Card for David

David is my sweet little nephew. He is too cute for words and so smart.

I made this card for him tonight. His dad (my brother) calls him "silly monkey" so I thought he'd really like this card.

Erosion problems

If you click on the first picture it will get bigger and you can get a better idea of what we are dealing with. Jeff has been working so hard on moving dirt and trying to level out the pasture land. I drive over the area he has leveled with the truck in order to pack it down. We have planted well over $100.00 worth of grass seeds just to watch them all get washed away. We finally bought some very expensive erosion control which was $40.00 per role and did not cover much ground at all. We bought biodegradable posts and made sure the anti erosion material was tied down good. It seems like every week we get torrential downpours of rain and it ruins all the hard work we did the previous weekend. You will see one row of the anti erosion material left on the hill. The rest got washed all the way down and is now buried in the dirt by where Jeff has the tractor in this picture. You can see the large ruts that are now where the erosion material used to be. We are thinking about building berms in the woods and creating something like french drains to see if that will help. I think we will end up having to get a bulldozier in here to do some of the work. It is getting a bit frustrating!

CPR certification class

We had fire fighters from another station join us for the CPR certification class. My certification had expired in October and I would have had to go the Red Cross to take the class again. It was great that a fire fighter from Prattville was able to come to us and teach us the class. It didn't even cost us anything so that was an added bonus. We also got certified to use the AED and we do have one that we take to all the scenes. I hope we never have to use it we all know how now if we have to.

Painting the bathrooms at the station

Velida is my good friend and the only other woman at the fire department. The bathrooms were NASTY because it had just been men at the station for so long. Velida had the week off so we decided to paint and fix up the bathrooms before our CPR training that weekend. We painted the bathrooms and also hung pictures and curtains so they look very pretty now.

More tornado pictures

Another fire fighter gave me a CD with pictures they had taken. You can see from these pictures just how bad things were for many families. It is so sad and to make a bad situation worse, there was some looting problems. We saw a sign someone posted in their yard "You loot, We shoot".

There was nothing good nor fun about the terrible damage from this tornado. But it was kind of cool to ride in a big red truck with flashing lights because there was no where we could not go. The police stopped all traffic and waved us through everywhere we went.

Tornado pictures

I got called out for tornado warnings in Billingsley. Funnel clouds had been spotted about 2 miles from our house. They wanted us to be at the station in case things got bad and we were needed. The rain was very bad but it seemed we were past the threat of tornados so we all went back home. I had just gotten out of the shower and the oven had just beeped telling us the the pizza was ready when my fire radio went off again. This time they had a special alarm that I had not heard come across my radio before. The dispatch lady announced that Prattville had been hit by tornados and that this was not a drill. They need all available volunteer personal to report to station 3 in Prattville immediately.

I was not at all prepared to see the devastation that we witnessed as we came into Prattville. These pictures here were mostly taken out of the window of the fire truck. Once we got on the ground, I took a couple of quick pictures and put the camera back in the truck so we could get to work. It felt good to be able to make a small difference in what was definitely an overwhelming situation.

Before indoor plumbing

I thought I would share with you how life was before indoor plumbing came to the Lambert farm. These chairs were here when we bought the property..honestly! Someone just dug a hole under this chair and cut a hole in the chair. Can you image? We knew that it would take us a long time to build our house so we built a bath house first. It has a shower, sink, toilet, hot water heater, the whole nine yards. It is the best little outhouse in the neighborhood! It is hysterical because our neighbors literally bring their friends down to see it.

The joys of indoor plumbing.

We moved in our house this past April and we just now got our septic tank installed. We had a lot of dirt to excavate before we could get the septic tank. It was a good thing we still had a working bath house but honestly, our trees saw more action than anything. And then there was that truly embarrassing encounter with the meter man but I won’t go there. Getting the septic tank is one of the last major milestones. The next milestones will be to get the last two rows of trees burned and get grass growing. There is never a lack of things to do but that is just how we like it.

Not all fun and games

It was a gorgeous afternoon for the beginning of February so we decided to wash all the fire trucks. We have 2 brush trucks, 2 big tankers, 2 large full sized engines, and one rescue and supply truck so washing the trucks took all afternoon. They sure looked pretty when we were finished!

Love those Manning Boys!

We had so much fun at our Super Bowl party!

I was sad to see the Colts get knocked out of the running but in the end it all turned out fine because a Manning boy still won.

I had not followed the Giants all year long because other than wanting Eli to do well, I just wasn't that interested in the overall team. When they won the wild card slot to get into the playoffs, I started to watch them and was surprised each time they won. By that last game against the Packers which put them in the Super Bowl, you'd think I'd been a fan for years because I was so excited they won. I honestly thought they had no chance to win against the Patriots but I put on my Manning Jersey and cheered full heartedly for Eli to kick some butt. I felt kind of sorry for Tom Brady because that Giants defense kept him on the ground most of the game which was probably pretty humbling for him. It was a great game and I was glad we got to watch it with such great friends.

Speaking of great friends, that is our friend Bill with wild beard and New York BASEBALL jersey on. He is so silly! But I can't talk because I have on an Indianapolis jersey. He at least go the right state.