I know it’s not over just yet, we still have Father’s Day to celebrate tomorrow, but the really hectic part of our weekend is over and we have all survived. I’m talking primarily about the kids’ dance recitals. Unfortunately I don’t have more pictures, but I do have a short video that I would put here if I could figure out how–so I may work on that tomorrow sometime. Jacob and Elise have been quite the little troopers, shuffle-ball-changing their way through rehearsal Thursday, their first show Friday night, and their two matinee shows today! Their Clark grandparents, along with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Scott, made it over in time for the show on Friday. Clarks drove across 4-5 inches of water rushing over part of the road on the way to get here, and so they left early to ensure that they’d make it home before Dad’s trolley gig today, but the information they received online about which roads were still open was inaccurate and they ended up having to backtrack to 218 and go all the way down to Burlington and across into Illinois. So, a trip that normally takes about 2 and a half hours from here to Muscatine, took them 6 hours! Then today the Thrap grandparents along with Uncle Steven were to come over for the first afternoon show, and they also had to go across into Illinois and down to Burlington in order to get around the Cedar and Iowa rivers. They didn’t make it in time for the first show, so we took Cameron and Elena and Aunt Jenny joined us, then Thraps arrived just in time to see the last performance. Jacob and Elise did really well, and–I hope–had a lot of fun.
For those of you outside of Iowa, you may have heard about all of the tremendous flooding that we’re having. In most places it is already worse than the historic floods of ‘93. As I mentioned earlier, roads, highways, and interstates are closed and travel to some places is just impossible. The Des Moines area is one of the areas being hit pretty hard right now, and although we live incredibly close to the Saylorville Lake, our immediate area and our home are not being threatened by the floodwaters. We did have several days and or nights of seemingly endless severe thunderstorms. The lightning was intense! And on more than one occasion we had to bunker down in the basement and wait for the tornado sirens to end. But so far we are all still fine.
Yes, it was quite the trip!! It was discouraging to be 10 miles from home at 11:30 p.m. and have to go back and do a 3.5+ hour drive-around to get home. But we are SOO glad we got to spend the afternoon and part of the evening with the Thraplettes. Seeing Jacob and Elise dance and look like they were having such fun was a highlight.
Looking forward to Elise’s arrival tonight for Grandma Camp–and the boys later in the summer. Elena was so chatty and finally warming up to me during our dance visit, I may need to start getting her into the Grandma Camp schedule!
I’m so bummed we missed it, but I look forward to the MOVIE!