Colleen's Birthday!!!

This past Sunday was my birthday.  I know I am really getting old now, because I am getting white hair along my temples!  Yikes!  My Grandmother was completely while by her late 40's, and my Mom is getting there now (after dying it for many years), so I guess I don't have a chance.  At least I have blonde hair so it's not quite so obvious...I'll just say that's my "platinum blonde" section.

On last Friday we loaded the car seats into the truck and made a trip to Menard's in Ottumwa to buy a bunch of stuff for the house and yard.  Saturday we had a relaxing day, and I made a nice meal for supper consisting of Cherry Chicken Spirals (chicken wrapped around bacon, dried cherries, and honey mustard, then breaded with panko and baked ) and a Snickerdoodle Cheesecake.  Yum yum!  

On Sunday, my actual birthday, we went to church, and then met my parents and my brother for lunch at Mi Ranchito, our local Mexican joint.  After we ate, we went to our house to hang out and eat cheesecake.  That turned into Mom watching the kids while Dad and I dug out all the vinca vines in the garden, and Scott and our friend Jake put together the wheelbarrow, hose reel, and power washer, and Jake even got rid of all the wasp nests by our deck (now that is a great birthday present!!!!).

Then, about 3pm, the excitement started!  Suddenly a storm blew in, and the wind picked up.  Then the electricity went out, all our deck furniture and the grill was blown to one side of the deck, and it started raining sideways.  We decided to go sit in the basement for a while.  The storm blew through in about 20 minutes, but turns out it was 70 to 80 mph straight line winds.  We had little damage, but our neighbors across the street had an entire tree come down.  Scott went over there with the chain saw to help out.  Then we found out that power lines and trees were down all over Oskaloosa, and a building at the hospital had it's roof blown off!  Yikes!

We ended up not getting any power back until some time after 11pm and before 2am, when I woke up and turned off all the lights around the house.  We had PBJ for supper, as we have an electric stove.  And we sat around with candlelight for a while, and went to bed when it got dark.  What an exciting birthday!

Here's our deck right after the storm blew through.  That grill is heavy, and the wheels were locked, but it still zipped right across the deck!

The electricity went out around 3pm.  By 8pm we still had not heard any updates on when it might come back one, so we got out a cooler, put all the ice in the house in it, and emptied out the fridge.  Fortunately, the electricity came on that night and the freezers were still frozen, so I did not have to have a thawed meat cooking party this week.