Aunt Janna planned a really fun birthday party for all of the kids. We celebrated everyone’s birthday. She also prepared some really cool crafts for them to do, including an owl themed one.

2 days into our family vacation we got a call from a very thoughtful friend who had checked out basement for us. He’d found nearly 4 feet of water down there. Jared drove home and spent the first portion of our vacation playing FEMA. After our vacation, my parents took our kids for a couple of days while Jared and I finished the job. It was a nasty mess down there. We lost a lot of stuff and it’s been a lot of work. The basement is nearly dry, but the water table is still close to the level of our floor.

Meanwhile my face slowly began to swell until good friends were having a hard time recognizing me. The doc said that it was some sort of plant reaction (like poison ivy but not) and he gave me prednisone, which has really helped.

My house is still a mess, but the kids are home and napping and all is looking well. We lost a lot of stuff, some of it replaceable like my pantry goods and our furnace, and some not like our photographs. Our wedding pictures made it through and I’m happy about that. Catastrophes like this make me feel very content because my family is safe. Losing photographs I can handle.

Ryan and Stacey’s wedding was beautiful! Everything about the it was fabulous, especially the couple. I had a great time that day. It’s easy to tell that Ryan and Stacey have will have a fun and amazing life together.

I’d like to give a shout out to a little company called Apple. They helped me through this mess without too much headache (just a little more waiting than I’d have liked). IF you have an Apple and you don’t use Time-machine, shame on you. I’ve you’re a PC user and worry about the safety of your files, get an Apple next time and set up Time-machine. I had a hard drive crash and the only thing I was worried about was the time it would take to fix it. All files are always fully backed up :-)

Win is our chef. He loves to cook with me. When he’s playing he often uses his toys to make pretend food. He really enjoys flipping through the Williams Sonoma catalogs that come in the mail.

This is a picture that we took of ourselves in my parents’ basement the night he proposed.  There hasn’t been a day since that I haven’t felt so lucky in love.