This is Nebraska

We took a family outing up to the pedestrian bridge over the Missouri River in downtown Omaha a few weeks ago to see the flooding first hand.  From the news stories, I doubted the bridge would even be open, but it was, although the sidewalks along the banks of the river were all closed and heavily flooded in certain places.  The bridge typically spans half water, half land, but with the flooding, the bridge is ALL over water now.

And as if we didn't have enough water, a huge storm rolled through one night as we were getting packed for our trip.  These thick, black clouds started billowing in and in a matter of a few minutes, the sky was black and the still air had 70 mph winds.  As we were packing, we noticed a wailing sound.  Justin and I looked at each other and realized we were hearing the tornado sirens, which I've never heard go off here unless it was just a drill.  We quickly turned on the news and saw that our small city was under a tornado warning.  With the Joplin disaster on our minds, we pulled all our kids out of bed, carried Annie downstairs and decided to wait out the storm there.  Molly was absolutely terrified, but we said a prayer and everything was ok.  It's amazing to see storms like this roll in so quickly and unexpectedly.  They definitely make life exciting!

All this rain, however, has definitely helped our garden this year.  We were surprised last year at how easily things grew here in Nebraska, so Justin decided to start an even larger garden this year!  Twice as large to be exact--it's 6' x 24'.  From left to right we have tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, beans, carrots, peppers, cilantro, onions, and cantaloupe (that haven't sprouted yet in this picture).  It's been 3 weeks since this picture was taken, and since then, every plant has about tripled in size!  Justin is also growing oregano and rosemary in pots on our deck.  His plan is to make a lot of salsa!  Our cantaloupe have sprouted now and are growing quickly too.