Afternoon at the park

The weather has been so nice. I just love spring, don't you? But it was a little chilly last week. Last week was suppose to be are last frost. I'm glad of that. I'd be happy if it never frosts again. By Friday it had warmed back up so we spent the afternoon at the park with the niece and all the nephews.

Natasha doing..................I don't know what. :)

Garrett loves stroller rides.

This is how Allen does the monkey bars.

Rachel and Titus

Elise helping Garrett ride the seesaw with Natasha.

This is how big boys play on the play ground. The climb up to the top of things where they aren't suppose to go. :D

There are lots of options when playing on a play ground. Every thing has it's use. The rocks are meant for covering Garrett.

Boaz and Allen on the swings.

Centerville Flood

Well, I might as well post about the great flood of the century here in Middle TN like everyone else is.

But for pictures, I will give you the links for those.

It started out with heavy rainfall from a major storm on Friday night, April 30. It lasted through Sunday evening.

We are up on a plateau, so we didn't have the problems that others have had.

"Ponds and streams" formed in our fields and the gardens got quite flooded.

But the property below us turned into a river.

The kids walked down to that property to see what was going on. The pasture had turned into a river http://www.dolcemusica.blogspot.com/. The water was over the fence posts and mudslides from the cliffs. All this is just a few hundred yards from our property.

The kids still had to go out in the storm and take care of the animals, (horses, milk cow, chickens). It is no fun to milk a cow in the hard pouring rain with no shelter/stall.

So needless to say, with all the going in and out in the downpour, I still have a lot of wet, dirty laundry.

Which leads me to say that our electricity, along with all of Centerville, went out at 8:15 a.m. Sunday morning. It is still out, which makes it day 4 without it.

By Sunday afternoon, we thought of putting out buckets to fill up with rain water for using for dishes and flushing the toilets. The week before, I just happened to pick up about 14 gallon jugs of drinking water. Something I don't always do. Praise God for that.

Also, I am very thankful for having a propane gas cookstove. We have been able to cook and heat up water. It is always good to start out on a full tank of gas though in these situations. We are at 30% in our tank. But that should last a while.

We went through the cleaning water pretty fast. We have got lots of dishes to wash plus milk jars and milk pails. We go through water for utility purposes more than cooking and drinking purposes. And I was trying to be conservative.

Monday, we thought of using the inverter that we have, plugged it into the car (had to have the car running) and plugged in our satelite dish internet and our computers. Now we could communicate with the world. Our Verizon cell service had gone out. We don't have a land line. (our cell service is now working)

Then we thought of seeing if we could run a refrigerator or chest freezer with the inverter.

NOPE! NOT HAPPENING! The inverter we have isn't for high wattage appliances.

So, Monday, Tim ventured into Hohenwald via a back way that hadn't been washed out. There was no water there to buy. He bought a few other supplies plus a higher wattage inverter.

I'm sure you have figured out by now, that we do not own a generator.

With the new inverter, we were able to run the chest freezer. The freezer is newer and it's not a real big one.

On the way home from Hohenwald, Tim spotted people getting water from a spring about a mile from our home. It is piped into a house across the road, but plenty of excess is there at the source. So now we have been taking as many buckets and plastic jugs as we have to get water from there.

Tuesday, Tim and the boys went to visit the Pine Family. The Pines and The Carpenters had generators to loan.

THANK YOU TO THOSE TWO FAMILIES.

We are using one and Tim took the other one to another friend.

So we are able to run the appliances but still no water. We did not wire it into our electric box where the well pump is wired, of course. But it is VERY helpful to have the refrigerators and the freezer running due to all the milk we have and the meat in our freezer.

We have heard news about different parts of Hickman County (where we now live) and Perry County (where we use to live).

It sounds very devestating.

There has been lost lives in both counties.

I imagine that the house we use to live in and the whole area on Russell Creek Rd in Lobelville, Perry County is a real mess.

Houses, barns, property, and probably livestock are destroyed or uninhabitable.

Parts of Hwy 100 leading in and out of Centerville are closed off. I believe the water has gone down, but some parts of the road are washed away.

On Monday, we were kind of hemmed in by the flooding on different roads. but we were able to find dryer, cleared up, back roads that were on a little higher ground.

So as you can see, we are doing very well compared to others.

Thank you, LORD.

Here are just a couple of links to look at pictures.

I am sure you can google to find more info and pics.

http://www.tennessean.com/

http://tnhunting.com/cumberlands/2010/05/flooding-doesnt-reach-home/

http://centervilletn.blogspot.com/2010/05/pictures-from-great-flood-of-2010.html