Happy Birthday Lily Lou

I remember when you looked like this...

And now you look like this...

Happy birthday to my beautiful Lily Louise. You have always been an awesome niece, but now you are an awesome cousin to Everett. Love you!

What a week!

So this happened...

 

Monday morning at about 5:15 am the giant tree in front of our house was struck by lightning. If you were in Johnson County you probably heard/felt it. 

Everett's window is on the second story in this picture. He had woken at 5 am, very unusual for him, so I was rocking him back to sleep in his room. (Insert Halleluiah Chorus here.) With no warning there was an alien-abduction-like bright flash and a sonic-boom-sounding, thunder clap. All the smoke detectors and car alarms went off.

I'm grateful and and believe it was a gift from God that I was holding Everett when the lightning struck. It is hard for me to think about the fear both of us would have experienced if he would have been alone upstairs.

It took Ryan and I about 5 minutes to actually determine what had happened. Brave Ryan went outside to check it out and quickly figured out the tree had been struck since it was missing about 75% of its bark. No people, pets or property was harmed. And the tree stayed standing.

However, the tree begin falling at 3 am on Thursday morning. First one giant branch, then the next followed about 4 am. My nerves were shot, but still nothing hit the house. 

We had all the branches cut down yesterday afternoon, so today we have a giant totem pole in our front yard. It will all be gone on Saturday. We will miss you 100-year-old tree. 

In awesome news...

Everett turns 9 months old today and has a tooth! I'll recap his 9 month milestones in my next post when my anxiety level returns to normal. 

Even though it has probably been the 2nd toughest week since Everett was born, Ryan and I have a lot to be thankful for this Friday. We are blessed.

 

Waking a Sleeping Baby

This morning Everett was extra sleepy. So sleepy I finally had to wake him up at 7 so I could get to work on time. Usually I'm rushing to get ready before his 6:30 wake up call. I recorded this sweet, sleeping baby so I can remember this when I'm dragging a 16 year old out of bed.

Picture of the sweet sleeping baby.



Video of baby boy waking up.