Sad news

My Grandma Grace died yesterday of congestive heart failure. She had been in an out of the hospital several times this year and had been on supplemental oxygen since last spring. She stayed mentally sharp though, and I'm glad I was able to visit with her 3 times since February. Our most recent visit was last month, when we spent some time going through photo albums I took to Florida with me.

Here's a picture of Grandma and Dave from their wedding in January of 2005:



Dave, thank you for taking such good care of Grandma! It takes a special person to keep up with somebody like her, with her busy schedule and her sense of adventure. I'm glad you're part of our family!

What's next? Locusts?

Oh, I have so very, very much to blog! My trip to Florida, buying the new car for Mike, roadtripping back up to Kansas with my mom and stopping by Graceland along the way, not to mention sharing some of the pictures Mike has put up on Facebook of his fun times so far in Dresden. That will have to wait until tomorrow though, because first I have to tell you about this afternoon.

You have to keep in mind that on the afore-mentioned roadtrip, we went right through a part of Alabama that had been devastated by the storms of the previous week. One minute we were cruising along, and the next minute there were helicopters sweeping around in the air and houses blasted to smithereens and giant trailers with pallets of bottled water.

Then the following day we went through Arkansas, most of which is a disaster area thanks to flooding. At one point our 4-lane highway turned into this:



Today Mom and I went out to pick up Annabelle after school and to run a few errands. It had been a cold, rainy morning, but when we left the house the sun was shining, and it was starting to warm up. Then all of a sudden huge gray clouds rolled in from the west, and the sky opened up. I made the decision to blow off the rest of our errands and go straight home. When I got to my neighborhood, however, I found the main street blocked by firetrucks. I tried to go around back to the alley, but there was a firetruck there too. Turns out that a bolt of lightening had struck the chimney of a house down the street from me. Everybody there was fine, but the remains of the chimney were scattered along the alley and on and in their next-door neighbor's car.

I took these photos with my phone, so they're not the best. This is the scene from the front of the house. You can see the firetrucks, and if you look at the house in the middle of the picture you can see an intact chimney and then one that looks like it disappears into the glare of the sky. No, it's just not quite there anymore:



This is how it looked out back:



And this is what happens if you dump bricks on an SUV:



Enough with the crazy weather already!