What a crazy week we have had! First, we’ll start with two more pretty pictures from my home garden - the lavender is in bloom and smells so wonderful!
Wouldn’t it be neat if you could scratch your computer moniter and smell it?? Maybe in “The Future” that will happen. 
On Wednesday afternoon, a really nasty storm moved in fast across the lake. I wish I’d taken a screen shot of the radar, because the cell was a deep, angry red. Red on radar is never good. Most of the storm was north of us, but starting around 6:00pm it hit us full-force. Within a few minutes, we had lost several trees, including the big one we really liked in the back yard. Within an hour, we had lost power and a raging river had flowed across the street, into our yard, down our side yard, and filled the backyard.
Here are some photographs that do no justice to what had happened; sorry for the graininess, but it was almost dark as night outside and I had my precious Rebel XTi inside a plastic Zip-Lock bag with a hairtie holding the bag tight around the lens.
Water coming off the road (several inches deep) and into neighbor’s front yard.
Trees and branches down all over our yard.
Following path of least resistance, which happens to lead into our side yard and down the hill.
This is the side yard, just to the east of the garage. Please note the saving grace of this event: the water is NOT washing up against our foundation. Basement stayed dry.
Coming down the side into the back yard and down the hill. See the downed trees on the right?
Our favorite tree that came down; this picture was taken later, so the ‘river’ is not as bad here but still flowing steadily.
And now the bottom of our yard, aka Lake Schmidt, where the water finally came to rest. Some of it flowed into the neighbor’s yard on the other side - he had the gall to come over in the rain and accuse us of flooding his yard.
We had lost power around 6:45pm. It came back for us around 2:30am, but most of Richland didn’t get power back until sometime today (Saturday - 3 days after the storm).
On Indenpendence Day, my parents came down to go to the Battle Creek Field of Flight airshow that is held every Fourth of July at KBTL. We go to the maintenance hangar where Brian works and we have the best seats in the whole place - it’s free, closed parking lot, no crowds, access to real bathrooms, and no carnies! A friend from work came as well and brought along four mini-kegs of Bell’s Oberon for us to enjoy. This year the main attraction was the Air Force Thunderbirds again. We also enjoyed the F-15 demo team, the F-18 demo team, and the F-104 Starfighter demo.
Kaitlyn loved her first airshow! Everytime a plane would fly in front of us, she would smile and wave her arms and kick her legs. We covered her ears for the jets, but it really wasn’t too loud except for the occassional high-speed, low-altitude fly-bys. (Fly-bies?) She was also completely enthralled with her first fireworks show. I had a bottle for her and she wanted nothing to do with it while the fireworks were going.
Enough talk, here’s some pictures!
Kaitlyn loved the airplanes.
One of the school’s Piper aircraft. It was not part of the show, but we stood next to it for most of the Thunderbird’s show.
Biplane about to perform a snap roll.
USAF Thunderbird F-16 Falcon taxiing to runway 23 for takeoff.
High-speed fly-by.
I want one!
Diamond formation.
Don’t you LOVE those colors? See the white tails of the Thunderbirds on the bottom left, and you can also see the silhoette of the Piper Seneca I have a picture of above.
Some friends of ours sat nearby and their 2-year-old daughter kept jumping up and saying, “Pop! Pop!”
That’s enough for now. Have a great holiday weekend! We’ll be cutting trees apart for weeks to come.
