{We Survived the Hurricane}

Well I'm sure if you guys had read FB, well Jon's you would know we were okay. Well more than okay we were truly blessed. Like I said the moment we got our answer that it was okay for us to stay that we all would be safe we felt so calm, but that didn't stop us from getting more prepared.

Here's a big list of what we needed to do

-take down the trampoline
-moved the computer and important documents {they were near big windows} {I need to buy a water and fire filing case}
-Bring in everything that can fly away including BBQ, flowers pots, benches, tables chairs, slides, jungle -gyms.
-take out all the stuff in our learning center room, cause it has been leaking really back and landlord hasn't fixed the problem and I didn't want the ceiling to fall through {late afternoon someone came and put a tarp on ceiling for us}
-pulled out empty containers to wash hands, dishes and etc.
-filled up bathtub {to flush toilet and clean clothes}
-cleaned all laundry
-cleaned all the dishes
-jon bought a small radio, to find out we already had one, but didn't have 8 C batteries for it, so we used the small radio that basically was junk since only one person could listen to at a time {note to self buy a decent handheld radio}
took out air conditioning units {not sure if that was necessary}
-neighbor was out of town so we brought all there stuff.


The winds woke me up around 10:30ish, by 12ish I got out of bed and looked in the back yard and saw our huge tree going wildly crazy. I grabbed my sleeping children and moved then from the back of the house to the front.

We lost half of our electricity around 12:30.

We lost all power at 4am

Between 12:30- 4 I didn't sleep at all.

Between 12:30-2:00 I believe I peed over 7 times. {NO LIE} My dad said it was my nerves and he's probably right.

Called my poor brother-in-law at 2:30 my time 12:30 his time to ask him why I only have power in half of my house. To find out the wind blew out one of the phases and there was nothing I could do.

My sister Casandra told my dad she would buy him a T-Shirt that said "I lived through Hurricane Irene" I think it should read "I Slept through Hurricane Irene."

JOn slept through it two, they both woke up one or twice for no more then 5 minutes. Me after I saw our tree there was no way I was sleeping anymore. I kept thinking the Hurricane is not even here yet and it's already this bad. 


LUCKILY, or I should say we were blessed that Long Island did not get hit bad. If anyone has been out west then you would know there are trees galore. SADLY our tree limb did not make it. It broke off slowly at the end of the storm. I have pictures and will post later. JOn has it on his FB.

WE JUST RECEIVED POWER TODAY AROUND 5:00. Electricians working in our area came from Michigan. When they were restoring power to my street. I kindly asked them to come to my home and fix my house. One guy blew me off so I asked another guy and he said he would try. Happily they came and there were three of them and they fixed it. I tried to hand them 15.00 and they wouldn't take it. Joe my neighbor said, "well I can tell they are not New Yorkers" apparently no one works over here without providing them a tip. The Michigan Electricians said New Yorkers get a bad wrap, they think that New Yorkers are the nicest people they have ever met. : ) I agree I love the people of NY.

That's why I heart NY.

The other thing is I stocked my freezer and refrigerator days before the Hurricane hit and luckily my neighbors behind me who had electricity let us plug our refrigerator in their outlet for a few days until we got power.  

In Conclusion:

Is this the Hurricane we had to worry about? Will there be more? I hope not, but for some reason because we didn't' get it bad I wonder if there are more to come and this was our warning. Don't get me wrong it was bad in some areas, but not as bad as people were thinking. I heard only 50% of Long Beach actually evacuated while the whole of Long Beach was under mandatory evacuation. It makes me think that if there is another Hurricane no one will take it serious again and they will try to ride out the storm and perish.

So I hope this allowed people to be more serious about BEING PREPARED listening to our church leaders as well as government officials.  I will say what a blessing it was for me that once you are prepared you can feel the blessings of not fearing. I know if I wasn't prepared I couldn't of easily of heard the promptings of the Holy Spirit of peace of mind and would have frantically reacted.  

I am grateful that I faced one of my deepest fears and I only did it with the help of Lord.

{Hurricane Irene coming to Visit}

Yes we getting prepared for the worst and hoping for the best. Thankfully again we have had plenty of food storage and water. We took down our trampoline, slides, patio furniture and anything that could fly away. We filled up on our gas. Tomorrow we are taping our windows up. Doing all our Laundry (thankfully it's only a couple of loads.), doing all the dishes, taking showers. We will have winds and rains starting tomorrow at 1pm and the hurricane will come through on Sunday and by Sunday night should be moving out. Monday is suppose to be a beautiful day.

Our family has prayed wether or not we should evacuated after receive three offers we could stay as other homes in different areas. (I am grateful for those individuals)  Last night you can say I started to feel a bit panicked and thought we should leave we even woke up at 5:30 preparing the house thinking that's what we should do, but the entire time I felt a bit wishy-washy and uneasy about leaving. Simply because what if a window breaks we are not here to fix it then more damage could happen, we also thought we would be losing the opportunity to help our neighbors with the aftermath of this Hurricane. Feeling unsure Jon came to the conclusion that maybe the answers to our prayers are not coming cause we are asking the wrong questions. Maybe our prayers need to be if we stay will we all be okay. The answer came back calming and since we made the decision to stay we have completely have felt calm and we haven't at all felt the thoughts of if we made the wrong choice.

To top it off my father who I have begging to come out is here and I would say bad timing for him, but I have to say I am so grateful he is here. I don't feel alone and fact I love his spirit, never once has he looked nervous, in a funny sense I think he's curious to see what Hurricane Irene is bringing us. He too felt like we should stay. Another reason is we may not be able to get back on Long Island for days or even weeks with trees on the roads and etc.

I am also grateful Jon is currently on Vacation and he will be right by our side fighting this storm. We hear they are going to keep all the doctors there and they wont be able to leave. These plans may change but that is what we heard last, so I'm grateful I don't have to worry for him since his hospital will definitely be in the flood zone. It's funny cause this year the hospitals choose our vacation times, they said it started to get confusing so this year they were going to do it. At first we were upset cause we just had a vacation the end of June and didn't want another one so close, but it's funny how things we don't see could work out end up working out perfectly! I couldn't image being here alone and worrying about wether or not Jon was okay especially with power outages. Also vice versa. I'm grateful we can fight this storm as a family.

It is wonderful to hear phone calls coming through, textes, FB messages with thoughts and prayers heading our way. We need them and we ask much for them.  It is a great feeling knowing that others are thinking about us during this crazy time.

I LOST MY CELL PHONE 2 DAYS AGO. Talk about horrible timing. All my contacts and everything. I think it's on Fire Island and it will be washed away in the storm. So I will try to give updates here on my blog;  as well as, my FB or try to call my home phone or Jon's phone.  I imagine we will have power outages I will try to post ASAP our update.

As of right now the eye of the Hurricane is right over our house. (as of 10pm friday night). That is a great thing, simple because we wont get a big impact.

We are not in the flood Zone. They are evacuation Zone A. I think are there are 4 Zones but we are not even in the flood Zone if a Category 5 hit us! Thankfully! Hurricane Irene is predicted to be a Category 1 when it hits us, but we will suffer from high winds up to 60mph and heavy rains. Last year I wrote about my worries of flooding from rain fall near my house because three roads join together right on our corner and all the water always comes and floods to your knees. I might be just fine but we are thinking about a new parking spot so it doesn't flood our car and sand bags near the one window leading to the basement.

I have to say i think about the scripture that states "if you are prepared you shall not fear." I have already felt the truth to that scripture. I am confident we are prepared. In many ways I feel like I keep hearing little promptings of suggestions or items how we could better be prepared. I have also had a thought that maybe this storm is just our warm-up, a test trial for a future big one. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not I know that Long Island will learn a lot from this coming storm for another one and as a whole be better prepared to hear the warnings.

I have to say this part Elder Olson was right {not like I ever doubted) but did say one of his missions when called as an ARea Seventy was prepare Long Island for a Hurricane. He was called a year and a half ago and he said it's not a matter if it will happen. It will and we all need to be prepared. {Last year he told me in person is would happen in the next five years) I have followed his council and I'm so grateful to have such a wonderful sweet inspiring man so close to home.

Anyone who knows me well knows this was one of my deepest fears moving out here to Long Island. I have learned to love this place and to call it home. I love LONG BEACH, FIRE ISLAND, CONEY ISLAND and pray the people on the Low levels will heed the councils of church leaders and government officials and get out to higher ground. I also pray for the beautiful lands and business and homes. For I know their will be tears out there after this, but above all I pray that this storm will turn many hearts and prayers to the Lord and we all will be stronger after this.

Please keep us in your prayers!

{Playing w/ Mason}

MB loves Mason so you have heard and she loves playing with him.  I pulled out his new seat that a friend here bought him for the first time and I asked MB to bring Mason a toy to play with. 

As you can see she brought a lot. Mason looks so overwhelmed with her selection.  I thought it was so darling.

Mason is 2 1/2 months here

{Sweet Local Honey}

To wrap up our trip i will start at the beginning. The drive was so beautiful. i love upstate NY so much. i was navigating and missed our exit, but if you look on a map of NY there are so many roads so we took another route that put on 5 minutes to our trip. {no problem we can handle that} and so glad we did cause we found a local farmer and at the end of his drive-way we had a post advertising honey.  The honey sign in our terms meant STOP!

HONEY/ STOP THEY ALL MEAN THE SAME THING!

We almost stopped at one that said "CHEESE" but for some reason that sounded a little grouse to me. I may have to stop next time- Maybe.

Anyway no one was there but there was plenty of Honey. 

Paying for your honey was based on the Honor System!

We are so excited to try our honey!

 I love supporting the local farmers!!!!

{Jon just told me I know can use the other shift key to make my "I" capitalized. Anyway I can't get used to typing like.  I bought myself a new keyboard, so folks it's coming.}

{Round 2 @ Truman Falls}

Since we got rained out the first time we went to Truman Falls we knew we would have to be back. 

Here is Mason looking so cute like always.

Boy do  i love him so much!

Check out my dive!

Okay it's not that great! Funny note my bathing suit almost fell off. 

Note to self: Never wear this bathing suit again to the falls or when diving or doing anything with a lot craziness going on.

Here is Jon jumping in the water. Call me a chicken but that was a high diving board. Not used to being so adventurous like that.

Mason slept the whole time on Vacation.  i think he loved hearing roars from the waterfalls. i don't blame him i loved them too.

Mason was 2 months old here!

 Jon swimming towards the falls. You cannot swim near the falls unless  you are a really good swimmer. You are not allowed a life jacket either and the girls were so sad they had to watch Jon and i play over there without them. Anyway here's Jon and lame me forgot to take more of him while he is under the falls.

 it was really hard like i said to swim and find a seat on the falls, but i saw a few other people go crazy so i felt like i had to copy and join in. Please excuse my bathing suit. The falls were making it go all over the place.

if you look close enough you can see me behind the falls. This didn't seem as relaxing as it may seem, however it was so much fun doing it. Like i said earlier the water was so strong and load. Oh i hadn't mentioned we went in the middle of June and the water was so so cold here.

{A Look From Above}

Since we camped right next to the Watkins Glen Falls one evening after dinner we decided  to walk above the falls. it was very safe and secure and they has a suspension bridge you could walk aross to see them from above. it was fun!

Here we are on our little hike! Mason was awesome. He loves his Bjorn and he loves hikes. He was so easy on this trip.

We saw a darling lily pond

 There were tables in a certain area. Who knows how long they had been there.

Check out the moss growing on these tables. 

 i guess i will find another place to eat on! LOL

{Montour Falls}

These falls were located in the town of Watkins Glen as well. Our trip we tried to see as many as possible. The crazy thing is we didn't even come close to seeing them all.

The wore out the kids. We would play so hard and the moment we'd get in the car they would pass out. The fun thing is a lot of the Falls you can drive right up and really don't have to get out the car.

Addison and Mason were sleeping and we accidently woke up MB.

The water falls never got old to us. We were so excited to see each one.

{What's up with my eye?}

Actually i'm not talking about my eyeball i actually mean my "i"on my keyboard.

 This summer the girls have been playing a lot of games on my computer. We have a rule {well for them not for me}

NO FOOD OR DRINK NEAR THE COMPUTER

Well they snuck water and spilt it on the keyboard and now my capital "i" doesn't work anymore. Also some of the arrow keys don't work either, so you will have to put up with reading my blog with out me capitalizing my "i" for a while until i replace my keyboard and no it's not a trend i'm trying to start. LOL

Sorry!

{Hector Falls}

 Hector falls is only a mile from Downtown ithica. it's right on the road which is totally not safe for children to be running around, but safely and consciously with some stress we managed to get a picture of with the family next to the falls.

it's crazy that locals there get to drive by these all the time.  i love the roar of falls so much. They are so relaxing.

{The Crown Jewel- Watkins Glen}

Okay i am sure you have learned that i get very excited over anything, but this is seriously something to get excited for. The Truman Falls is what really got me to search the area, but it was Watkins Glen Falls that got me really moving. i saw many pictures, but seriously it is much more beautiful then i could of imagined it being. in my opinion this is seriously one of the most beautiful places  i have ever been and i will for sure do it again. it was breathtaking.

This hike was almost 3 miles up and back. i was so amazed how all the kids did it. On the way back MB got tired and after 5 minutes walking back she passed out completely in Jon's arms. The hike down goes by so fast cause it's all down hill. We thought about shuttling down for 2.00 a person and kids i believe are free but so glad we didn't. The hike was way more majestic hiking up then down, but let's be real it still was breathtaking. We just knew of some people who shuttled up and only walked down, so i say if you are doing the shuttle then hike up then shuttle down.

Above you can see the cave we entered that got us to walk over the bridge. These Falls were amazing!

i took 451 pictures of our Vacation, the majority were of these Falls. Let's just say this was the hardest post to create and i may feel like i need to do this one over again. i just couldn't decided what pictures to put on. i think i snapped at every step i took. 

Thanks to Jon i really got to take this in. He took the kids most of the time while i played with the camera. it was really tricky because we were in and out of light all the time. i could of spend all day there. But that is why some pictures of people are blurry cause i wasn't quickly adjusting my settings as fast as  i should of.

These pictures just speak for themselves.

Walking through we realized how much unknown stress was built up and we were weighing down on our shoulders. The moment we entered in we both felt so light, energetic and our minds were so clear.

This next picture was Jon's favorite pocket. it's called "Frowning Crown" He loved all the little pools of water and small waterfalls.

 i may be kissing Mason 

but i'm not kissing Watkins Glen Goodbye.

 i definitely will be back!

{Truman Falls}

This is the fall that started this whole vacation. i was on the NY Stake Park Website and they had a picture similar to this one randomly on their website. They didnt' tell you where it was which frustrated me so much.  So i searched on the internet for months looking for it.

i finally found it 

and we are finally here

and then we were rained out!!!

But tell me  got a good shot of it! i even got it without a tripod. 

Below is not adjusting my shutter-speed.

The great thing about the crazy lighting storm is that i was able to take this picture with out anyone in it!!! 

Don't feel too bad we went back 2 days later!

{The Falls Weren't Enough for Jon}

The Falls weren't enough for Jon that he felt like he had to drive over them. Just playing is was part of the road.  to get to the picnic area. i kept laughing because we never had to drive to the picnic area but Jon just wanted to fill the adventure. it was fun!

These are our fun kicks we get into sometimes! 

it was fun to have our few seconds of thrill!

Thanks Jon for the Adventure!

We are easily Entertained over here!

{Buttermilk Falls}

The Buttermilk Falls were so pretty. They were closed for swimming this time, but i'm sure we will hit it up later another time. YOu can also hike up it but this time we just wanted to scout it out sense there were more falls and MB & Addison were a sleep in the car from the Taughannock Falls.

This is fun cause you drive right up to these falls no Hiking. So great for the kids.

They were closed at the time cause they just emptied it to clean the bottom, and they were waiting for it to fill up again. So that's good to know!

You can take a pretty ride up the falls and see more of it.  We also saw deer on this ride.

Alix can't wait to come back here.