You Aren't Going to *BELIEVE* This!

It has been pretty chilly and rainy here in Arizona, more so than usual, but I never expected that it would actually SNOW here!!  This afternoon I peeked out the window to check out the rain that was falling and I swore that I saw a flurry, and then a few seconds later I was sure I saw another one!  By the time we made it to the back yard to get a closer look at the situation, it was really snowing!!

(Do you see the flurries?  I swear they are there!  My friend Alicia suggested that Arizona is attempting to win me over, I think she might be right.)

Nothing stuck around, of course, but it was wonderful to see snow falling outside my window, even for just a short while.

Working Outside

File under:  Things you can't do in Iowa in February.

We're Gonna Need an Ark

Did I ever mention that Brett & I are living in a lakefront community?

No?

Well that's because we aren't... but this scene says differently:

The park down the street is totally underwater.  The freeways are all underwater.  I think Brett might have to swim to work tomorrow. 

I hear things are not much better in So Cal. 

We have nothing but more strong storms headed our way.  I checked the hourly weather forecast and the strong storms just keep going...

and going...

and going...

and going...

I stocked up on all of the necessary supplies (food, water, crafting stuff, etc.) so that I can just hunker down and stay home and not go anywhere until the world outside stops blowing away. 

It sounds like a good plan to me. 

Snow?

Snow? In San Diego? Yes, my Midwestern friends, it does happen. Fortunately it does not involve salt and shoveling driveways and sidewalks. Unfortunately, this also means there aren't any snow days. :(

But yes, there is snow. See?


No? You don't see? Alright, maybe a little zooming will help...


See! There! Snow on top of the mountain!

Ok, I admit, it's no 8 inches, but I'll take my little doses of winter where I can get them. :)

Pretty Clouds

Aren't these clouds spectacular? I snapped this pic on our way out to dinner for our friend Dusty's birthday. It's the backside of a very strong storm that had passed through the area a few minutes before.

Blog?

What blog?

After much prodding from friends, family, and co-workers, I decided it might be time to update this blog.

Many weeks ago (I know, I haven't posted in forever) we went and heard a great band play at the Redstone room in Davenport.


This information is largely irrelevant. To be honest I just wanted to post a pic of it because I was having a really good hair day. :)

On June 1st I went back to school. I use the term "went back" loosely because going to school doesn't actually require going anywhere. I am completing my Bachelor's in Business Management online. It's going really, really well so far. The school I am going to allows you to test out of classes, so I am banking on my existing smarts to help me advance through the program more quickly. :)

Brooke came down for a visit with her son Truman, her friend Sarah and Sarah's son Khai. We had a good time, and it was nice to finally meet Truman (it only took a year!). Brooke was kind enough to take some nice pictures of Brett & I. We were going for a professional look for future advertising/marketing/website. I think they look awesome!







Then we took some pictures just for fun. Here we are being a couple of goofballs:


Apparently something was funny:


That same weekend I hosted a baby shower for my friend April. She is expecting her little boy Dylan sometime in September.


I made another diaper cake. I think I outdid myself on this one.


I also made this cute little turtle quilt for Dylan.


The following weekend, my Grandma came for a visit with her friend Shirley. We went to the quad city botanical center where we checked out the flowers and made friends with a little turtle who had perched himself on a rock.






This past weekend I took some Engagement & Wedding pictures for a couple all in the same weekend, which kept me pretty busy. Then my aunt Colleen came for a visit. She has all of the pictures from the trip, so I will have to get them and share them at a later time.

Also over the weekend, we had a crazy severe thunderstorm that began about 3.5 seconds after the outdoor wedding ended. The storm blew in three of our sun room windows and blew off some of our rain gutters. As if that wasn't enough, a pipe burst in our basement unleashing a flood that rivaled Niagara Falls. I am just thankful that 1. We were home, and 2. There is a drain in our basement floor.

I am now off for a week from work which is nice. I will hopefully have more to blog about in the coming week.

That's all I can think up to blog about for now. Happy Fourth of July!

Spring Still Isn't Here Yet

There is a strange sleet/flurry/rain combination falling outside right now. Yesterday it was sunny, and a couple of days ago it was pushing 70 degrees. Now they are calling for 4-8” of snow. Bleh. I was naïve enough to think that we were in the clear. I haven’t decided if we are going anywhere today. Groceries need to be gotten so now the debate is whether to go now in the rain, or tomorrow when there’s snow. It’s kind of a lose-lose. Plus, I was struck with some variety of food poisoning/flu/mysterious bug last Sunday, and I have been pretty under the weather ever since, so naturally, motivation is dwindling. Not to mention the fact that Brett & I just got completely addicted to 24. We have made it through the first 12 hours/episodes, which means there are 12 more to go. The more I write this, the more I think we aren’t going anywhere today.

In other news, I have fallen completely in love with these:

They are measuring cups from Antrhopologie that come in the shape of adorable little flower bowls. Tempting. Very tempting. Then I remind myself that they cost $36, and it is NOT OK to spend $36 on measuring bowls. Spring needs to get here, because dangerous things begin to happen when I am cooped up inside spending too much time on my computer. Moving on…

Brett and I went to hear this speaker last night at Front Street Brewery in Davenport. He is a chiropractor/consultant/guy who builds practices for the purpose of selling them. He was interesting. And scary. He talked a lot about all of the things we pretty much already knew but didn’t particularly want to be reminded of about owning a business, growing a practice, financial stuff, etc. etc. etc. Oh well, for now I will just pull a Scarlett O’Hara, “I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.” And when I say tomorrow I mean 208 days, 19 hours and 40 minutes from now when Brett graduates. Not that I’m counting.

Now I’m in the mood to watch Gone With the Wind. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow instead of shoveling snow.

UPDATE: In the time it took me to write this blog post it went from wintry mix to actually snowing outside, and some of it is even beginning to accumulate. *Sigh* Where are you, Spring?

It's Freezing Cold

I really don't have much to blog about this week. Other than the incredibly cold temperatures here, everything else has been pretty normal. Last week I headed to work in -44 degree windchill. That is officially the coldest I have ever been. The air temperature here reached -29 degrees last week- that doesn't even factor in windchill. Even penguins would be cold. The day that we reached twenty-nine below was the coldest day in recorded history for Davenport. How lucky that Brett and I could be here for that. :-P <---Note the sarcasm.

I hope that everyone reading this is warmer than we are right now. ;-)

We Haven't Blown Away (Yet)

I am having a hard time believing that today is the first official day of winter, because we have been hit hard by the winter weather already. It all began on Thursday with lots of snow, sleet, and of course freezing rain to go on top of and solidify all of the snow we already had on the ground. Yesterday Brett was kind enough to go out and de-ice my car that had been sitting outside since Thursday night. The snow was so solid that this huge chunk came off in one piece off of the roof of the car:

Everything outside is completely covered in ice...

Even this bird house has a giant icicle:

We could even pick up giant chunks of snow in our yard because everything is so frozen:

Today it is very cold and VERY windy. When I woke up this morning the air temperature outside was -7 degrees with -32 degree windchill... I think I am just going to stay inside where it is warm and cook some chili. :)

NOTE: For those of you receiving e-mail blog updates, I added a cool plug-in to the blog so that it looks like it is snowing. If you want to check it out, you can go here.

Winter

I think I blinked and missed fall. I had the best of intentions and was planning on going out and taking some pictures of all of the beautiful fall leaves... and before I knew it they were gone. This was the view out my front door this weekend. Can you make out the tiny snow flurries? I promise they are there.

To get into the spirit of the season, I decided to make an apple pie from scratch. A patient brought us some yummy apples from her very own apple tree. I think I get two points for using locally grown apples. ;-)

And here is the delicious end result (a-la-mode, of course):

EEK!!!!!

So last Friday while I was at work we had Tornado warnings and I, um, didn't handle it as well as I would have expected. I was practically climbing the walls and poor Amanda had to calm me down. There were a couple of Tornado touchdowns that I know by tornado standards were no where near us, but by Amy standards were WAY too close for comfort. Today we are slated for more strong storms, with a slight risk for severe weather... I am keeping my fingers crossed for no tornado warnings this week. If there are you can find me hiding behind Mel for the remainder of the afternoon. :-P

Meet Eskimo Amy

BRRRRRR it's cold! As I passed a bank this morning on my way to work the sign outside it flashed -8º!!!!! That my friends is AIR TEMPERATURE and does not take in to account the wind chill, which in our area is currently anywhere from -25º to -40º. Not only is that the coldest it has been since we moved to Iowa, it is by far the coldest I have ever been in my entire life!!!!!

Happy New Year!

Here is the story of our day, told with (lots of) pictures:

It was very snowy yesterday. The crazy weather people only called for "about an inch." Well, we got a little more than an inch. More like 3-6" depending on your area. The roads were snowy and icy, so we really didn't go out much. Here is a peek of our winter wonderland:


Here is my MooseCat doing what he does best by hanging out under the tree:

And here he is looking particularly handsome:


Around 3 o'clock I got a crazy craving for French Toast, so Brett made me some. :)


Later on, we hung out with our friends Dean & Michelle. We played Battle of the Sexes:


And then we rang in the new year:


Aren't they cute?


Then we tried to take a group picture using some of my new camera toys. Here's how that went:
Maybe a little too much flash?


Is it working? Hmmm, maybe if I point my remote directly at the camera....oops!


That's better. :)


Happy New Year!

Ice Storm, Round II

Today, Brett and I had a snow day. Well, I guess it was actually an ice day. Either way, schools were closed, and I opted not to drive 20 miles to work on ice-covered roads.

Remember those snow-covered red berries from last week? Well, here they are in their current state.

They are now completely covered in ice. Last week I had to stand on my toes and use my zoom lens to take a picture of them. Now, thanks to ice weighing down the tree branches, they hang just a few feet off the ground. A grand total of 1/2"-1" of ice accumulation is expected. Other than stepping outside to snap a few pictures, I think Brett & I will be staying in for the rest of the evening.

Very Christmas-y

Is it just me, or does nothing say "Christmas is coming" quite like red snow-covered berries?

Ice Storm

The worst of the ice storm came after dark last night, and it was hard for me to get a picture at that time. It was raining, and cameras don't usually like rain, particularly not rain that freezes on contact. But I was able to capture this shot taken at Palmer of the windows completely glazed over with ice:

Every window on campus looked like this. It was kind of eerie to walk through the halls and not be able to see out any of the windows.

Baby Shower

Well, it was a crazy day for a baby shower yesterday. Davenport got hit with an ice storm, which certainly made things interesting. Originally, the shower was going to be at our friends Matt & Kelly's house, but they live at the bottom of a hill and there were concerns that with the amount of ice we were getting, people might not be able to get back up the hill. So, we moved it to our house. Not even 2 minutes before people arrived our power went out. We had 2 options: light a bunch of candles and have the most romantic baby shower ever, or take our chances and move the party back to our original location. We went with option 2 (I was voting for option 1 :-P). After all the craziness the party was great, and the baby quilts that Amber (left) and I made were a hit.

Left to right: Amber, Renee (& Abri), and Me

Oh, and it should be mentioned that on the game where you guess how big around the Mom-to be is, my guess was exactly right. I rule. :-)

I'm Dreaming of a White...Thanksgiving???

We had our first taste of winter Wednesday night. Snow fell for a good portion of the evening, but due to ground temperatures being so high, not much of it stuck around. We did see a little evidence of winter on it's way when we went to cut down our Christmas tree yesterday:

Too Close for Comfort...

...but we are still here.

It's that time of year again. Time for severe thunderstorms, and even the occasional tornado. Here is our forecast right now from Weather.com: (Click to Enlarge)



Don't be alarmed if you hear on the news about some tornado action here in Eastern Iowa. We did have an F3 tornado touch down in an area close to, but not in Davenport. No need to worry because we are all fine here. The cat is hiding out in the closet because he is afraid of the thunder...but other than that the occupants of the Vowles house are doing well. Here is a picture from our local news station's (KWQC TV6) website of the tornado:

(I should emphasize that this picture was NOT taken by me.)

It was definitely a stressful morning. They initially told us that we would not be in the path of this dangerous storm...but the weather people were wrong again. The tornado sirens went off while we were picking up some groceries at Wal Mart. We quickly left the store and went home. Fortunately, the intense storm only lasted for about 20 minutes and aside from some typical flooding, it passed through Davenport without incident. We are still under a tornado watch until 7 pm tonight, but we have nothing but blue skies and sunshine outside right now, so I think that we are in the clear.