A 507 Mile Round Trip Adventure

This past weekend, Michael and I went on a road trip to Iowa, Minnesota and ended up spending the night in Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. We had an amazing time and we were able to see some pretty neat sights! We saw a Wind Turbine Farm, Amish families on their way to church and the Mississippi River. Here are some pictures of our little adventure

Never in my wildest dreams..

did I ever think I would date a biker!!

What a crazy weekend with Pictures!

So this past weekend was a crazy one for Michael and I. At around 2pm on Friday, Michael called and told me to plug in our weather radio and to turn on the news. We were on a severe weather watch and a tornado watch. For the past 5 months, I have often questioned people about the Tornado Siren , what would it sound like and will I be able to hear it?! People's response to this question was, " oh trust me, you will know." So there I was listening to the weather radio " Severe thunderstorms for Milwaukee County and Tornado watches are in effect until 6pm tonight." I was laying in bed, where it was cool and watching the TV like a hawk for any type of change in the weather pattern and seeing where random funnel clouds had been spotted. All of a sudden I heard what sounded like a consistent truck horn going off.. Could this be the tornado siren?!

I called Karyn( a wife of one of Michael's co-workers who I had to been out to lunch with earlier in the day.) and asked her if it was indeed the tornado siren. She said she wasn't sure, but in case it was to start getting blankets and pillows into the bathroom. She called me back a few minutes later and said " yes that is indeed the siren. Make sure you have all of the doors and shades drawn in your apartment. Try not to panic." That was easy for her to say when she was used to these type of things! So I scrambled around the apartment and trying to find the right pillow and blankets to bring into the apartment, while calling Ann to let her know what was going on and that I was alright. Karen then calls back and tells me to make sure I had my car keys, license and Debit card with me at all times. I had just started to get the rabbit out of his cage to bring him and the cats into the bathroom, when the front door opened.

It was Michael ( He had been at work under severe T-Storm watch and he had been able to sneak out of work before they stopped people from going home.) he came up the stairs and said that we were not staying at the apartment and that we would be going to the grocery store because it was made out of concrete. I ran around the apartment trying to find my cell phone in case Karyn called again and I could not find it. ( Later found out it was in the scrub top I had been wearing the whole time) Michael at that point started to get nervous and he said "Amanda, We need to go RIGHT NOW! You have not seen how dark the sky is!!" So off to Woodman's we went and listened to the sirens to the south of us. LUCKILY! Nothing happened:-) off to Team Building we went!

Then on Saturday, I got home from work and the same thing happened again.. More Tornado Watches,severe weather alerts and flash flooding. Just as we were getting into the car, we heard the tornado siren go off across from our house and off to Woodman's we went. Michael had been tracking the storm and knew what direction the storm had been coming from. We watched a pretty good lightning show to the west and heard some nice rumbles of thunder. We drove around for a bit to get some pictures of the sky, it had started to rain so we headed back to Woodman's to do a little shopping. We were done and about to leave when I looked outside and couldn't believe the amount of rain that was pouring down. I have never seen so much rain fall at once and tons of thunder and lightning. It reminded me of a Hurricane. We waited a half hour for the rain to die down a little, and headed out to the car. We drove around waiting for our pizza to be done and we could not believe the flooding on the roads and how many cars were stuck in the water. We ended up getting 5.5 inches of water in a little less than 2 hours and about another 1.5 inches the next morning.

Sunday night we got another 2.5 inches of water for a grand total of 10 inches of water in less than 24 hours!! We had 3 days of random thunderstorms. Right now we are under a state of emergency and a bunch of roads are closed due to flooding and washouts!

On a side note.. Guess how much a lobster tail is here...

$68.00

Here are a few pictures from this weekend..

^ These were taken by Michael.. These on the bottom are from TMJ4's Website
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Funnel Cloud in Racine ( The city where I work)

Wide Open Spaces

The days leaving up to December 26th were some very hard days. Not only did I have to struggle with the idea of saying goodbye to everyone. I had to struggle with the fact that I was leaving everything that was familiar to me.

I think that things really hit home when I was at Mam's on Christmas Eve. Seeing Avery and Sophia and knowing that I wouldn't be home when Tiff and Cousin Dan got home with their baby and the fact that I wouldn't be home when Tia came home to give birth to her baby. I couldn't imagine not being in the same state as my parents, friends and the residents who I had developed a really good relationship with.

I had an amazing talk with my dad on Christmas Eve, that proved to me that we are close but in our own dysfunctional way. I dreaded saying good-bye to my aunts, uncles and cousins but that was not as bad as I thought it would be and with Mam avoiding my every move before I left, there were not any tears shed after my talk with Dad. However; Christmas day wasn't that easy.

Christmas day was pretty hectic. Hectic by my choice, I ended up going to three different Christmas's. First to my parents, then to Michael's grandparents and finally to my mother's parents. I cried after leaving my parents house, I cried saying good-bye to Michael's mother and grandmother and I cried while saying goodbye to people at my grandmothers house. The worst part of the day was knowing that I had to say good-bye to Mam, I had been dreading it and although it went well, it was still a very hard thing to do.

I still had a ton of stuff to do on Christmas night when I got home and my friend Mike would not let me spend it all alone, so he came over and helped me make endless trips to the dumpster. I had a ton of stuff to throw away and i guess what was my trash was Mike's treasure. Mike made out like a bandit taking some of the big things that I would of had to just thrown away.

And then it was moving day...

Very important news!!

As some of you may know, Michael has gone on a few job interviews over the past 2 months. The last job interview was with a company named Bechtel. Michael has had many phone conversations with the HR's at Bechtel and he was fairly certain that he was going to get offered a job.

Michael was offered a job with Bechtel that would be sending us to Oak Hill, Wisconson. Michael leaves on December 5th, he will be driving to Wisconsin and start his training and once he finds an apartment, I will be joining him sometime after christmas.

Although, this move has come as a surprise, we are both excited and nervous for what opportunities will come with this move. Neither one of us have ever lived out of the state of Maine and we are excited to see what new adventures Wisconsin will bring us!