Pajama Party Continued: Saturday Morning

Eliza e-mails a note to her Mommy, with last night's artwork sent as a scanned attachment.

Magdalena dances (above) and organizes below. Magdalena likes to put things in rows or put them in containers.

Slumber Party

Magdalena (left) and Eliza stay over at Gramma's house.
Eliza creates a masterpiece for Mommy and Daddy, whom she misses, but it's "fun at your house, too," she says.
Maggie scrubs dirty laundry. While I use a "hand washer" I got from a mail order catalog, Maggie's idea of scrubbing out a stain with a brush worked very well, too.

Joy....

Joy can come in a variety of forms....

a really good run yesterday.

flowers from a friend via e-mail (photo by Nelson, taken at Crosswinds Prayer Garden). Daisies are one of my favorites (they're so wild, crazy and free-spirited), and the roses behind are beautiful, too.

a reward for hard work (click on this and you'll see that I graduated summa cum laude!). Thanks again, everyone, for all your help through prayer support, encouragement, acting as a sounding board, and loving me even during high stress times when projects came due. Thanks to First Pres at Victor for providing me a steady, part-time income and to Hallifax Business Services for income and bonuses. And a special thanks to Nelson for pots of coffee and tea, home cooked meals, and help finding the right balance between study time and study breaks.

Twighlight Scenes...after a rain

Another long stride and I'd have stepped on these ducks, who were so engrossed in their preening they seemed unaware of my approach.
Escargot, anyone?

The intensely sweet scent of honeysuckle permeates the air long before the flowers come into view. And honeysickle vines crawl along several of the stone and brick walls in Staunton, or light posts...or anywhere else they can grab hold.

At least it's clean...

Dirty when I arrived in Virginia, my car looked really bad after six weeks of primarily sitting in the parking garage and weekend excursions to hiking trails. So when we got back from Crabtree Falls, we parked it on the fifth floor for a bath, which weather reports said were forthcoming from Mother Nature. Well, my car is clean now...but also pock marked from the hail storm.

Tornado Update

Just got off the phone after talking with my good friend, Nancy Sparrow, who was about five minutes ahead of the tornado, she said, when it hit the Muscatine (Iowa) area. She was at the Hardy's (Restaurant) in Muskie (the natives' nickname for Muscatine) waiting for an order of cheesburgers when the wind picked up, the sky got dark and a sheriff's car flew by. On the cell phone to her husband, Chuck, she said, "Hmmm, there must have been a bad accident."
The "accident" was at least one funnel cloud that left 14 miles of devastation.
"It was skippy," Nancy said. "just 300 feet wide in some spots to 1/4 mile wide in others." Over 100 buildings were destroyed including eight homes in Grandview. She said that the windows in 80 cars at the Toyota dealership in Muscatine blew out. The parsonage at her church is uninhabitable, part of the roof having blown off and a couple walls moved. The youth pastor who lived there is just a few weeks away from moving to another home, but temporarily homeless. Fruitland, as I said in yesterday's post, was hit the hardest. Unbelievably, however, there were no serious injuries or fatalities.
"Just cuts and bruises," Nancy said.

"Home" Stomping Grounds Hit by Tornado

Southeast Iowa tornado posted on Belski's blog (http://wave3.typepad.com/belskis_blog/)

I grew up in Iowa. Someone once commented about how "new" everything looked there and how clean. And I said, "That's because Mother Nature wipes it clean every few years." Well another part of southeast Iowa was wiped clean on Friday, June 1. Fruitland, Iowa, lost the post office and City Hall. Fruitland is on what we used to call the "Muscatine Island," an area along the Mississippi River. The sandy soil grows some of the best melons (cantaloupe, muskmelon and watermelon) you can get anywhere. Fruitland was a favorite stopping place between where I grew up near Washington, Iowa, and Davenport where several relatives and my brothers live.

About ten years ago, the Washington, Iowa, area was hit by tornadoes, and like this one in Fruitland, it wasn't known whether one super cell devasted the area, or if two or three funnels merged.

Well...the blurb in the Muscatine Journal tells the story, and at the bottom of the article is a link if you'd like to see a slideshow of photos illustrating the damage:

Sightseers stay home: Emergency proclamation issued.
"Police issue warning: Non-essential traffic should stay off the streets"
by Melissa Regennitter Of the Muscatine Journal

BREAKING NEWS MUSCATINE, Iowa — An emergency proclamation has been declared for Muscatine and Fruitland according to city officials. Muscatine Police Chief Gary Coderoni said no one is sure if one tornado touched down three times, or if there were multiple tornados along a 12-mile stretch through Grandview, Fruitland and Muscatine.

The tornado, which touched down just after noon on Friday, was classified as an F3 but dissipated to an F2 as it passed through Muscatine.Gov. Chet Culver has declared a disaster proclamation for Jackson, Muscatine and Louisa Counties. So far, six injuries have been reported from Fruitland, where the majority of damage was done, but Coderoni believes none are life threatening.

Slideshow: Fruitland Tornado Link below:

Retrieved from: http://www.muscatinejournal.com/multimedia/?type=slideshow&id=3 on June 2, 2007.