The craziest storms

We have had a series of crazy storms. The weather in Illinois has been fierce this spring and it isn't easing up. I don't love the warnings and sirens, but they have definitely been going off. I'm ready for calmer skies!

This is what friendship looks like

Hailey is mowing our lawn for the 4th time.

And the Harris family has brought us dinner about a half dozen times. This one was extra special because Ruth (who is 10) wanted to make us dessert. She made these s'mores bananas for us. So cute! 

We are so grateful for the friendship and help we have received. We are definitely feeling the love. 

No shortage of projects

Yep, you guessed it. We have more projects. 

The unloaded truck in the basement.

The basement is painted. 

We worked on building a mantle, but in the end, we scrapped it and decided to start over. We just couldn't make it exactly what we wanted, so we are going to try again. 

The new shelves arrived for the garage...those will have to wait! 

Painting the shelves in the new craft room.

Getting the primer on the banisters.

 Whew!

Mammatus clouds

We had another crazy storm roll in and the result were these mammatus clouds. I've never seen anything like these before. They were amazing and beautiful. 

Emptying Out

It's so strange to see our house emptying out. It always brings mixed emotions too. I'm focused on the good and holding tight to those feelings - there is a lot of progress and excitement in this empty house. 

Taco Bell buddies

I love these little Taco Bell buddies and love that they eat lunch together so often. It melts my mama heart!

Working and working

Between the two houses, we are just working and working...and working and working! We are making  lot of progress too. 

The new floors are going in...

The garage is filling with projects and extra supplies...

Painting the trim on the stairs...

Zach's room is done! 

So is Andrew and Kayleigh's bathroom.

Zach and Ava's bathroom is getting close.

We are starting to paint the basement...I am very excited about this one!

Another moving day is in the books too. These longs days are a lot of work (to say the least), but we are getting so close.

We have a lot of trash set out for the truck to pick up. Goodbye to the old flooring!

A good reminder in a time where it feels like we have 2 homes and no home all at the same time. 

The new tile for our fireplace install. 

All of the work is paying off and we are getting really excited to see so many things starting to come together and starting to look the way we imagined it could. 

So much sass

I don't know if I could love a picture more than this. Ava and Caroline are giving it all they've got! What an awesome throw back!

Andrew & Kayleigh's room is almost done!

We have a couple of finishing touches to get done, but we are down to hanging a few pictures. The progress feels great!

Chaos and blessings

When we got out of the play, we had a bunch of text messages asking us if we were okay and asking us to check on people in our ward. We had no idea what was going on, but we quickly realized there had been a tornado in Bloomington/Normal and it went right over our new house. That's obviously a super unsettling feeling and we were of course worried about the potential damage. After saying our goodbyes to the Sanchezes, we started our drive home. 

We were watching the radar and the storms were still really severe, so we actually went to charge Greg's car and then waiting for about an hour before starting the drive home. Greg was able to sleep during that time, but of course I couldn't. Leaving IU around 1 a.m. wasn't ideal, but it was better than driving into tornado winds. 

About 2 am, we hit a huge pothole on the freeway and quickly realized the car wasn't okay. Luckily (a huge blessing really), we were only a mile from a rest stop and so we were able to pull off of the freeway and get into a parking spot. To make the long story of a very long night a little shorter, we had 2 tires blown out and needed to wait for a tow truck. They didn't arrive until 6:30 and accidentally brought the tow truck that only had 1 extra seat - even though dispatching a truck with 2 extra seats was the reason it was taking so long. So...Greg staying in the car (not legal) and was towed the rest of the way home. The driver had to bring us 1.5 hours to Bloomington. We rolled up at 8 a.m., dropped the car at the shop and immediately went to check on the house. 

We lost 2 huge trees, but didn't have any damage to the house. Our next door neighbors, and many others in right around us weren't so lucky. 

It didn't take long before friends in the ward had come over and made quick work of the huge trees. Then we all went as a posse to 4 other neighbor's homes. It was our first time meeting anyone in the neighborhood. Quite the way to get introduced! Everyone was super grateful for the help and we were happy to be part of the "helping hands".

The remnants of our trees in the road. 

These are the maps of the tornados and the red dot in the bottom picture is our house. We were literally right in the line of the tornado. We were very blessed...very blessed. It was a super long night though and a super long day. But the feeling of being blessed was definitely our overriding feeling.