Tornadoes! (Part 1)

Growing up in Minnesota and Oklahoma, I was not unaware of tornadoes. In both places, the cities we lived in would test the tornado sirens once a month and we would have tornado drills at school once or twice a year.  Occasionally we would be under a tornado watch during spring and summer months when tornadoes were most common and occasionally the weather forecasters would issue tornado warnings, although usually there were no tornadoes (at least not near us), the conditions were ideal for them to happen. 

Having lived in Minnesota and Oklahoma (part of Tornado Alley), I used to be afraid of big thunderstorms and deathly afraid of tornadoes. Anytime there was a bad thunderstorm with the possibility of tornadoes or not, I would start shaking and find Mom or Dad as quickly as possible and stay close to them until the storm passed.  If a storm happened in the middle of night, it was guaranteed that I rushed to Mom and Dad's room, woke them up, and camped out on their floor until morning.

I was reminded of this fear yesterday (May 20) not because of a tornado near where I am, but one near where my Grandma Crain lives in Oklahoma.

There was a giant EF5 tornado (the strongest tornado category) that tore through Moore, Oklahoma yesterday.  The tornado was up to a mile wide at times and the winds were over 200 miles an hour. Now that is horribly scary tornado. It came within a mile or so of my grandma's house, who lives in Moore. Grandma was not home at the time, because she was at a funeral at the nearby stake center, where someone came in and told them to take shelter as soon as possible. She was shaken up, but is doing okay. Her house is also okay.

But there were neighborhoods that were completely destroyed, two elementary schools were hit and dozens and dozens of people were killed. It is so sad. The relief effort is amazing and I pray for those people affected by this horrible storm.

And this past week and this weekend (June 1) Oklahoma has gotten some more horrible storms with flooding and high winds and rains etc. They just can't seem to catch a break right now from Mother Nature. My grandma is doing okay.  Her house is fine, but her back fence is gone. My uncle and aunt and cousins that live about 15 or 20 miles from Grandma are also okay and their house is fine.  But there are many others who weren't so lucky.  May those affected by these storms be comforted.

This tornado and this bad weather reminded me of a tornado that happened on May 3, 1999 in Moore, Oklahoma when we lived in Oklahoma, but this story will have to wait for another post...

Central Park and Broadway Rock!

I went to New York City two weekends ago and I loved it!  I've been there before and have been meaning to get back there and finally did.  (You can read about my experience then if you click here and here.)

 

I love Central Park and walked two times through it, at different parts of the park, on this little trip. 

Central Park!

Central Park is just beautiful!

The weather was perfect both days.  Sunny, clear blue skies with temperatures in the 60s during the day. The trees and flowers were blooming and I especially liked this tree in Central Park!

I loved these flowers!

Isn't springtime awesome?!

I couldn't get enough of these flowers!  If you think they're pretty in the picture, they were even more spectacular in person!

Running away from the rabbit...   In the evening as we were trying to find a place to eat, we ran into this lovely statue :)

Love and peace, my friend.

Doing the can can in front of Radio City Music Hall with Diana.

These stonehenge type things were near the Rockefeller Center.  I am not sure what they represent, besides Stonehenge...

Rockefeller Center!

 The main reason for the trip, at least for me, was to see a show on Broadway, since I've never seen one in New York City before. So on Saturday night Diana, Kara and I went to see Cinderella on Broadway.  It was awesome!  It was fun and cute and funny and the singing and dancing was lovely and the costumes were beautiful and the scene changes were pretty awesome! I loved it!

The trip was awesome! Thanks for the little adventure in New York Kara and Diana!

Happy Birthday!

I always feel like I should give a shout out to all of my siblings and siblings-in-law and nieces and nephews who have a birthday in April since there are so many of them.  So happy 18th birthday to Spencer today! And happy birthday to Lara and Tim and Mika and Tom and Lauren and McKenzie and Andrew this month!  You rock and I hope your birthdays were filled with awesomeness!

Also since I didn't wish a happy birthday on my blog to those in my family who already had a birthday this year, I also wish Matt and Madeline and Ellie a happy birthday too :)  And since it is almost May, I also wish Nate a happy birthday!  That's all for now :)

My weekend!

I had a lovely weekend filled with...

baseball and...

friends on Friday night and...

preparing for and throwing a surprise 40th birthday party for my awesome sister, Lara, on Saturday!

Food mostly from Costco, which was delicious!   (There are meatballs at one end of the table and Oreo truffles at the other end to round off the meal:)

An awesome cake made by Cami! (A white cake with chocolate ganache on the inside and Oreo frosting on the outside.)

A cool sign made by me.  (I really liked the way it turned out. Cami gave me the idea and I didn't know how it would turn out, so I was pleased when it turned out well.)

This picture is for Lara (since she doesn't like the one above:) (I thought this was a cute picture of both of us. What do you think do Lara and I look anything alike?!)

The birthday party was a success, thanks to Emma for planning most of it, for being persistent that we do it, and for distracting Lara so that we could get things set up.  And thanks to Cami for making the cake and getting the decorations up.  And thanks to Glen for the financial support of the party.

Temple Walk!

On Saturday, the McLean Stake youth walked to the D.C. temple from the Arlington chapel and I walked with them.  It was a total of about 14 miles.  There were over 160 youth that walked and over 200 people that walked in all, that including the adult volunteers.  

It was a really good experience! It was to help us remember the sacrifice that some people have to make to go to the temple. (I will talk about it more at the end of the post.)

At the beginning of the walk, I started talking to one of the young women and we just ended up walking the whole way together.  We talked the whole time, we walked about the same speed, and we encouraged each other when we were getting tired.

The picture above is most of the youth after we had made it to the temple.

I kind of forgot to take more pictures but I did take a few. I liked this tunnel! The group you see ahead in the picture is a group of youth.

This tunnel was a little eerie.  It's part of a trail in Bethesda and when Dana and I got to it we were the only people in it that we could see.  It reminded me of an eerie sci-fi movie or something.

After the eerie tunnel above we ate lunch at this cute little park. Dana nor I never sat down at any of the pit stops knowing that if we sat down, it would be really hard to get back up. 

We walked through some nice neighborhoods. The weather was seriously perfect for the walk.  It was sunny and the temperature was in the low 60s.

If you look close, you can see the temple ahead. This was our first glimpse of the temple and we were super excited! We were still about 2 miles away but we knew we would make it then!

A cool shot of the temple that kind of blends in with the clouds!

Dana and I after we made it to the finish line which was the stake center next to the temple.  (It took us about 5 hours from start to finish.) After everyone made it to the temple, we had a little devotional at the temple visitor's center where the stake president talked about why we did this walk. 

This is what greeted us at the temple!  The tulips were beautiful!

The walk was to help us appreciate that we live so close to a temple and to think about the sacrifice that some people have to make to go to the temple.  Although there are temples all over the world, there are still a lot of people that must save up for years and years and travel so far to get to the temple just once in their life. The stake wanted us to remember that and encouraged the adults to contribute to the temple fund which helps those that live far away from a temple get to there at least once in their lives.

Let the temple be our goal.  The temple is a place of peace and refuge and love. We make covenants and perform ordinances there which will help us return to our Heavenly Father and live with our families forever.  Let us strive to go to the temple as often as we can and be grateful for being so close to one. I love the temple and I am grateful for having a means of getting to the temple in just about 30 minutes!

Cherry Blossoms!

Last Thursday, I took off of work and went to downtown D.C. with my sister, Lara, and three of her kiddos, Emma, Adam, and Ellie to see the cherry blossoms bright and early in the morning. It was a beautiful sunshiny day.  It was a little warm, but it was still lovely! I don't have much to say. Just enjoy the pictures below!

Of course I had get a self-portrait of us all :)

Aren't the blossoms beautiful?!

 I liked the contrast of the dark pink and the light pink.

Einstein, Declaration, John Paul Jones, Tidal Basin

I went downtown with two of my co-workers and friends, C and Heather, on Monday so that we could go to the Einstein statue.  Heather and I have been talking about going for about a year now and we finally got there :)  (I've been there before but Heather had not.)

 Heather, C and I.

As I was researching the best route for our little adventure downtown, I saw this thing that said the Signers of the Declaration of Independence memorial. I had never heard of it and it was right on our path to the tidal basin, so we made a little stop at the memorial.  It was on a cute little island.  

Here's half of the memorial.

Each of the squares had a name of one of the signers and their occupation and where they were from.  I liked the memorial.  I thought it was cool and it was in a beautiful location!

C, Heather and I. Self-portrait.

Tree hugger :) 

John Paul Jones statue.  Man from the Revolutionary War.  I honestly don't remember about him. 

"Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight."

 The non-existent cherry blossoms that should have been blooming by then, but alas were not.

We still walked around the tidal basin despite there not being any cherry blossoms. It's a good walk any way!   FDR memorial.

George Mason memorial.

The only tree that had started blooming.

The sunset.  It was a lovely evening downtown with Heather and C!  It was a little chilly with the wind blowing, but other than that it was a fun adventure!