back to brentwood to pick lainie up-then back to ballwin to spend some time with grandma and sally and sarah who were staying at chris payne's house. -back to brentwood by 6 to drop lainie and bradley off at friends houses to spend the night, then tristan and i went to imo's for dinner and baskin robbins for dessert. sunday up for church-left service early to run bradley back out to ballwin for his tournament and then on to greensfelder park for andy and megan's shower...(which was great)

tristan...up to no good...we walked around the corner and he, noah and jacob were making mud and painiting the wall of the shelter with it...lainie was the water-fetching girl

it was a nice day and it was a beautiful shelter in the woods...we had fried chicken, chris payne's famous potato salad, fruit salad and an amazing chocolate cake...and then there were mini cupcakes and mona made these incredible lime tartlets. bradley won his first game of the day,-in fact he hit in the winning run!- so he and chris drove out to the shower for about 20 minutes and went back for the second game-they lost.