The last day of June

 June 30th was a memorable day this year . . .

First, it was our 7th anniversary!  We planned to go out to dinner that night to celebrate, and decided that our new dishwasher (that we unexpectedly had to purchase) would be our "gift" to each other.  But since Billy had been talking about making a lemon meringue pie (his favorite!) using a family recipe he'd recently acquired but just never got around to actually doing it, I made him an anniversary pie.  I think I may have made a lemon pie once before, but it had been several years . . . and I wasn't so sure about the meringue.  But it turned out well!

The second memorable part of June 30 this year is that it rained . . . and rained and rained.  I think some people say we may have gotten 5 inches in about an hour!

The kids and I went to the pool, and the sky started to cloud over as the storm moved in.  We made it home before the rain started, but the sky looked very ominous.

The kids and I actually retreated to the basement, as we were also under a tornado AND flood watch.  I also wanted to keep an eye on the sump pump to be sure it was working (thankfully it was).

When Billy got home he said that they actually had a hard time driving into town because so many streets were flooded.  We waited a while, but then went out "touring" to see the flooding . . .

 This is the little creek behind our house that typically has a couple of inches of water in it. I have NEVER seen it so full - it probably has about 3 feet of water in it in this pic. There was also a lot of water pouring into the creek from the North, and I'll admit it had me a little worried (but it was back to normal by the next day).
 

 This is Aunt Amy's backyard . . . they did end up with water in their basement :( (as did LOTS of people in town - including our next door neighbors because their sump pump didn't pump when the power went off . . . we feel so fortunate that ours stayed dry due to our back up pump system).

This is looking North on 6th Street.  We had turned around because Hwy 22 was underwater.

After our tour we went home and had pie (and supper) - Billy loved the pie and said it was excellent. :)

Just after we'd eaten supper, we lost power.  The kids got antsy, so we drove around a bit again and then hung out at Aunt Allie's house (part of the town still had power).  The kids entertained themselves with baby Annie. (Sorry - at least one person is blurry in all of these pics!)

We eventually headed home, and thankfully the power came on soon after (and our sump pump kept kept working). :)