Weather, weather, and more weather!

It is hard to believe that it is almost July already. What is sad about this is that I can count on one hand the nice days we've had since school let out for Em on June 10th. As most of you know I took the summer off to spend time with Em before she gets too old to want to spend time with me. :) We had a lot of plans made and most of them involved the outdoors. The weather has put a damper on most of our plans so far. We were supposed to pick a destination and walk there each day no matter how far it was. We've only been able to do that twice. I can't blame the weather for this everyday though. We've had appointments and Em had the Boost program last week. We did have a great day on my birthday though. We left in the morning and didn't get home until about 5:00 p.m. or so. We shopped, saw my mom, went out to eat, did some more shopping, went to Cup of Joe and then had a great supper made by Allison. That following Weds. was another beautiful day but I spent it baking pies for my sons birthday and some cookies for him to take to work. Now I get to blame it on the weather for the rest of the change of plans. So many nights have been spent staying up until 4:00 in the morning monitoring the severity of the storms and making sure all was clear before I could go to sleep. It looks like it may be another long night tonight as well. I could just go to sleep and let my phone wake me up but I've been this way ever since I can remember. When I was little I HATED storms. My dad finally got me to go outside with him for a very short time to look at the clouds. He always made us stay in our cellar and he reassured me that we were very safe because it was a cellar and was underground. I'm not afraid of them anymore and have been known to storm watch on more than one occasion. My kids hate that! At least Em does. Em's fear of storms didn't start until after the Parkersburg/New Hartford tornado from 2 years ago. I don't blame her. So many lives lost and the damage was unbelievable. Then of course the July storm we had last year was pretty bad too. We lost one of our trees in the backyard which surprisingly did very little damage to our property. It fell between everything it could have hit. It did take out part of our swing set though. If there is even a hint of bad weather she brings all of her things down to the living room and camps out. Of course that means I do too. I can only pray that tonight isn't as bad as it seems it might be by looking at the radar and the storms that are likely to hit us that are on their way down from Minnesota. I need to call my niece and tell her to keep that crappy weather up there! There is some good news to celebrate---if the forecasters are correct then we will have beautiful weather pretty much all next week which means Em and I can start having our daily adventures as long as she is back for play practice by 3:30. Her 12th birthday is on July 1st so I am extremely happy that the weather is supposed to be nice. YAY! Have a super week one and all!!!