Isabel has decided to start walking and I think it is the cutest thing. She sticks her arms straight out to balance her, and looks like frankenstein. She started about 2 weeks ago, but didn't walk much that week when she was sick. But she is back at it now and is starting to get a little better. With this new freedom comes her desire to go where SHE wants to go and she gets a little upset when I try and lead her elsewhere. She is so much fun!
Here is a clip I found of the storm here in Omaha from Friday. This looks a lot like what we were witnessing at our house. Pretty crazy, I felt like I was in a hurricane. I can't believe there wasn't more damage!
Holy Cow, what a crazy storm! We got hit really hard last night. But not by a tornado, it was more like a hurricane. We were watching the weatherman on the news covering a thunderstorm that was about 30 miles west of us. The weather people always come on the TV when there are any thunderstorms because the weather is so unpredictable, you never know what it will turn into. So they were talking about how there was strong winds and a chance of hail. We had wanted to go out to eat, but decided to order some pizza so we wouldn't have to go out in the rain. So while we are watching the weatherman, I called the pizza place. The storm was still about 15 minutes away, and it was still kinda blue skies outside. Well, I was in the middle of ordering our pizza when the line went dead and the power went out. David looked outside and it wasn't raining, but he saw a huge wall of mean, dark clouds barrelling towards us. Then about 5 seconds later, it started POURING and the wind was blowing like crazy. David said very urgently that we needed to get downstairs NOW. So Isabel and I hurried downstairs (in the pitch black) while David grabbed the flashlight and closed the front door. I have never heard such crazy sounds while we were waiting downstairs. I kept thinking any minute, that the window was going to break. We knew it was bad because we have been in some pretty strong storms out here, and none of them even compared to this. It sounded like everything was being destroyed outside. After about 10 minutes of that, we decided it sounded much calmer and we went upstairs to see what was going on. It looked like we were in the middle of hurricane Katrina. The trees were getting blown like little plants and the rain was coming from every direction. Our friends porch swing was blown across the yard and smashed into their neighbors window. Then the hail came. It sounded like it was raining playground gravel, that was about the size of the hail. Luckily it didn't damage that many cars. After another 10 minutes or so, the rain calmed down enough that David went to see if everything was okay. He came back a few 
minutes later and told me to grab the camera and get in the car, that I "wouldn't believe all the damage". So we drove around our complex and I was speechless. Luckily no one was hurt and no other townhouses were damaged. It was a miracle that it wasn't worse. The news has said that it was around 90 mph winds that came through, but it wasn't a tornado because it was straight blowing wind. These pictures don't do it justice, but at least you get an idea of what happened.
This is our street that takes us out of the complex, notice the large tree that is now blocking most of the road.
This is the tree that used to provide shade for the moms. It is at the playground and was so nice to sit under when it was hot outside. I guess we won't be having much shade for a while. If you can believe it, the house didn't get any damage from this tree, other than a dirty porch. Luckily they weren't home when it happened. It took about an hour to clear a path to get into the house. They came home as it was being cut up, so they were pretty surprised to see a tree on their front step.
This building had three trees in front of it, now there are none. They were all just flattened, but by some miracle, they didn't hit any houses or cars. Too bad they no longer have any shade from the blazing summer heat and humidity.
The whole complex looks like this: the ground covered with small branches and leaves. We even have a leaf hanging from our window frame on our car that got plastered on there from the crazy wind.
This actually looks way worse than it is. The tree is leaning against the building, but amazingly, the building is not damaged. There is no structural damage and no windows were broken. The Lord was definitely watching out for us this night!
Wow, this has been a crazy week. I will spare all the gorey details, but we have been sick. Last Monday night, Isabel got a stomach bug. I got it Wednesday afternoon and it hit me so hard! Isabel was still under the weather, but I could barely take care of her. Then David got hit on Thursday. For David and I, it was just a 24 hour bug. But poor little Isabel had it for a week. And to top it off, on Saturday she got a bad cough and runny nose. So this week has been spent cleaning up her many, many accidents, washing numerous loads of her laundry (and mine since I was thrown up on many times by her) and trying to keep the house from becoming a complete disaster. She is finally starting to feel better and I can see the light.
It is so hard to watch your little one when they are sick. She has no way to tell me how or what she is feeling, and I know she was just plain miserable. Usually, she loves to wander around the house and play with her toys on the floor in front of me and whatever I am doing, but all she would do was cuddle with me and sleep, it was so sad. I am glad to have my little sunshine back and hopefully she will be feeling well enough to play later this week because it will be so darn hot and HUMID.
The college world series is winding down out here in Omaha. We live very, very close to the stadium and it has been so crazy here. So many people and so much traffic. We didn't go to any games this year because David is swamped with school and studying for the boards next month. But hopefully next year we can go see one which should be fun.
My pregnancy is going good. I am feeling more normal and can get things done around the house. I still feel like I am carrying so low still, so my pants don't really fit, but above my waist you can hardly tell any difference. So I feel a little bit like I have a beer belly and not a pregnancy belly. Hopefully the baby will come up a bit:) I can't wait until I can start to feel the baby move, that is my favorite part. We have our ultrasound scheduled, which will be in 3 weeks, but I am sorry to report that we will not be finding out the gender of this baby either. It was so much fun with Isabel, we wanted that extra excitement in the delivery room again. I have to admit I am a bit more nervous this time about not finding out. I think because we were both pretty sure that Isabel was a girl, and this time I don't really have any feelings of what it will be yet, so I feel a little unprepared. But David will be home for 3 weeks after the baby is born, so we can get things squared away then.
Isabel loves to point at our flowers everytime we are outside our house. These beautiful orange lillies came up this spring, we didn't plant them. They are so pretty and Isabel loves to smell flowers. Here she is getting ready to go to her first baseball game. 
The minor league team in Omaha is the Royals and their stadium is just down the road from our house. It is Rosenblatt stadium, and it is where they have the men's NCAA baseball tournament (which is going on this week by the way- so it is very crazy around our house with all the visitors to Omaha). David's class had some money left over this year from the class dues, so they decided to give us all tickets to a game last weekend. We were very excited to go.
Here is their mascot, er, Isabel. Their was so much fun stuff going on outside the stadium- blow up toys, food galore and lots of entertainment and souvenirs for sale.
We got to the stadium right when the first game of the double header was getting over and before our game started. Isabel had so much fun. She jumped right in and just kept clapping all the time when everyone else was and would just wave at random people. She liked watching the mascots walking around and made lots of noises at the pet goat (???) they brought out on the field. Our seats were really great, almost directly behind home plate.
We went to the zoo this week with some friends. She is really starting to enjoy looking at all the animals. She makes the same noise for every animal, but at least she knows that they make noises, we will work on distinguishing the sounds later. She really enjoyed the giraffes and the fishes. There is a bridge you go over a murky pond with tons of those big goldfish. She kept trying to leap out of my arms over the edge. I was a little nervous that she may actually get loose. She is such a squirmer. She also liked this peacock that was showing off for us. She would point at it and make her animal noise.
Here is a little video of her making an animal noise at the zoo. I think we were by the merry go round and peacocks kept walking by, so she was talking to them. Isabel also does this little dance move where she shakes back and forth. It started one day when I told her to shake some toy she had and instead she got her groove on. So now everytime we say "shake it" she starts dancing like crazy, it is so funny. Enjoy watching her shake what her mama gave her!We did it. We finally broke down and bought another car. It was quite the experience. We have been married for almost 5 years and were doing pretty good with just the one car. David would drive to school once or twice a week and then carpool the rest. It was working out well, until this year. Now that they are in clinic, they are on totally different schedules and it was hard to coordinate rides. Plus he felt like he was burdening other people if he had to stay later at school and made them stay so he could get a ride. So we started shopping. We were going to try and just get a beater car so he could drive to and from school. But the more we looked, the more we saw that most of them were just bigger headaches (imminent breakdowns in the near future). So we had to take the student loan money we tried not to touch in hopes that would wouldn't have to pay back as much. We used the money and purchased this Chevy Malibu from the Omaha Mission office. We picked through 8 cars and looked through their records and found a great one. The missionaries that had this car were all pretty easy on it and it wasn't in any accidents. It has been lots of fun to drive around. We put Isabel's new car seat in it and she enjoys seeing what is in front of her. She loves to look out the window and point everything out. We feel blessed that we were able to find a decent car that was in our price range. Hopefully this one will be good to us for at least the 2 years of school that we have left!
