I just have to share this with you. It is the most heartfelt thing I can imagine. Last night on the radio they announced that the Carthage Senior High class of 2011 had raised $10,000 for Project Graduation, but they have decided to donate their Project Grad money to the City of Joplin after that tornado hit. How awesome is that?
More information on the Tornado: The tornado hit winds in excess of 198 mph so they’ve classed it as an EF4. 14,000 people still remain without electricity as of last night. The death toll has raised to 116 as of this morning. I think I’ve heard 17 people have been rescued alive in the rubble. They are having blood drives, they especially need O-neg. I have no idea what my blood type is but I’m planning on getting over my fear of needles and donating.
When we got home on Sunday after the tornado had ripped through Joplin, our yard was covered in debris. Some of it is unreal. My friend Aerielle and her kids came to our house so we could all check facebook for photos because at that time there were still no photos on the tv. So between her house and ours (about 1 mile) there was styrofoam all over the road, 2×6’s with nails in the middle of the road, tree limbs down, tin in the ditch. All the debris being as far away as what we were was just unreal.
So here’s some of what we found in our yard debris wise.
This was the TV just about the time Joplin got hit.
We got some hail but not like they did. Remember I’m about 25 miles from where it was hit or so…
You really can’t tell but it was POURING
This was driving back to our house.
We worked all day Saturday getting all the water off the pool tarp and it was dry. This was after the storm went through.
This looked to be pieces out of a radiology book of some sorts.
This was an Insurance EOB.
I’m not sure what is in his right hand, the left hand (pink) was foam insulation
Joplin High School graduation happened and I’m fairly certain this is part of their program.
This was referring to scriptures in the Bible so I’m thinking part out of a Christian book??
and really no idea here…
We had insulation all over. Pink, Yellow, foam…
Sheet rock.
Black roofing tar
I don’t even remember…
More Styrofoam.
You can’t tell here so much but we had insulation all over our roof.
And someone’s shingle 🙁
and what looks like a piece of a little girls outfit.
More insulation.
This was the sky around 8pm. The tornado hit around 6ish.
This was a cover to a cookbook.
A neighbor actually got a whole page from a cookbook.
The sky was super eery even at 8pm. Then the lightening kicked in…
Please remember to keep the victims as well as the worker’s in your thoughts and prayers. 2 of my co-workers are volunteering their time. They said pictures we see aren’t even doing it justice. He said they are having to climb over things to get into the houses and rubble that they are digging through. I can only imagine. The weather is predicting more Tornadic cells coming through our area tonight along with more rain tomorrow. Please keep all of these people in your prayers!
The tornado spanned 6 miles long and was guessed to be 1/2 mile across. So far the death toll is at 89 people. Homes are gone, businesses are gone, and the real kicker, we have another line of sever weather headed our way right now. In fact we are in a Severe Thunderstorm Warning and it is following the same path as the tornado last night. These tornadoes seem to be getting closer and closer and it’s scary. This, this is close. From my house to where my {step}daughter lives it takes 25-30 minutes (due to winding through the city).
This appears to be the forming of the tornado
Sadly, I don’t even know where this is. Nothing is left for landmarks.
This is what is left of the St. John’s building.
Again, there’s nothing left to even know where this is, but you can see it’s a parking lot due to the lines on the concrete.
25-30% of Joplin is just in rubble.
This looks to be an apartment building.
What’s left….
I didn’t take any of these photos. I pulled them from news stations. I figure still it’s best to stay out of the way, however I brought old clothes with me today because I have some friends I still haven’t gotten ahold of. I’m not afraid to go hunting them down!
I was watching the Today Show this morning and I found it crazy, Al Roker is in Joplin, Missouri. You know how he does the weather (usually for NYC) and then says, “…now here’s what’s happening in your neck of the woods.” And I yelled through the house, “That is my neck of the woods!” Then I looked at my husband and said, “Man that’s not a line I ever expected to yell at the tv toward Al Roker.”
This has made both national and apparently international news because my mom is in Germany at the moment for work and I guess she found out around 1am our time this morning. I started to contact her but it would have been around 3am her time and I hated to wake her up to that news. So she woke my dad up at 1am.
The building I work in has around 600 employees. I’ve heard of one death and many lost houses. One lady lost her husband about 7 months ago and during the tornado last night she lost her house. Please keep her and all the people affected by this in your prayers and thoughts!
***update: here is an official picture of the path***
**My drawing, and it’s a smidge off, it never went down 32nd St until closer to Flyin’ J**
(click on the photo to make it bigger)
If you can picture this……… (the squiggly line is the track of the tornado)
Joplin North to South streets are numbered. Joplin & Webb City have grown in to each other and Webb City is North. The tornado came in from the Galena/Riverton, KS area which is due West of Joplin. It came in around 15-26th streets. The main East & West markers in Joplin are Duquesne (East, which I forgot to mark but it’s east of Range Line), Then Range Line, then Main Street, Then Maiden Lane. St. John’s Hospital is over on 26th street and just East of Maiden Lane. It blew up St. Johns. They said it sounded like an atomic bomb going off. I guess that twister sucked a lot of both staff and patients out of the windows (I’ve heard including a 300lb man, just gone. Vanished. Not that weight matters…) It was 1/2 mile wide and moved at 20 miles per hour. It kind of bounced back and forth between 15th and 26th streets. Once it got to 15th & Range Line (where one of the Walmarts is that is now gone) it turned due and went down Range line. It took out Walmart, Academy, a strip center with a JoAnn’s cloth store and CC’s pizza, a brand new Walgreens at 20th & RL, plus the Home Depot is flattened right behind it. As it went on down Range Line it took out Chick-Fil-A, Ihop, Lowes’, and once it got to 32nd street it turned and went east again down 32nd street. Red Lobster is on 32nd & RL and it took at least part if not all of Red Lobster (Lowes is just North of Red Lobster about 5 blocks… it’s about 26th & Range Line) and then it went east down 32nd Street. South of 32nd Street is I-44. It had semi’s knocked over, on top of each other, banged around and it went out at the 249 bypass at 71 & I-44. There is a Flying J right there and I’ve heard it is gone. Then it headed on down I-44 actually toward my parents & grandparents house. My parents/grandparents live about 11 miles from there or so. I called my dad and my grandma, pretty much all they got was debris (which we got and we’re more to the North and East of Joplin. My dad did say that it blew one of his pipe fences apart and he had to go put cows back in. Otherwise my family was ok.
Now St. John’s is on McClelland Blvd & 26th street (just east of Maiden Lane about 4 blocks or so or just west of Main Street about 8 blocks.). Freeman West Hospital is on 32nd & basically McClelland. Freeman East Hospital is at 32nd & just East of Main Street (which is East of Maiden Lane) about 4 blocks. My Mother in law works at Freeman East. They had them on 3rd floor where the Psych Ward is (no windows and can’t move those patients). Their warnings and all clears come from Freeman West. After the storm had moved on and was headed out of Joplin and more our direction, they still hadn’t gotten the all clear from West because West got a little damage (but definitely not like St. Johns). So they opened a triage center in the basement of East, at Memorial Hall (over on 7th St) and other places around the city. My mother in law was at work last night until around 4:30am or so and she actually gets off at 11.
She said she drove down 32nd street to Range Line and then caught I-44 and headed home. She lives about 7-10 miles on East of my parents and she said what she saw was just awful. And she gets to go and do it all over again tonight.
They had to move critical patients to Freeman West and non critical to either triage centers or they sent them to Carthage, up to Lamar (45 minutes away) or Pittsburg, KS (45 minutes away) or moved even some of them to Springfield which is about 1 hr 15 minutes away.
We have heartache and devastation in my area today. I haven’t even seen all the devastation that has gone through because the storm has only just left our area within the last couple of hours and sometimes it’s just best to let professionals do their work without people getting in the way.
I haven’t heard the exact severity but we’ve heard anywhere from an F3-F4 tornado hit Joplin tonight. I live about 30 minutes from there and it was headed in our direction. Apparently, the West side of town got hit bad but the tornado picked up speed as it headed toward the east end of town. Once it left town they say it lost some of the speed/power.
1. I woke up this morning to thunder. We’ve actually had rain in our forecast for 7 days starting yesterday….
2. Last night laying in bed (no this isn’t dirty, it’s ok to read) I laid down and rolled to my right side (which faces me off the bed). My husband rolled over and snuggled against me but my shoulder hurt so I said I can’t lay on that side and we rolled on to our backs and I snuggled into his shoulder. Well then I asked him to scootch over and he said, oh I’m sorry I’ll get on my 1/4 side of the bed so you can have your 3/4. We giggled and I said no I share. He said yeah, 1/4.
3. When I got up this morning to go to the bathroom, I came to get back in bed and he was sprawled out on the entire bed and I had to kick my way back into bed. When we actually woke up to get up, he said, man you beat me up this morning.
4. I made dinner the other night, a slightly modified version of a recipe that Jill at Teenage Bride gave me. Oh it was yummy! (that’s why the garlic smell yesterday) I had 6 pieces of chicken to use up before they went bad! So I made them all. That left us chicken to eat last night so we made a salad out of it. Oh. My. Goodness. Super fantastic! I went to bed stuffed!
5. I watched Ground Hog Day last night. I know I watched it as a kid when it first came out in 1993, but come on… I didn’t remember it! So we watched it last night.
6. My mom is in Germany for work. Wednesday of this week was 1 week she was there. She’ll be there a total of 3 weeks. That means I’ll see her come June. Every 2 years she has to go to this trade show. Once she gets home, she’ll be preparing for the one in 2 years. Yup, she works that far in advance.
7. The first time she was to go I was a sophomore in high school, but my dad got sick and so she didn’t go. Then the second time she was to go I graduated from high school, therefore she didn’t go again. She wasn’t about to miss my graduation. Her boss said she WOULDN’T get out of the third time. That time she got locked in a bathroom stall over there and her boss had to get her out. (no knob on the inside of the stall to open the door….) The fourth time she went she barely got home in time to see me graduate from college, but she swore to me she wouldn’t miss it for the world. She was at graduation 🙂
8. That was probably a lot of useless info you really didn’t care about. Sorry 🙂
9. So I decided the other day, I want some honey bees. Don’t ask me why, just some crazy thing I decided. Probably won’t get any, but how cool would they be? Fresh Honey!!! My husbands supervisor said he has some friends that have some honey bees. We live in southwest Missouri so our winters can be horrid cold (for us, not my Canadian friends ;)) or they can be mild, it just depends on the year. But this guy will drive his honey bees all the way down into Texas for the winter. Now that’s dedicated. We also heard though that honey bees will hibernate, you just have to feed them during the winter here.
10. I’m not so sure my corn in my garden will be knee high by the fourth of July. I’m a little worried. They say for it to tassel out right, that’s how high it needs to be. I sure hope it makes it. I’m enjoying the rain because that’s better for a garden then water out of your hose, but my garden needs some good sun and heat too. I’m torn. But I’ve never been one to complain about rain because come July/August we’ll be begging for it.
11. Speaking of rain in July, that’s the reason I was born… I was 2 weeks late. Hey I’ve never been on time (case in point) so why start now :). Anyway my mom was out in the hayfield helping my dad buck bales up until almost the time I was born. Didn’t stop her I guess, even my grandma nagging at her couldn’t :). But anyway, mom called the doctor and they told her to come in. Once she got there the doctor said they could induce labor or else the doctor was going on vacation the next week and mom could use the on-call doctor. Mom said, “Well it’s raining so we can’t go to the hayfield, let’s have a baby instead.” Nice huh…. LOL :).
12. When they induced my mom though, they put my heart under stress and they had to take me by C-section. When I came out, my dad said I was purple. Maybe that’s why it’s my favorite color 🙂
13. Last night I went through my closet and got rid of a bunch of shirts I don’t like/don’t wear. Then I went and put on the outfit I had my engagement photos taken in; the weight loss shows in that outfit. LOL 🙂
14. I have to end on an even number. It’s just my style 🙂 Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!!
**I made dinner last night and held fresh Garlic in my hands… whew I’ve washed them I don’t know how many times and my hands still smell like garlic. Ok just thought I’d share. Luckily I don’t mind the smell of Garlic! Now back to regularly scheduled programming :)**
This weekend was a little chilly around these parts, but Saturday morning we got up and went out and started planting some trees along our driveway. While hubby and Tbug were planting the trees I was moving the lawnmower around (yes we had it out, we have a trailer for it… :)) and passing out trees. Well Oakley was being a good girl moving around with us and for the most part leaving the new trees alone. They aren’t big and she’s still a puppy… not a good combo!
So while we were moving around I started in on “training” her to sit on command. She started doing fairly well at that so I figured while I was at it, I’d work on Shake too.
This is one smart pup! After a morning of that she had sit and shake down on command for the most part. Well Tbug jumped in with me and all weekend we worked on “Sit” and “Shake”. It’s extremely good because the last time Tbug was with us Oakley jumped up to grab her hood on her jacket and wound up giving her a small black eye… major Fail! So I figured we’d work on manners and it turns out Oakley will listen to Tbug too! Yey!
And after Audrey got in trouble for going into the barn and killing the chickens… Oakley has nothing, and so far I mean nothing to do with that barn. She’s really smart!! 🙂
“Awe man, you’re going in there? Again?”
“Screw that, I’m staying out here!”
“Oakley, Come here.”
“Only if you come out of the barn, Ok?”
“Sit”
“Good Girl, Good Sit!!”
“Shake”
“Such a good girl, Good Shake!”
I was so impressed! But I’m also glad that Oakley listens to Tbug, that’s one of my main concerns! That and NOT jumping on my car. I’ll kick her butt the next time I find paw prints on my car… I’m just sayin 🙂
So last night my husband was taking a final at school. I came home like any other day and decided to go out and check on his chickens, make sure they had feed/water, and just make sure all was well, and what to my eyes did appear….?
Yeah, that nasty Hawk. Those things eat chickens… and I’ve even heard stories of them eating ducks.
My thoughts… GREAT! Why do these weird things seem to happen when I’m by myself. So I went back in the house to send him a text and he actually called. He was on his way into class. So I told him what I found. I don’t think he was really happy… LOL. So I went back out once I got off the phone and pondered on how to get the dumb thing out of there. I finally opened the door, hoped that the chickens didn’t run out (that would have been a huge mess!), and went around to the open side and scared it out. Yey, I saved the chickens :). Unless he swallowed some of the babies whole, I believe all our chickens and ducks are just fine 🙂 (more…)
Wow, I’m new to WordPress… but I’ve had a blog for over a year now. I’m just trying this out to see if I’ll like wordpress or stick with my current…. Any suggestions?
Ah, so here’s yesterday’s post which got swapped around with today’s post… 🙂
So one day last week my dad called us on our way home (hubs and I work together so we can sometimes ride to work together) and asked us if we knew where some town was here in Missouri. Now I thought this was funny because usually it’s the other way around, me asking dad :). So hubs looked it up on his phone map and we found out it was about an hour from us… but why?
Well because he found a horse on Craig’s List that had very good Cutting horse breed lines for a REALLY good price and he just wondered how far away these people might be. We asked him a few more details about the horse and asked if he had called on her. He said no because he was afraid that the deal may be too good to pass up and he’d have to go buy her.
A few years ago my dad got a mare given to him by some friends. She’s an older gal and she’s past her peek to actually foal any more offspring, but she has a home until the day she passes on to greener grasses. But my dad would LOVE another foal out of his stud. I told him to breed my Palomino Mare to his stud but he hasn’t yet (not sure why). He’s also tried to breed one of his show mares to him (the one tbug rides all the time) so far with no luck.
Well this mare he found on Craig’s List has a great pedigree as well as being in foal to a colt out of another stud with great pedigree.
So PC called on this mare to find out the story. Dad was a little leery because of the GREAT price for the bloodlines. Turns out the lady Loves her horse and this mare is “Queen of the Pasture” and she didn’t want her mare hurt so one of them had to go. They actually sold this mare last fall but the people didn’t pay so they had to go repo her so we got her for what was still owed on her plus their fuel to go pick her up from the other people. You have no idea how great of a deal we got. We went partners with my dad on this mare too.
And then in the end the people drove up here and brought her to us. My dad asked my hubby how he sweet talked the people into doing this and we were like, they offered, we just took them up on the deal, they were already headed this way with their trailer in tow so heck why not. We had to drive about 5 miles to go meet them… Score 🙂
Munchkin was mad to see the trailer leaving without him. He loves to go for rides.
Sis was sure interested to know what was going on once we got back.
But definitely not as much as Munchkin. He was prancing up and down the fence to see what was coming out of the trailer.
This mare trailed so easily!
But she wasn’t sure she liked backing out of the trailer
And here she is.
Super sweet, super gentle mare.
She’s 10 years old. The people we bought her from bought her because of her bloodlines.
They weren’t sure if she was broke to ride. They only actually bought her for the bloodlines and for the colt in her belly which they gave up when they sold her.
This is what Muddy thought, he was getting ignored.
Ah, a little more attention, that’s better.
While we were picking the mare up I told Tbug not to run around and act squirrely and so she was a little nervous but she warmed up to the mare very fast. I just did that because it was a new mare and who knows how she’d act. She has a very calm manner though!
I think she’ll like her new home… well until she moves out to our place if we ever get fence built.
