Biking with Daddy......

So I know I have been an advocate of the Strider Bike previously, but here is one of my favorite videos of Gabe riding with his daddy. He also rides with grandma and grandpa whenever he stays there as well. It is seriously the best "toy" he has every had! He rides it everywhere! And the cool thing is that he can ride with older kids who are riding real bikes. Very cool!

Pretty much everyone 2 year old we know has gotten one (or will be getting one) for thier brithday :).

The Flood.....

So...4 days after all the rain we are getting all the water from Chicago on the banks of the Illinois River. For those not from Peoria, we have a "riverfront" presence with lots of restaurants, concerts, etc. Pretty much everything on the banks has flooded. Unfortunately it is only going to get worse. Here are some pictures we took today.

Not knowing anything about the flooding (I guess I should watch the news more :)), my friend and I headed out for a walk with the kiddos this morning along the river front.....NOT!! But Gabe thought it was cool anyway :).

CEFCU Center Stage....concerts are here. Notice the water is over the stage and close to the umbrella!

Gross!! All the rubish from the banks getting caught at the dock.
At the marina......

seriously!! Is he really docking in the parking lot??!!
Here are the docks...yes way out there!
And the gas station
This is the marina parking lot
And this is where we workout..in the distance is the outdoor swimming area, good thing it is fine covered in water :).

Water Steet with the railroad track next to it...all covered in water
More of Water Street
It's glass!!

No skiing for us, that is unless you want to dodge huge trees as they float down river.
Gabe doing his part to take pictures with his phone along with me.

More of downtown

Yes, we're alive!

Wow, what a weekend! As Dale says...."now you have experienced your first midwest disaster"....whatever that means! Peoria experienced record breaking rain and we didn't even get the worst of it! Chicago got it way worse.

So it started raining on Thursday morning and didn't stop until Sunday afternoon. Now I know I've said "it's been raining for days" before, but obviously I had no idea what I was talking about! It seriously rained night and day without stopping and at times so hard that it would hurt if you were in it! After watching a movie on Friday night I kept hearing a siren outside and wondered what that could be......Dale fell asleep and I woke him up saying....could that be a tornado siren?! Sure enough it was! At the same time our roof started to leak into the front room (new roof, I might add). So, we turn on the weather channel and there it is beeping saying to move to the basement right away there is a tornado near by.....what?? So, I'm running around the house trying to figure out what to do, should I get gabe out of bed? should we go to the basement? etc while dale is in the attic trying to fix the roof leak (hum...not the safest place in a tornado!!). So, I did go get gabe and we hung out in front of the TV watching the weather channel. Gabe thought it was super cool to be up in the middle of the night 'watching tv" :). So, we never went to the basement (have you seen our basement??...it has an outside entrance and trap door looking thing) and the tornado never touched down. In fact only 30 or so minutes later we had a flash flood warning and were told to move to the highest place :). So all was well from our eventful evening except that practically every rental, our house, our office and Dale's mom and dads house flooded! Urgg! So dale spent a good part of the weekend pumping out basements. Dale's parents flooded even with 5 sump pumps working! And the crazy thing is.....this is the ONLY picture I have from all the events!

Not so sure about all the rain....

BUT I LOVE my new Thomas umbrella!

I guess I better start thinking "blog picture" when in a time of crisis :).

Updates...

So it seems like I should have some great picture to post by now (I'm not much of a normal life picture taker....unfortunately), but I guess we are just kinda moving along without a ton of "adventure", if you will, but I thought I'd post anyway. It seems like we have been trying to play catch up since we came home from SLC....still! How did that happen? Since when do you play catch up for weeks? Something must change :).

Normal life has actually been nice! Dale and I have had some fun (and consistent) date nights thanks to grandma and grandpa :). Gabe gets to sleep over and Dale and I get a date night! (I bet all you mommies without grandparents in town are jealous!). Gabe and Pete and Wanda absolutely LOVE thier weekly sleepover and do all sorts of fun stuff. 4-wheeling and swimming always a must. We are enjoying getting to know some really great people here. I tell you what, the Midwest may not produce mountains and deserts, but they it sure produces some great people! And with it being a fairly small town Dale has reconnected with quite a few old friends. It seems every where we go he sees someone from the past :). He actually went for a mountain bike ride last weekend and came back muddy with a huge grin in his face (I should have taken a picture....dah!) and said it was really fun! Mountain biking in Peoria.....fun?? Go figure! Actually Peoria is supposed to have the best mountain biking in the midwest....funny!

Gabe is getting more and more fun by the day. He is becoming our little pal :). He cracks himself (and us) up daily. He loves his strider bike and prefers it over any and all toys in and out of the house. Seriously I could just pack everything else away and he'd never know! He is a lover and a snuggler and will come up and spontaneously give me a kiss on the cheek.....it just makes my heart melt! He is getting into pretend stuff now....like driving his motorcycle everywhere, pretending he is a buffalo (thanks to Hank :)), and telling all sorts of interesting stories that I have no clue about :). He loves playing with his little friends and loves going to the nursery at church. We just finished a Shepherding Your Childs Heart Bible study and it was awesome! We feel much more equipped to continue with this parenting thing :). I would highly suggest the book to anyone who hasn't read it. It has totally changed my view of parenting from the heart rather than fixing the behavior. Wow, what a concept!

Anyway, enough is enough.....maybe I will take some more pictures soon :).