Poor Weather, to say the least

As I'm sure you all know, the Southland took a beating this week from Mother Nature... thankfully, Atlanta was spared the worst, but we still got some insane rainstorms. My uncle and some of our extended family live in the Muscle Shoals/Florence area in Northern Alabama where three tornadoes touched down. Florence is 25sq mi, so that's 1 tornado for every 8.3sq mi in the city. I was grateful to hear from my Aunt Linda that Uncle Joe (who lives in my grandfather's house) made it out safely with only a few downed limbs. My college friend and sister Erin's family is from that area as well and reported some fairly major damage to the city that mostly culminated in loss of property, not life. Cullman is the closest video that's worth much...



I can't find the one that shows the twin tails of the funnel, but this one shows you the magnitude of the cloud feeding it.

NPR just put out a sliding scale similar to the pre-post-tsunami one the NY Times did showing Tuscaloosa from satellite photos before and after the tornado.

Northwest GA in particular suffered; they've never seen anything like this, and cleanup there and everywhere will take a lot of time and effort.

If you have anything to spare, the Red Cross mostly needs money to support the victims of 164 (confirmed) tornadoes the day of April 27-- please go to their website and donate what you can. Chances are good you know someone affected by the storms.

Best for last?

For those of you who remember last summer's great ankle debacle caused by the total inability of an individual to clean a puddle of water, it's come back to haunt me!!

The last few months my ankle has been bothering me more and more, which led me to favor it-- had I thought about it, I would have fixed it but... that's not how things work! Instead, I went to step over a sweater nearly two weeks ago and my knee suddenly felt like there was a screwdriver under the kneecap!

I got in to the orthopedist surprisingly fast, and he set me up with six weeks of physical therapy. He confirmed my suspicion (and Iggy's) that it was due to my ankle never healing properly. I'm hoping to get reimbursement for at least part of it from worker's comp since the case was never closed by a doctor and DeKalb Medical never followed up on that.

Anyways, prayers, positive thoughts, good mojo, all that jazz is totally appreciated! I would really rather not have surgery on my ankle!

Divide and Conquer!

FBC Decatur had their Spring Fling yesterday so we took the kids up to have a little fun! With both of them there, we decided to divide and conquer-- Michael and his mom went with Julian and we went with Violet-- she was exhausted, but still managed to have a little fun!

Yelp!

One of the best things about being in Atlanta, and being involved in the community, is free events sponsored by Yelp. We've been needing something interesting to go to for a while, but haven't had the money for anything we want-- then Yelp came along with the Passione Italiano exhibit at the Museum Of Design Atlanta! It was perfect and Jeremy, needless to say, was thrilled. The exhibit was small, but it's part of the collection of Barber Vintage Motorsports which is just outside Birmingham so we'll stop by to see the rest soon! It was also great because I didn't even know the MODA existed! Now I have another fun place to add to our list.

All State Recruitment!

I'm so excited to be helping the girls out with recruitment this year! Our first event was the All-State Recruitment workshop!! In addition to our chapter, girls from Columbus State, UGA, UC Aiken, and Kennesaw State came out. What a wonderful day!

Spring Break!

I don't know if we'll do Spring Break camp or not next year, we'll have to see what the numbers look like at the end of the month, but this year made it tempting to keep it around! I did a Classics-type theme which included Olympics, a Pyramid Building Contest, a trip to the Mythical Creatures exhibit at Fernbank, Ancient Gods craft projects, and then the kids watched Hercules or Percy Jackson on Friday. So much fun!!

Roman in his home made Hoplite armor

Kornel presents Duncan, champion of Athens, with his shield

On your marks...

Lennox picks up big brother's discarded weaponry-- for Sparta!

Jimmy marks the oranges for shotput

Louis helps the kids with the pyramid building contest

Remember the TIV? We got a surprise when we got to Fernbank-- the DOW (Doppler on Wheels) was visiting! I got to meet Josh, too!

Thomas mimics the troll-- pretty scary!

K group numero uno outside the entrance

Rock climbing!

The weekend after raviolis, John and Paige grabbed us on the way home to see if we wanted to come with them to the rock climbing gym the next day-- heck yeah we did! Jeremy's been climbing once before a long time ago, and the most I ever did was a small wall set up at a Venture Crew retreat in HS. Needless to say, much fun was had and we can't wait to do it again! 

Jeremy, John, and Nandan watch Anu get hooked up for her first climb

Anu and Paige

The boys

Anu went straight up without hesitation! She's the daredevil!

Nandan and Paige

Jeremy and Nandan on the wall-- Nandan is 90% monkey

John makes this look easy...

So does Paige!

I finally conquered my elevated heart rate and made it to the top my fourth time on the wall!

Ravioli Time!

We wanted to have dinner with John and Paige, so we decided on a house dinner on the front porch-- probably the best thing about getting along so well with our neighbors! Jeremy invited Nandan and Anu over and we had a make your own ravioli party!

Paige gets excited about her first ravioli!

Jeremy's up next!

Curried potatoes, butternut squash, spinach, bacon, gruyere cheese, ricotta cheese, and walnuts were on our ingredients buffet-- YUM!

Nandan and Anu sample the options

John takes a gander

Paige and I toast to a lovely evening-- that's the kurta Nandan brought me back from his last trip to India. Ignore the random lady in the background...

Violet was obsessed with Jeremy's marathon medal

AND my high heels! We had to distract her just to get her to leave them here!

Storm Chasers!

I don't know how many of you watch Storm Chasers, but we're pretty big fans! We LOVE extreme/severe weather! Yes, it's a double edged sword-- frequently people and property are harmed and families lose loved ones and means of living, BUT the Storm Chasers who do it for research are doing a great service to us by learning more about how these storms form and how to predict them.

Fermbank Museum of Natural History is right up the road from us and they are a real TREASURE! They have so many awesome exhibits, recently they've had Geckos and Water, and now at the IMAX they have a Storm Chasers film called "Tornado Alley"-- we haven't gotten to see it yet, but plan on fitting it in. I was lazing around one day on Facebook and noticed the Fernbank page had a picture of the TIV-- THEN I noticed that Fernbank HAD the TIV! The TIV is the Tornado Intercept Vehicle and is SUPER cool! Sean Casey, the IMAX film guy, helped design and build this thing to withstand severe weather so they can get awesome IMAX footage and scientific data!

Rear shot of the TIV

IMAX Camera Turret

Side shot of the TIV

Cameraman's chair

Me and Marcus Guttierez-- the TIV's driver!!

Imagine driving this thing! And yes, that IS a light switch from a house!

And thus start the updates...

A LOT has happened since the last time I really had a chance to update, a lot of it having to do with more injuries... we've been blessed with good health up until recently, so I suppose it was just about time!!

Anyway, be prepared-- lots of updates and lots of pictures!

Agape Update!

I promise I'll update this with "life" stuff soon, but until then you should enjoy another update on my biz blog over at Agape Events!

Doin' It!

Just updated the biz blog with a post about bridesmaids dresses! I am getting things done (albeit not around the house) this weekend and I'm going to be pushing hard to promote Agape Events! Now if only I could figure out how to get a Cutest Blog on The Block background up with the new Blogger template...