First and Last

After 17 years with a child in Warren County Public Schools, the chapter closed completely Monday.  Miles went to SWHS for the last time and had graduation practice with his classmates.  I'm so fortunate having Matt there at South to capture these moments for me as a mom.  

After practice, the students leave for the middle school for a graduation walk.  

 

From there, they go to their respective elementary schools which is always a highlight!

 

 

No Plano visit is complete without a game of dodgeball!

Love all my fellow Panther parents who sent me pictures!

 

We've been enjoying multiple graduation parties with friends.  

 

Sad we can't make them all, but all of these storms have wreaked havoc on our property.  

Friday's storm brought down one of our giant trees in the front yard along with NO power.

I was an absolute mess mainly because Miles was at work Friday night and hadn't made it home yet.  Our power went off around 10:20PM and he didn't make it back until closer to 11PM.  We had flashlights, LED candles and real candles burning.

The morning brought this disaster!

 

Super thankful this limb didn't land on our neighbors home or any of their vehicles.  It did trap them in their driveway.  Matt whipped out his Poulan saw and got to work.  We have the best neighbors - the owners of this house came out and worked to remove all the limbs and our neighbor up the street assisted too.  It made the job a little less dangerous as three minds were assessing the best way and angles to cut safely.

It was also the day of multiple community yard sales so there was traffic everywhere along with tree limbs down.  The scene was pure chaos!  I woke up super early - probably getting about 3-4 hours of sleep.  Since the power had been off overnight, I immediately thought about how I needed to try and save our groceries if possible.  I called IGA to see if they had power and ice (they did).  I headed there to get two big bags and got our cold stuff in coolers to salvage what I could.  On the way to IGA, I saw what I believe to be our subdivision's pole, and it looked bad.  Fortunately, power came back on later that afternoon at 4:20.  It could've been worse, and we are super grateful to all the crews out there working hard.

Sadly, the decision was made to remove our tree.  Our tree guy came and took it out yesterday along with trimming the adjacent tree that hangs over onto our neighbors property as well.  While we were at it, we took out a dead tree on the opposing side and also had some overhanging branches trimmed in our backyard.  

 

I have a feeling with all these storms, there is a good chance we might lose our other large tree.  It looks so lonely in the front yard now.

The bonus is we will have A LOT less raking to do this fall, and once the tree stump has been grinded down, our yard will look much nicer.