Busy Working

Is this what I do?!?! Could she possibly be imitating me? She was so busy working and talking she couldn't even look at the camera to give me a smile. I wasn't able to catch it on video, but when she plays with the phone she says things like "mmmhmmm....yes......mmmmhmmmm....ok, bye!" She will also roll her eyes around while talking and then look up out of the corner of her eyes like she is really listening and concentrating on what the "person" on the phone is telling her. I love watching and listening to her play.

Exposed

For the last week I have felt exposed to all. I'm afraid I will feel exposed for a while longer.....

Late last fall we had a big storm with strong winds that took down a couple of sections of our backyard fence on the sides. Not such a huge deal since it was down a little on the sides. Then winter came, so we weren't able to fix it. We were planning on fixing it in the spring.

Then a week ago we had another big storm come through our neighborhood. I put Bella to bed at about 7:30, and Andy and I were watching the news. The weather was on all of the stations talking about "the big storm coming". They were telling people to go to their basements because several tornadoes had been spotted in other areas. It was calm outside our house except for the nonstop lightning that was going from cloud to cloud. It was kind of neat to watch, because it was constant lightning. At about 8:15 I asked Andy if we should get Bella up and go to the basement. He looked out the window and said "No...it's not even raining or windy out - just lightning." By 8:20 I felt like the weatherman spoke directly to us....He said, "If you live in Neenah, Menasha, or Appleton - you should be in your basement RIGHT NOW." So we looked at each other and decided it must be time if Justin, the weatherman, was going to be so direct with us! I got Bella up, gathered a couple blankets and a flashlight, and we went downstairs. Within minutes the whole storm was here. It sounded horrible - I thought the roof was going to fly off. Andy was so curious and had to go upstairs to peek out the windows. About 2 minutes later, he came running downstairs saying, "Oh my gosh! I just saw the whole fence go down and the pine tree come out of the ground!" He also heard the train noise - which is what people say a tornado sounds like. He didn't see a tornado, but the winds were so insanely strong that they took the rest of our fence down and pulled our pine tree out by the roots. We also have some siding damage from the neighbor's shingles hitting our house.

I feel so "exposed," because the back of our house is backed up to a busy road. The fence gave a sense of privacy and separation. Now it is wide open and I can't wait for a new fence to go up! I'm afraid it will be a while before a new one goes up, because we need to wait for insurance to get figured out and to find a weekend for Andy to start building. If you drive down the road behind our house, you would find there are a lot of other fences and trees that are down throughout the neighborhood. Here are a few pictures of our backyard.