Tornado's in Raleigh

Well if you saw the news, then you have seen the devastation that took place here on Saturday afternoon.  This is a first for our family and I think we are still in shock and processing that we lived through a tornado, we are a very THANKFUL family and community! This storm probably only lasted 10 minutes or so cruising through town, but left a lot of damage and took many lives in the process.  Our city is still recovering and many efforts are being made to help all those in need, it is encouraging to see the church and community come together and show love.  Here are some pictures from our backyard, these are nothing compared to things a couple streets over and further north, but thought you would like to see what happened on our block!

View from my back porch to the back yard, that is usually an open field.

Another back yard view!

Our house, we were going for the speckled look, if you look you can see a stick that was lodged in our siding, random.

Our street, the brick building is Shaw University roof was torn off.

The kids playing on the tree that fell on Cordell's porch.

View from other side, our house is between the tree's you can barely see it.

Tree that fell on Cordell's(our neighbors) porch, just missed their house.

Roots of that big tree that fell above, it was a BIG tree!

Sunday, workday it is starting to be cleared out as our church family works together!!

Anna going to class

Anna is going to this little class one day a week up at our church nursery where one of our members
is teaching a preschool class on geography and history, so I just thought I'd post this picture of Anna
going for the first time.  The class has been going on for a while, but she just started going and loved it so much!

Sunday Happenings

Well thought I'd just give you some pictures of some things we did yesterday.  We had a wonderful time at church hearing about the discipline of love, how it is hard to love, but how Christ love is amazing...and through him we are able to, and when we do it is beautiful, what a great way to start the day.

Anna with her baby Mercy, they have the same dress thanks to Granna.

Isaiah with his buds Elijah and Jadon trying to play some tunes!

Sammy playing dead!

Anna playing dead!

Micah playing, dead, sorry for the pic, Anna actually took it!

Sammy doing his wolverine pose.

Our toothless boys, Micah lost one today and Isaiah yesterday!

Sammy in his messy cuteness!

Yes, our kids enjoy playing dead, they are actually really good at it, not sure if that is a good thing or not.  But we had a good day of fun.  We ended the evening with a fun supper of popcorn, pizza and smoothie...everyone got to pick what they wanted.  My friend said her family used to have popcorn
for dinner on Sunday nights so sounded like a good idea, then we just added a couple more things to make it a fun dinner.

Flat Stanley Project

We had the honor of helping one of our nephews Tyson in Tennessee with a school project called Flat Stanley, for those who don't know this is a book about a boy(I think) haven't read it but anyway who gets flat and goes in the mail, so the aim of this project was for Tyson to send us a flat stanley in the mail and we got to take him around our city and show him the sites and then mail him back and tell of his adventures.  So I thought I would show you some of the places we took Flat Stanley while he was here in Raleigh.  It really was alot of fun and our kids enjoyed it as well!  First we went to Krispy Kreme, founded in Winston Salem, NC a must see while here and partake of as well.  Then we ventured to the Governor's Mansion, Capital Building and Monuments, Carolina Hurricane's building and NC State Stadium.  At the Stadium as you will see in the pictures our boys had on Duke t-shirts, they are of course Duke fans via their Papa who is a Duke fan.  So we walk in the office of NC State football stadium with Duke shirts on with a bunch of guys sitting in the foyer, who looked like football player types, don't know if they were recruits or already players but I didn't think that through ahead of time, but they just kind of laughed and said somethings that I couldn't hear.  But the lady was real friendly she took us around and let us go up and see the field from the second floor, the boys of course loved this! So enjoy the pictures of our adventures with Flat Stanley.

Krispy Kreme assembly line, HOT NOW is going on!

Governor's mansion

Capitol building

Capitol Building and Washington Monument

Canon, Anna trying to shoot Micah:)

Wolfpack Stadium

Inside Wolfpack stadium, they had lots of cool football stuff.

Wolfpack field, a little dark, I had some kids who were afraid of heights here and wouldn't move much:)