The Thunder Rolls and the Lightening Strikes

We have been having some severe thunder storms here, with aboding tornadoes. We only have Vince's phone for internet till at least sometime next week. As during one of the storms the other night the dish that provides the internet got fried from the lightening. So I probably won't be on too regularly till that is fixed up.

Thursday my little brother Ben graduated from high school, we went to his graduation. Then came home and had pizza, cake and ice cream. His birth mother, grandmother, sister and niece came from Kansas City to his graduation and were invited over afterwards. It was nice to get to know them a little bit. Darla had a DVD of pictures of Ben of his whole life to be played at his party today. So we played that for his birth family to see. I think they really liked that. They got to see him from baby till now. Many places he has gotten to go on vacation, and with boy scouts, etc. And of course what a cute little boy he was. I think it went really nicely. Belle loved the cake and was licking the plate afterwards entertaining every one. haha

Later that night is when the storms began. Thankfully I had a bought a lot of candles when we first got married in case of storms but NYC doesn't really have the electrical storms we have here and I never needed them. So I pulled them all out and lit them. Which made Lela and Belle very happy. Especially Belle, it really scared her when it was too dark for her to see us. So she was very happy when I started lighting the candles and she could see us again. The power was back on in a few hours, however, the internet was fried as I explained earlier. We tried to reset it but nothing worked, we finally called the company and they said they thought it was the dish, but they can't schedule a visit till sometime mid next week. So I guess we will see.

Friday there was a home school used book sale at the county extension office so we went there and the girls really made out! I got about 20 books for 9 dollars. A few really really good books that I paid a few dollars for. Then our last table we went to, the lady was selling boxes of books for only 3 dollars a box, and you could fill the box with any books you wanted. I was able to get a whole lot of really good books for the girls that way for only 3 dollars.

We met dad for lunch at Bella Luna, which had horrible internet reviews, but was packed. I really liked the food myself. I'm not sure why they had such bad internet reviews. Amber, Belle, Lela, Dad and I split hummus and pita, herbed chicken pizza, and chicken scalopini which in my opinion tasted more like chicken picata, but that was ok it was delicious! Again before we left Belle decided to lick the plate. haha I also had a chia tea, it was just a box kind-Oregon Chia, but they made it up really good with a lot of frothy milk and spices on top, I liked the texture they added with all the spices. It was so good! Then they gave us little chocolate mint sticks for dessert. And of course Lela wanted to eat them up but was still stuffed from lunch as we all were. Practically had to roll out of the place.

After that Amber went to Borders to meet a friend for coffee, while I played with the girls in the kids section. And went through the bargain bin. I was able to get some really cute books for only a dollar each. Some monkey books from a famous monkey painting artists, I've seen shirts and such of his around for a long time. The books were really well written as well which is nice change for some of the newer kids books. And a little rabbit finger puppet book, that Belle and Lela both loved!

Then we rushed over to Bennette's school, which we thought was a little graduation for her whole class but ended up being a party just for Bennette, for all her academic accomplishments even under the adversity of not being educated at all before coming to America and being so much older. She had to learn to write and read completely as she didn't even know how to in creole, she had to learn English, and just so much. And she has done amazing. She has really had to work hard at learning all this but is so smart and so advanced. She is doing wonderful. There was people there from all over the school district to recognize her accomplishments, even from the school board. It was quite amazing. I wish I had taken my camera but had no idea it was just to recognize her! I could of kicked myself. Everyone had even brought her gifts, her teacher had baked her a cake and served lemonade and such. It was just very nice and sweet. And Bennette was beaming from it. Wish I had a picture to show it!

Today is Ben's graduation party. Dad's best friend since Kindergarten, Terry, is going to come over and grill burgers for it. He's always been a great friend always doing stuff for us and our family. Wish I had had a friend that long, that was that close still. But, glad dad does.