Bye Bye Bradford Pear

The night before our gender ultrasound was interesting to say the least.

A pretty big storm had hit our area that afternoon. I work a good hour away, and since it was sunny at work, I didn't think the storm was that bad.

When I pulled into our street I found all the neighbors huddling in the cul-de-sac. I knew for sure that our power was out - because it goes out constantly. This made the fourth time in four days.

I was a little surprised to try to pull into my driveway and find this:

One third of our Bradford Pear tree laying across the driveway. This angle does not do it justice. The pile of branches on the ground was taller than me!

The neighbors were all stopping to say how they were so sorry, and just how awful it was that our tree had fallen down, we couldn't get into our garage, and didn't have power.

This was the day after the horrible tornados in Oklahoma. Our little issue was so minor compared to everything those families were going through - and still had yet to go through. I was so thankful that the tree didn't hit our house or our neighbors house. The room top right is our guest room, where Koda lays all day. She could have been hit, guests could have been hit, or what if we turned that room into the nursery. I was so thankful it happened the way it did. Sure, it was an inconvenience. An expensive inconvenience. But someone was looking out for us when that tree fell.

Here are a few pictures I took when the Bradford Pear bloomed this Spring:

And after we had the tree taken down:

We are currently looking into a few bushes to hide the view of the neighbor's house. And my mom and I bought some new plants for the front bed. Eventually it won't look so bare.

It was hard to entertain ourselves the night before the gender ultrasound. We didn't want to open the fridge at the risk of spoiling our food, so we grabbed pizza for dinner. We could have read books by candlelight - but instead just sat around staring at each other: 'you think it'll be a girl?' 'you think it'll be a boy?' 'it's hot as crap in here!'

I barely slept. Partly because it was like Christmas morning. Partly because it was 86 degrees in our bedroom.