The Great Flood (at the farm)

So many of you may know that we were flooded out at the farm.  For those of you who don't, this is what happened last Friday morning.  7 1/2" of rainfall wreaked a lot of havoc, especially to an area still accessed by gravel roads.  The farm is located in Adeline, IL (population 139 as of 2000 census) and uses Leaf River as the postal code.  Leaf River runs directly through the property and in all of granddad's years on and around the farm (all 83 years), the river has never overflowed the banks this much.

Now, before I get to the pictures, I want to tell a little of what went on in the hours before these pictures were taken.  Tim was on his way to the farm with the girls who spent several days with my mom and dad.  It had already stopped raining by this time, sometime between 2pm and 3pm.  Now the last 5 to 7 minutes of the trip is all on gravel roads.  Tim turned onto the first section of the gravel and ended up driving through a rough patch of flooded road.  Once he cleared that first patch of flooding having had water come in the car through the door, I guess (in his little Toyota Matrix), he realized that the next patch of road was worse and he had better not attempt to get through at the risk of getting stuck altogether.

He called me and I took our Suburban out to pick him up.  I got to the end of the lane (what you call a driveway that is .73 miles long), which already had about 50 ft of it under water, and I turned left to head out to Tim.  The river had already overflowed its bank and was cascading over the part of road ahead of me into the open field that lies about 5 feet lower than the road.  In the time it took for me to get to Tim and the girls and come back, that section of road had already caved in to where half the road was at least a foot lower than the other half with rushing water still ravaging the road.

We ended up taking some back roads to get beyond that caved in section of road, we parked the truck up the road by the one room school house and literally had to walk through upper thigh high water.  I carried Micah and Tim carried Eden as we carefully waded through the at least 100 foot section of flooded lane where I lost one of my brand new flip flops (the water rose almost 2 feet in less than half an hour).  Has the river no mercy?  Here are the pictures we took after we made it safely home.

Zooming in down the lane, you can see the mailbox that is across the street from the lane.  The water has not come that high yet.

This is looking to the right at the end of the lane where just beyond the trees is a bridge, and up the road from the bridge is the one room school house.

This is a picture to the left of the lane, the open field I mentioned earlier.  It would be nice to have before pictures to compare, but for those of you who have been here, you know what I am talking about.

This is one of the bean fields, as is the river you see beyond the beans.  The overflow of the river takes the path straight through the beans.  Knowing that the beans are at least a foot high right now, the water is at least that high on that lower field, and I would dare say twice that high if you were to measure it.

Tim and granddad walked down to see that bean field close up.  Anyone up for soggy beans? 

The next morning we took a walk down the lane hoping it had gone down some.  Even if it was the same thigh high water from the day before, Tim was going to wade through it to get to the library for me (I was reading the Above the Line series by Karen Kingsbury and needed the 4th book desperately).  We didn't need to go all the way down the lane to know it wasn't happening.

You see the ripples in the water?  The water is at least another 30 feet up the lane and is now making waves.  Tim would have had to full-on swim, and that would have gotten the first 3 books in that series wet, so Take Four would have to wait.  Humphf.  Safety first.  I guess.

Zooming in to the mailbox you can see that the river finally claimed the road.

We did manage to play a little and the kids were finding rocks and making a rock collection.  This was Eden's best rock.

On the way back to the house we stopped at the turkey feather.

We also stopped at the mud puddle that had this juicy worm swimming around in it, and we rescued it.  Do worms swim?  The picture isn't all that great, but this worm was fat and much to my surprise, Titus picked it up.  When he went to throw it into the grass, he must have gotten a bit spooked by the mini snake that he ended up throwing the worm right back into the water.  Funny.

The rest of these pictures are just to give you a tour of sorts from the bottom of the lane (as far as we can get with the water and all) all the way up to the house and the surrounding area.  Each photo is basically a new section of the lane.

Here is the beautiful tree that we wanted the tree house in.  The swings are here, but it also has a direct view of a portion of the lane that just could not be blocked.  Oh well.

I can't wait for you to see the after pictures of the water damage, so hang in there...it's almost 1am and I can't post it tonight, but ♫ there's always tomorrow ♫.  'Night all.

I ♥ coffee...and my mac

After not having slept much last night,  I was up early, washed the dishes, made coffee and fiddled around on my computer.

Pictorial ode to Cup o' Joe

Mmm, mmm, good Andy Warhol style.

Coffee just has that special something to jump start your day.  I feel like I got a full night's rest and I know it's gonna be a great day (despite the thunder and lightning and rain that has been going since 10pm last night)!

My how bats fly when you're having fun!

First of all, I have to say how glad and lucky and fortunate and all I must be to come back after my weekend away to find the bat I so worried about.  He was indeed dead.  He was not dead in some corner.  I am grateful because to be honest, I was not going to search that room to find a decaying bat.  Trust me.  Thank you God for your kindness to me in this particular instance.  You won't be so kind next time.

Let's see, the second thing is that Eden has developed.....................an interest in wearing my cupped bra.  This is so terribly cute and funny and mortifying all at the same time.  I mean, first of all, these are totally not proportional to her tiny frame.  Secondly, they are already mama boobs...they are practically on her stomach.  Thirdly, Ruthie, it sure beats bouncing your elbows!!!  Eden is not embarrassed by this.  Well, she didn't seem to be at all as she carried on normally for the 2 days she wore this under her clothes, but as soon as Levi got here with his friend Ty (Ty and Eden are in the same class at school and church) she took it off and hasn't put it back on.  Too, too funny!

We forgot to close the garage door last night.  You'd think that would be no big deal, but here at the farm, the bandits are out before dark and they didn't take much time to devour all the goodies we had to offer them today.

Take a look past the bikes.

And some more towards the back of the garage.

And more still.

I was not going to lie to granddad about the garage door.  I also wasn't going to stick around to hear him yell about it, so I strapped on my "let's get serious" garb and let out a big almost depressed sigh and got busy cleaning up the stupid, putrid smelling garage.  It's only 9am.  What kind of a day is this going to be?

We spent the day working on this project.  Granddad wanted this bush/amazon/tree area cleared and so we decided to go ahead and do it.

The entire area was covered in little trees and other stalks that grew from branches that were too heavy and just lay on the ground.  Hundreds of these little trees, many of which were clustered and had to be pulled out by the roots, were beckoning us in the 90° heat to break our backs and our hands to pull them out.

Inside this area is a tree with 3 trunks and then, as you can see to the left there, over a dozen other mini trunks that amounted to nothing more than a huge inconvenience.  We still have to figure out how we are going to separate that chunk from the tree portion that we are trying to keep in tact.

As you can see, we are mostly done.  I have never sweat so much as I did during this project and should have dropped 10 pounds in the process.  Apparently it doesn't work that easily.  Hopefully we will finish it today and when we do, it will become the home of the tree house Tim intends to build.

After dinner, we drove to the farm on the west side of town to try and walk around.  We have never been out there with the kids and I knew there was some neat stuff to see.  On the way out of the lane this buck runs across the road and goes into the woods next to us and just stands there.  At this rate, come hunting season, he is a goner real quick!

Here is one of the barns at the other property.  Off limits, of course.

There is this huge, towering, dead tree in the middle of all the lush greenery.  Odd.

This looked like a chicken coup or a sheepfold or something for some kind of animals.

This is, obviously, just a bit of the farmland.  It, like the main property, is beautiful!

There is a house on the property, but you don't realize where it is until you are looking through these creepy trees and it hits you, almost secretly because of how it blends in.

Everything is so overgrown that we need to go back to put pants on to walk up to it, but this must have, at one time, been a very nice house.  It is a shame, and I am continually amazed at the contradictory mindset out here.  Such a beautiful property gone to waste, a one-time potential income property and instead it stands in shambles, probably a home for any and all animals willing to nest here.  It is so sad to me to see money and history and potential left to rot, rust and get infested with rodents. Maddening. 

In all that junk was one lone Tiger Lilly, also known as the Karen North Lilly.  It is beautiful and I may have Tim go back and dig it up to try and get it to grow here at the farm.  We will see.

We got back and put the kids to bed and ended up talking to Phil and Shelley as they had their yard sale, of sorts when out of nowhere, a kamikaze bat comes flying into the room we are in.  We jumped up ran sat there and screamed like girls...yes, Tim too...and basically panicked as Tim prodded me to get up and take care of it what with all my experience as of late.

Did he come to my rescue at all?  No.  He just sat there shouting with me and at me as I shouted at him.  Before we knew it, the bat was gone and the problem was, we didn't have a clue as to where.  We found out later, after Tim finally went upstairs to put on a shirt and pants, that the bat clearly wanted out.  I sat on the couch and Tim, armed with a full-sized mattress cover (?????) was out by the back door with it open when out of the living room the night bird was taking flight again, round and round my head.

I was yelling...I was mad at Tim for not coming in here to take care of it.   The bat was coming in by me, doing fly-bys and then leaving, just teasing me.  Tim told me to get it because he was at the opposite end of the house as the bat (conveniently) knocking on the wall by the back door to help guide the bat to the door.  A lot of good that did when I was yelling from the other room.  No way was I getting it.  That nasty thing came so close to my head.  I had full intention to take the top to the Lego's bucket and swat at it in the hopes to knock it out of flight and then somehow pick it up and shoo it outside.  Long, more dramatic story made short, the bat flew out the back door.  Lucky for Tim because I was about ready to go to bed and leave him to fend for himself and I would not have looked back.

After all that excitement and the long grueling day, guess what I got in return for all my hard work and my bravery in the line of duty?  Insomnia.  Yep.  I was awake almost all night.  I tried.  My body was tired.  My eyes were burning.  I listened to music.  I could not get to sleep.  I am about tired and frustrated to tears when I fell asleep at 4:30 only to wake up at around 10 til 5.  Lord, have mercy on all those around me today, including me.

...Batwoman

So I have been doing laundry a lot because I have a lot to do and because we are going home this weekend and I need to pack everyone up.  Well, in one of the trips in and out of the laundry room I closed the door which squeaks, but this time it didn't stop squeaking.  I opened the door and watched a bat drop to the ground.

Oh my goodness, I didn't sign up for bat killing duty.  So, brave me, I run to Tim's 82yr old granddad to tell him about it.  He goes and gets his gloves and then we open the door to get the injured night bird and wouldn't you know it?  He's not there.  Granddad wanted to know why I didn't get him right away to which I had to humbly explain that it was because I was caught off guard and basically scared of it.  Sheesh.  Naturally I couldn't find the little bugger anywhere, which creeped me out, so I decided to wait until tomorrow to figure it out as I still had dinner dishes to do now that the kids were in bed.

As I am doing the dishes, I notice something flopping around on the kitchen floor, on the opposite side of the kitchen from the laundry room and for whatever reason, it took me a few seconds of looking at it to realize it was a bat.  An injured bat.  Doggoneit.  I just heard the bat I injured flopping and scraping the laundry room door.  Now I have TWO bats?  This time I thought quickly and grabbed a kitchen towel ant threw it on top of the bat.  Yeah, that's gonna do it, Einstein.

It didn't take the flightless bird long to limp its way to the edge of that blue towel, all the while screeching, so I went ahead and threw another towel on him as I pondered what to do.  I was still gloved but there was NO way I was going to grab that rodent with my bare hands like that (yes, rubber gloves vs bat = bare hands to me) so I poked the towel to find out where the bat was, exactly.  It was rather cool because I could feel his heart racing or he was just electrically charged.  Either way, he was vibrating so I knew where he was.  I scooped up the bat very carefully, folded it up so the critter wouldn't escape and carried him outside where I opened the towel, kindly dropped the little fella to the ground to watch him wing hobble away.  He would be scooped up by some predator very soon in his condition.

One down.  One to go.  I wanted to be brave and take care of the creepy beast on my own, so I put on a hat in case he wanted to swoop down and nest in my hair (I think its my uncle Jeff's hat actually) and I already had my gloves on and I got prepared to "go in."

He's in there...

Here I am, all geared up in a TANK TOP and FLIP FLOPS (what am I?  Nuts?) getting ready to go one on one with a mini monster.  Well, I meant business.  So much so that I stormed over to that door...and stood outside for at least 10 minutes praying up the courage to face this thing.  HAHA!!!  It was pathetic.

Then I thought, as I was hitting the door to scare him off that bats are deaf, so that won't make a difference.  Then I was going through what all I could remember about bats (is this adult ADD or what?) as if any of it was going to make a difference to me.  I remembered something about listening by sonar because they aren't deaf.  They are blind!  Yes, that's it.  Hello, "blind as a bat."  OK, that gave me a bit of courage.  Now I had the confidence (of a kid on his first day in a new school) that he couldn't see me right away to swoop down and attack me.  Just God-given sonar. So much better.  Ugh.

Finally I opened the door slowly, giving ample time for this nocturnal nightmare to fly out and roam around the house.  Dork.  Once I got in, I closed the door and dagnabbit, I couldn't find the dumb bat.  I looked in the laundry.  I looked on the floor.  I looked behind and under and in everything I could physically reach and there wasn't any living creatures besides this herkin' huge carpenter ant and the moths running into the window screens over and over again.

Now I am mad because I went in all brave to do this noble task and there was nothing for me to conquer.  Truth be told, this is how I really went in.

Now I am gonna have to chance facing it today.  I suppose I don't NEED to go in that laundry room, but I am guessing that in the time I am gone, this critter will either curl up and die SOMEWHERE in there and then start to become quite an odor, or granddad will accidentally let it out and then I have to consider myself and my family as bat prey.  Neither sounds acceptable.  In the meantime I am going to shower and consider my options before risking life and limb for my family.  It's a dangerous job, but someones gotta do it!

Holy Fireworks...Batwoman?

The Fourth of July was fun.  It was a long and hot and tiring *napless* day and perhaps we suffered for it, but it was fun.  At church that morning there was social time before an abreviated sunday school because the church celebrates the month's birthdays on the first Sunday of the month.  During this get together, we overheard about a Fourth of July parade and thought we might as well go to it.  Church let out at 11:30 and the parade started at 3:00, we wanted to be to the pastor's house early (he let us park at his house and we walked around the corner to watch the parade) and still get the kids a nap.

Well, it was obvious the kids needed a nap, so in order to cram one in we eliminated lunch.  Well, not totally.  We gave them each a piece of peach pie that the night before we had promised they could have after lunch the next day (follow?), not knowing we wouldn't be having any.  I wonder why none of them slept.

The parade was your typical parade and the kids got lots of candy.  This is probably the first parade any of the kids will remember going to.

The kids really wanted to know how you get on these bikes.  It doesn't look comfortable, that's for sure!

This was a nice change from those little cars that the Shriners usually drive around.  Of course those were there too along with little go-karts.  The planes were cooler!

Later in the evening, well past bedtime,  we headed back out to the town nearby to see the fireworks.  It was a holiday weekend and we were having fun together and daddy even splurged for refreshments for the show.  We won't say how much he had to pay to get that smoothie into that carved coconut.

Grandma wasn't feeling too well, but grandpa was able to come and brave these 2 boys.

The fireworks were pretty.  I took shots of them just to see how they would turn out.  I don't think they were half bad.

And before we knew it, it was all done.  15 minute show.  It was really good while it lasted and I am so thankful we went and the kids had fun.  We got home and the kids in bed by 10:30 roughly, and no, they did not sleep in the next morning and yes they were crabby!

That was the "Holy Fireworks."  The "Batwoman" will have to come tomorrow night.  I am tired!!!