Community - One of the my favorite things

I'll start with the more depressing topic...

In case you live under a rock, Western Massachusetts was hit with some pretty bad tornadoes last week. The cities of Springfield, West Springfield, and Monson were some of them that were most severely hit. Don't worry, all of my family and friends are fine - though some have parents who lost their homes. Being in Ohio and trying to track down my parents and siblings that day after work was terrifying. After finally confirming everyone was okay, I took up my post as newsmaster. My parents house had been without power for over 2 hours and my siblings (who were all home without the 'rents) had no way to keep up with what was going on. So I got on our local news station's website and watched the streaming feed for hours, sending texts and phone calls about new warnings, tornadoes, and updates. It was nice to be useful. And I know my youngest brother (13 years old) appreciated it - he was the most upset and scared about what was happening. Massachusetts folks don't really grow up knowing what to do when a tornado hits - so with me being the new midwesterner I was called on for my "knowledge" (which is not much... haha).

When all is said and done, the death count was very low for these storms, and it sounds like the community is coming together to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. I am newly appreciative for my family's good fortune and safety.

Now a happier note :-)

My house this weekend was the scene of community coming together to get a big job done. My husband and I recruited 6 of our closet friends and family to help put in a french drain (see previous posts about flooding in our basement...). I got home from work on Saturday to see a yard full of half naked, dirty, sweaty, smelly men playing in dirt throughout our yard. Everyone put in hours upon hours of hard work and now the drain is complete. I'm actually hoping it rains buckets sometime soon so we can see if it's gonna solve our problem.

I am so thankful to have friends who are willing to spend a large portion of their weekend doing housework with us. To be fair, we did entice with as much food and beer as they could consume :-)

One of the boys got up this morning saying it felt like Daytona (Dayton to Daytona for those who don't know). He was out in the 90+ degree heat all day Saturday, getting sweaty and gross, then spent all night drinking heavily.

Is it bad that I'm proud our house became a less fun version of Daytona...? :-)