Dress Up Fun with Parker Foo Foo

This girl always keeps us laughing--we love her imagination and style!!
 Behold, the RICH LADY!!

Parker Faye, age 7 1/2

The Worst Day Ever--Flood Edition

So Midland has these 20-30 year floods apparently, and we just so happened to live through one. There was an excessive amount of rainfall this month and apparently the storm drains and rivers just couldn't handle all the excess, so it backed up into our basements. It depended on where you lived, but our neighborhood got it pretty bad. It was a horrible feeling to wake up to this kind of devastation that will cost us thousands of dollars and months worth of work to clean up and repair.  It was literally the worst day in Midland.

This was one of the first things we could see from the stairs. We weren't supposed to go into the flood water because there was sewage as well as electrical charge in the water. We had to wait for it to recede.

This is how high it was and you can't see because it's dark, but the whole basement had floating items strewn all over.

At least the Forbidden Planet poster is dry.

At least two feet of water with nowhere to go but recede.

From our driveway--it was flooded all over the neighborhood.

Sharon Pierce brought donuts and bread after she heard the news. This was the highlight of this tragedy--all the helpers that came and served us for hours and hours.

Shows how far the water go to our house--the mulch line--that we had just put in last summer was all washed up.

Mulch line on the side yard.

Again--a mulch line--there was so much water!!

The sister missionaries and the Lowe family helping us clean and organize our garage.

The sisters helped us wipe off our food storage and dry everything off in our garage.

This was part of the pile of stuff we had to throw away. It was devastating seeing so much of our stuff out there--so much time, money, and memories down the drain...literally.

After the flood was over and things started to calm down, there was this really sunny afternoon. The girls took our new dog, Cooper, out to enjoy the sunshine.

The Great Clean-Up

My sisters and I descended on the Condo and started the process of moving my Dad into an Independent Living facility called Walton Wood. It was a good time for us to bond and be able to take our time processing their many years worth of memories and heirlooms. It will be sad to say goodbye, but good to move to the next phase of life.

We found our fingerprints! This was so funny!!

My Dad's glasses from the 80s!!

My Dad's missionary pictures! He was so young!!

We found about a million of these sweet little notes that they saved from each of us. This one had us laughing all weekend!!

My Mom's glasses!

Another pair of Mom's glasses!!

Visiting Dad at the Hospital--he ended up getting a pretty bad UTI that landed him in the hospital while we were there. It all worked out though because we were able to get a LOT more done without him there.

This is the menu for dinner at Walton Wood--he is living the HIGH LIFE!! Haha!

We treated ourselves to these yummy chocolate strawberries one night after cleaning.

The trees behind my parent's grave markers. I just love how it's two trees connected at the base that grows up together and then branches out--seems like such a fitting metaphor for their 50+ years of marriage and our family.

Addie helping clean off the headstone.

I love these sisters of mine!!

Me and Addie at the cemetary

Missing Erin here, but Dad and most of his daughters on Father's Day, 2017.

Melanie and I enjoying our visit with Mom at the Cemetary.

Eating our four-course meal at the Walton Wood retirement village.

We shouldn't have done this, but we used the Livonia Ward dumpster to throw away a ton of the garbage we pulled out of the condo. Shhh!!

This storage room took us a million years!!

Last Day of School and Start of Summer

This is Parker on her last day of school!! Last day as a first grader!!

These girls are thrilled to finally be out for summer!! Here are some random pics from the month of June.

We got some extra landscaping rocks from the church, and this is Avery helping.

Girls doing masks on their summer break.

Classic Avery

Mark is taking advantage of the outdoors to get some work done.

A well-child check for Parker Faye!

I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm glad they are doing it together. 

My sisters and I got together at the end of June to start the big clean-out of the Condo. This is the year my Dad has decided to sell the condo and move into Independent living at a place called Walton Wood. While I'm sad to say goodbye to the Little Condo in the Big Woods, I'm glad my Dad has made this difficult life decision to move to the next phase of life.