The Storm

Holy Cow!

We had a freak storm blow through this afternoon! It was sunny, humid and hot and all of a sudden, it hit with a vengeance. We got about an inch and a half of water in 10 min, then it stopped. The ground couldn't soak it up fast enough, so tons of flooding, and the wind...well, take a look.

This is a chunk of one of my trees that came down in my backyard

This is my barbecue...my big, heavy stainless steel barbecue that until the storm was standing upright on top of the deck.

My basement. Water seeped in all along the south wall. You can see I've pulled back the carpet to mop it all up. Now I've got the carpet back down and 2 big box fans blowing to try to dry everything out.

And the big doozy. This tree was on the corner of Harvard & Humphrey (3 houses down).

It apparently took out a car when it came down. Hit the hood of the car. Driver panicked, hit the gas instead of the brake, ran into a truck parked across the street from my house, bounced up into the yard across the street from me, and drove through 3 yards before coming to a stop. Driver got out w/ only a couple of scratches. Amazing! I missed the whole thing.

The village was out fast to remove it.

Matthew will be so bummed he missed all the excitement.

Working on New Superhero Bedroom, Part I

I have the itch to redecorate something. But in these fiscally conservative times it doesn't seem prudent to do that kitchen remodel I've been dreaming of. So I decided to do a little redecorating in Matthew's room. He's got a really cute truck and transportation theme going, and I figured I'd enhance it with some wall decals. I showed him some examples online and he was...underwhelmed. I made the mistake of letting him see the other options available online and when he saw these a major room redo was born, superhero style.

When they come we'll put them up on his walls. I've also ordered from Pottery Barn Kids the Spider Man lamp shade (see pic below)

Bat Man Pillow Sham

And Spider Man and Bat Man pillow cases. I'll use his existing solid colored sheets and buy a coordinating solid colored comforter, too. Mormor is using her considerable talents to redo his bed rail cover in superhero logos, too. More pics to come!

We also made a trip to Ikea to get him a little desk/table for his room. It's so cute!

We put it by his bed so it acts as nightstand too, and we moved his bulletin board above it. The tall chest that used to be there is now in the closet. Of course, the tall chest was anchored to the wall, so now there are two huge holes in the wall...time to get out the spackle! Good thing I have a helper.

Matthew also really wanted to be able to hang up his own coat (something he is encouraged to do at school) but all the bars in his closet were too high. So yesterday we installed another bar halfway down so that he could reach his clothes. I also took the opportunity to reorganize his closet and get rid of stuff he'd outgrown. It was a good day for projects!

More pics to come when Phase II of the Superhero bedroom redo commences and the real fun begins...

How the Subprime Market Really Works

Sorry grandparents for a post that is not Matthew related, but I stumbled across this little nugget online and I thought it was good enough to post.

It's a stick figure slide show explaining the Subprime market meltdown, and it's pretty good. Warning: it contains some profanity. But it's informative and pretty funny.

Click here, then scroll down and then click on the first slide to start the slide show.

Via The Big Picture

Resignation from the title of Greatest Mother in the World

None of you were foolish enough to believe I was talking about myself, did you? I never had the delusion to believe I was in the running for Greatest Mother standing to begin with, preferring instead to believe that "Hey I didn't screw him up too badly today" was OK. If there's milk in the fridge, everyone is basically clean, the cat bowl is not empty, nobody broke any bones (yeah yeah I know, that one day last May), and Matthew goes to bed happy and with a smile on his face then I am chalking up the day as a success.

But I digress...

Since starting this blog I've taken to reading a few other "Mommy" blogs I've found online. A post caught my eye today that I thought was funny and well written. It's by a woman named Mir who writes on her blog Woulda Coulda Shoulda. Check out her post here.

Mormor arrives tomorrow...stay tuned!

Jersey Boys

Rochelle and I saw Jersey Boys last night. WOW! Amazing, amazing, amazing! I had low expectations going in, knowing nothing about the musical other than that it was "The story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons". Well, not having grown up in the 60's I wasn't even familiar with the music of Frankie Valli....or so I though. Holy Cow! Not only did I know almost all the songs, but they were AWESOME and the musical was AMAZING and the entire 3 hours completely blew me away.

Now I have seen Phantom, and Les Miserables, and more recent productions such as Wicked and Spamelot and the Producers...and this more than held its own. It is my new favorite musical. I came home and ordered both the Broadway soundtrack and a "best of" the Four Seasons CD on Amazon at 11:30pm last night.

Click on the hot link above or here to go to the official musical website and listen to clips from the musical.