Major Storms

Last night I was curled up in bed, happily reading my Kindle, when Kevin strode in and turned on the light.  It was 11 p.m. and he announced that there were tornado warnings for our area.

We woke up all the kids and trundled down to the basement, where our storage room is a very safe space from damaging storms.  It's made out of poured concrete and is wonderfully protected.

And we sat there for over half an hour.  Outside the rain poured down and the lightning flashed and the thunder roared, but we were safe.  We went back to bed around 11:45 or so, though I came down and sat in the family room until 12:45 a.m. because the tornado sirens kept howling.

We left the basement because the worst of the storm had passed us. We were fine.  Our irises were annoyed, but we had no other damage.

Only 10 miles away or so, a tornado touched down and destroyed an Aldi's, a pet supply store, and a Chik-Fil-A!  Kevin saw another area where a section of trees had been knocked down. So this was a very big storm, a very dangerous storm, and we are blessed and grateful that we didn't sustain damage or even lose electricity.

My heart goes out to those who were affected.  Many will be cleaning up for some time, there have been some injuries and one fatality, and some people probably lost their jobs with businesses being so damaged.

One curious reality is that during the storm, debris from damaged homes and businesses leaped into the air, cavorted in the currents, and eventually came down in our yard. We've found fiberglass insulation and building foam and a board or two. 

Again, big storm.

Thankful we are OK. 

Listening to the Bible in the Car

I am SUPER visual. Super visual.

I think one of the reasons I did so well in school is that I can learn information from books extremely well. 

My auditory skills haven't been the greatest, and they've gotten worse as our house got more and more full of noisy people. (I can be noisy too -- I'm not saying it is everyone else!)

In the first years of motherhood, I liked to listen to the Christian radio show Focus on the Family.  It is a great show and I learned from it and was encouraged by it. But then it got too noisy.  I'd be listening and screams would emanate from somewhere and I'd miss part of what was going on. So I gave up on the radio.

Fast forward many years, to like, now.  We have had the Bible on CD for many years and I used to play it for the kids OCCASIONALLY. But the same issues held -- it was noisy and people would miss what was going on in a passage.

I decided recently that even though I'm visual, and even though I get a lot from reading the Bible, it would be pleasant to listen to the Bible in the car when I am alone.  So I ripped the Bible CD's and put them on the thumb drive that I use for my music in the car.

And it has been really neat and to my surprise, I'm actually noticing things I have never noticed when reading. Or if I did notice them previously, but had forgotten.

I listened to the entire book of Esther in the last couple of days. Haman the Agagite plotted to destroy the Jews in the first month of the year in question, but when he cast the lots, the day to destroy the Jews fell in the 12th month.  Esther intervened, and the King had Haman exectued in the 3rd month, leaving 9 months for the Jews to organize to protect themselves.

So I found  that interesting. It wasn't an 11th hour salvation, so to speak. 

Also, Haman was executed and Mordecai was raised to the position of King Xerxes's right hand man, and yet some people still tried to kill the Jews in the 12th month. That seems...stupid. I don't know much about Persian culture, but people have been greedy, and violent, and racist for a very long time.

And why didn't Haman's sons get out of Susa?  Their father had been executed and yet 9 months after his death, they were still raring to go in attacking the Jews of the capital city. Again, that just seems stupid. But people are sometimes.  For sure.

Going off in another direction, we had a dinner discussion about Napoleon Bonaparte this week.  This dude was smart smart smart as a military commander, but his vaulting ambition resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen and soldiers of other countries as well.  So smart guy, very dubious morals. 

And Henry VIII?  REALLY?  Your wife doesn't bear you a son, and a mistress pressures you, so you divorce your loyal wife in favor of the mistress, marry the mistress, then have her executed a few years later on trumped up charges?

Some people are evil jerks.

Moving the Girls Around

With Naomi graduating, we decided to move the girls around.  Naomi is moving into our study on the main floor and will have the room to herself.

Lydia is moving in with Angela and Miriam.

Sarah and Rose are moving into the old "big girls' room".

So lots of things are moving around and the house is chaotic :-).

Naomi and Lydia's old room. It looks amazing...and empty.

Chaos.

More chaos!!

Naomi graduates from High School ... and Clark State University

Regrettably, I am super busy at this moment but I really wanted to throw this up. Naomi graduated from Clark State, and high school, yesterday!  She earned an associate's degree in New Media.  We are so proud of her.  She got honor cords with a grade point of average above 3.5.  Great job, Naomi!

More St. Croix pictures

This was the view from our little cottage (we were in the upstairs unit of a two story building).  The place we stayed is on the west side of the island and the waters are usually very calm. They were smacked hard by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the beach was washed out significantly, but it has mostly recovered.

Is this gorgeous, or what?

Yes, horses on the beach. And sometimes people took their horses swimming in the ocean, which the horses seemed to enjoy!

This is an tower on an old sugar plantation.  St. Croix has quite a complex history for such a small island.  It was held by many European countries, the last being Denmark. It wasn't until World War I that the United States purchased St. Croix from Denmark. The history is, of course, not entirely a joyful one as many Africans were abducted and brought over as slaves to toil on cotton and sugar plantations.

Feral chickens roam St. Croix. They are able to survive and thrive, apparently, as the chickens are seen everywhere including this mama chicken and her three chicks.  She guided them into a restaurant in Frederiksted, the little town closest to our cottage.

Kevin snorkeled a great deal and took a bazillion wonderful pictures!

Like this one.  Butterfly fish!!  Never heard of them before.  Aren't they beautiful.

And a tiny seahorse. I know he looks big but he was all of a few inches long.

Kevin and Me

Underwater Creatures

Kevin took all of these pictures while snorkeling in the lovely waters off St. Croix.  God's creation is truly amazing.