Presidential Disaster Area

We took our first trip as a family this past Sunday. My step-brother had his college open house at my Mom's house, which is 1.5 hours away. We began our journey at noon and got there around 1:45 or so. As we passed through Tama, we noticed A LOT of fields that were flooded. We began to wonder how detasseling was going to go this summer, since alot of the farmers either don't have fields planted or the one's that they do have planted are under water. We passed by a field that was slightly elevated above the road that was FULL of water and we couldn't understand how it wasn't spilling onto the road. We continued along enjoying each other and the quietness of Olivia sleeping (the whole way!). The trip there was rather uneventful, although we almost hit a pheasant, which was amusing (pretty sure it's a "you had to be there" event). We had a pleasant time at Mom's and at 5:00 decided that it was time to leave. We left in the midst of a lot of weather watches & warnings. We drove through heavy rain and a ridiculous amount of lightning. When we reached the outskirts of Tama, we noticed that the road was closed because of flooding... from that field I previously mentioned. So we began our detouring - began being the key word. We drove towards Chelsea, which we couldn't get through because it was flooded as well. From there we ended up driving through Marengo and on towards Iowa City, and from there we were finally able to head North towards home. We got home at 8:45. The 1.5 hour trip home ended up taking us almost 4 hours - through heavy rains, lightning, a crying (hungry) baby, and tornado watches. I have never wanted to get home so much in my life. It was a very long "first trip", and the way that the weather is continuing to go, we probably won't make it down there very often this summer. :(

Our next trip will occur in a few weeks when we travel to Wisconsin to visit with Jesse's parents. Not sure I'm looking forward to a 4-4.5 hour trip and I'm really not looking forward to having to cross the Mississippi river, either.

Which brings up what I've been up to today.

Today began a little earlier than usual - 7:15, but not horrible since the sun was out and Olivia had slept all night long. I fed her and waited until she fell asleep around 8 before I took a shower and got myself ready for the day. After completing this, Olivia woke up from her little nap, so I got her dressed and we headed over to Grandma's house. About an hour later we headed over to the church to work on some VBS stuff. As we're on the highway, we noticed that the downtown area was roped off with CAUTION tape because the water was beginning to trickle over the side of the bridge. We also weren't able to take the exit that we needed to because the John Deere foundary was flooded. This happened just a few minutes before we drove there. They were evacuating cars and people. So we ended up driving a little ways further and finally made it to the church. A few minutes later we were getting reports that another dam had been breached, so we started thinking about leaving, since the church is right in between two water sources that are obviously way above flood level. My sister and I walked out to see if we could see any water around and we saw a policeman at the next corner. We told us that they might be closing more bridges and streets, so we decided that we had better go home so we didn't end up stranded. Later on we hear that a train bridge had broken. Danette & I decided to go help with the sandbagging effort in Cedar Falls. Bags of sand are sure heavy! We did that for a while and then headed home as more workers were coming. And that's the news of the day. Now I'm sitting at home with VERY tired legs and arms, just waiting to see what happens.