A whirlwind for the end of summer

Phew...it has been quite a week!

Last Wednesday we drove 5 hours to Itasca. We had a wonderful trip up north.

For those of you who are the last hold outs on Facebook you can see the other pictures here without being a FB user:  http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150638836210852.387746.571700851&type=1&l=7a04e50708

Once we got back we had a big day ahead of us. As Penny reminded us the entire vacation "I get to start PPK" (that's Primrose Pre-Kindergarten). She didn't put up too much of a fight when I said she couldn't wear a purple tutu over her uniform, but she was stubborn about her hat. It did make for cute pictures:

 I did tear up a little we dropped her off in class and she greeted all her friends in their little uniforms and said "bye mommy! Pick me up after work". She had a great first day with a full backpack of projects to show for it:

Yes, all of these were from the first day. She said "mommy, we learned about children all over the world."  We even have family homework to do. She has to present next week about our heritage. 

We were in such a rush from unpacking and getting Penny to her first day of PPK that both Chris and I forgot that Tuesday was this day:

Yup. 8 years totally slipped our minds. I got a Happy Anniversary email from my dad when I got to work and burst out laughing. We also got a few cards from our family. Ah well...as chris said "we went to Noodles & Co last night for dinner so I guess we celebrated" Nothing like a pseudo fast-food place with a moody preschooler for an anniversary celebration. Don't worry...we've got big plans this weekend for my birthday.

Then last night was the surprise adventure. I had heard there was a severe thunderstorm warning for the evening, but didn't think about it again since the skies were clear when I went to bed. It started around 11 and went on for a few hours.  I don't think I've ever been in a storm that bad. Hail, 70 mph winds, heavy rain. I'm surprised the tornado warnings didn't go off. The tree from our yard fell and we lost all power...thankfully only a small part of it hit the house. But then I took Penny down to the basement. She had been sleeping through it. Once I woke her up she was wide awake and really scared. Here's what we found in the morning:

And these pictures were after Chris spent 4 hours hacking away at it so it wouldn't block the back door and the electric company could fix the wires. Our whole subdivision had dozens of trees down. Thankfully the power was back on by noon.

Poor little Penny is asleep in her bed holding the flashlight like a teddy bear. She told Chris "If there's a storm I can use the flashlight." I guess it was pretty traumatic. 

So that's 1 week of strand family adventures! Hopefully we bring it down a few notches because I'm not sure I can continue at this pace of adventures!