Like every normal family, getting everyone together in one family pose is like pulling teeth. Moaning and groaning and heavy sighs ensue while I beg and plead since we haven’t had a family portrait in a few years. Well, several burst mode 10 second delay shots later, and we have our family portrait for the year.

I paid a totally different kind of sitting fee.

Thank you, self timer and faux suede curtain panel. Thank you Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 and thank you Corel Paint Shop Pro. Thank you Photoscape and Adobe Photoshop, and last but not least, Dell for letting me merge, crop, save and re-save without delay - or malfunction.

Catybug had a graduation ceremony at Church this past weekend and part of the ritual is a good old fashioned food in the face … thing. Daddy applied the peanut butter, and then she went face first into a plate of M&M’s.

I’m still finishing up some design work - with a head cold - so I’m around, just a little stuffy, and a little slow!

…that my hubby’s unit has been activated again? He just got back from Iraq in March 2005 and now his unit is heading for Afghanistan.

Thankfully, God Bless the guys in his unit, he’s been elected to serve as the Unit Administrator during this deployment, which means he won’t be leaving the states. Amen to that.

His unit is like a family, though, and as much as we’re relieved he gets to stay behind, his brothers are going to endure more time in the Middle East. Please keep the Dixon IL-ANG (Illinois Army National Guard) unit in your prayers. And the people of Afghanistan.

When Chickeymonkey hollered at me while I was mowing yesterday and held this note up for me to read, I couldn’t quite make out what she was trying to ask me.

“You want to plant??” I yelled. “Sure! You can plant!”

“No!! PAINT!!!” she yelled back.

“Paint??” (squints at note and makes puzzled face) “That says PAINT?”

“YES!!! Can I paint???” she asked.

“Of course!” I said. “Just clean off the table first!”

And off she went. And I thought, I feel like I’ve been asking myself the same question. And it’s finally dawned on me, I’m the only one who can answer it.

The weekend started off with a wave of excitement as I discovered my first Musk Melon taking shape in my vegetable garden. I squealed like a girl, in proper first-time-vegetable-gardener form, and set to fetch my camera. There are hairy melon balls hanging ALL over the place, and I know that sounds so wrong but it feels so right. I want to go bless each of them with Holy Water, or something.

And then, I gazed. Stargazer Lily Island has fully developed, and I want to pop a tent and live in the back corner of my yard. It’s a bit harder to isolate the lilies now that there are so many, but I am fully enjoying that there are so many. I will be moving them closer to the house. They are waaaay too far away from me. Must. Bring. Closer.

Of course, I would not be me if my weekend didn’t set out to overachieve in some aspect in my life. This weekend I chose to build a custom vanity cabinet for my shoebox sized bathroom, “easy peasy” I said, as I packed my daughter, my big purse and myself into my car and headed to Lowe’s for all of the fixin’s. If you can’t find it pre-made, build it yourself, right? Right. So I have this under 24″ space to fit my sink in, and nothing in this bathroom has EVER worked (for long). I built it in my head, and then I built it in my garage. With Hubby and Catybug’s help, of course. It was a 6 hour project, an experience I’ll never forget, a Saturday I’ll never get back, and….

A sink I’ll never use. Anyone need a 20w x 18d x 32h custom vanity cabinet with a drop in sink? Urgh - when you have a shoebox for a bathroom, the last thing you want is something so deep that it makes you feel like your peeing in a porta-john. Seriously, if I gain just 3-5 pounds, someone will have to pry me out from between the wall and the cabinet, and that would not be pretty.

Well, then, on to the next project.

Did I mention my garden is doing well? Four burpless cucumber plants have taken over half of my garden. I have more cukes than I can count on two hands, what’s a girl to do? Make bread & butter pickles, that’s what.

If you like bread & butter pickles, then you’ll want to check back, because I’m going to have a little contest, and you could win a jar. Because I’m a Midwestern kindof gal, and it’s a Midwestern kindof contest.

While my cukes were cooling, I meandered around my garden again. As I do every day, I stopped to smell the roses.

This rose bloom was just picture perfect. I was pretty angry when I went back to appreciate it again, as there was a Japanese Beetle munching a great big hole in the petals. I’m glad I captured its beauty while it lasted.

I didn’t know what to expect from my Lupine this year (especially since it’s not a Lupine, it’s a Delphinium. Thanks, Taba. ) - I planted the root last fall and it’s supposed to get really tall and be very hardy. It’s slowly making an appearance, and the blooms are so dainty I’m afraid I’ll hurt it if I get my nose too close.

Enough with the wandering around the yard, there’s work to be done. Our honey-do list included installing the vanity that I didn’t want, but have to live with because the other one is too big. Got that? Okay. Well, on the honey-don’t list was “break the sink we have to live with.” We successfully took that off the “don’t” list and then quickly added to the “do” list “fix the support that busted in half when top heavy sink falls forward onto Hubby’s leg and shaves off top 3 layers of skin”. Check. First we repaired Hubby, then I repaired the sink.

And also? I attempted to remove a nut that had rusted onto the waste line with a tool that was not a pipe wrench. The result?

Tears. Lots of tears. And then, a(nother) trip to Lowe’s.

I eventually got the nut off (using the proper tools, and some spray goo that loosens rust), because my bathroom hates us and I’m bound and determined to fight back and win. I figured if the plumbing doesn’t work this time, I’ll google how to build a bomb and blow the freakin’ bathroom to smithereens. That’ll show it who’s boss. Of course it would have to be a bomb that would only blow up the bathroom, and it would have to vaporize all remnants of the immediate area so there’s no clean up involved.

Well at 6:58pm we realized that Lowe’s closes at 7pm so there was no more shopping on Sunday for us, and that meant no more plumbing, which also meant putting a big bowl under the bathroom sink so we could brush our teeth. Whatever, I’m used to brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink so just being in the bathroom was sweet victory to me.

Monday morning. The Monday morning that no Quad City resident will ever forget. A storm blew through here like I’ve never seen, winds blew upwards of 100mph. Trees came down. Power went out. The Cities are dark, still, and I feel so fortunate to have power.

The National Weather Service says the storm that hit the Quad Cities is called a “derecho“, a type of long lived and destructive wind storm.

From our local news station this morning:

Moline, QUAD CITIES — MidAmerican Energy says 72,000 Quad City residents and businesses are still without power as of early Tuesday morning.

At 3 a.m., the largest concentrations of those without power were located in:

* MOLINE - 33,000 are without power
* ROCK ISLAND - 28,000 are without power
* MERCER COUNTY - 6400 are without power
* ROCK ISLAND COUNTY - 5100 are without power
* COAL VALLEY - 4041 are without power
* HENRY COUNTY - 2620 are without power

Alliant Energy is reporting fewer scattered outages in southeastern Iowa. About 500 are without power north of the Quad Cities.

The utilities report they have broght in extra crews to try to restore power to the region. At one point, more than 200,000 people were without power due to the strong storms.

To say that trees came down is really an understatement. What really happened was that the entire landscape in the Quad Cities was changed by force over the course of one storm that lasted about one hour. City streets look like country roads - no stores are lit up, no street lights. People lining up to buy generators, McDonald’s, gasoline. Chainsaws are completely sold out.

Trees were just ripped in half by the winds. I saw a tree that had to be 6-8 feet in diameter lying on at least one car, maybe more. Many trees just completely uprooted and lying on their sides.

Our damage was minimal. We lost a couple of branches about this size:

And smaller pieces were scattered all over the yard. We are definitely one of the fortunate ones - and I’m so thankful that we had our tree thinned out last year.

The clouds lastnight were eerie, but beautiful - as I hosted my girlfriend and her boys who are without power, it’s been an unusual 24 hours and we’re wondering how long before power is restored to our area. We’re also wondering what we would do if we had to live without it on a permanent basis. Life without power. What would that be like?

This was shown at Church yesterday, and I was so moved by it I had to share. It’s almost 4 minutes long.