Freedom

This has been a month that has flown by in fact, I'm still stunned at how fast time flies by.  The summer is about half over at this point.  Perhaps it's been the excitement of the storm on Father's Day that has made our thoughts be focused on that while time was moving ever onward...I have no idea.  Now as Gabby daily begs me to go get some fireworks I realize that half way point is nearly upon us.  This promises to be an unusual year since the kids will have only been back in school for a month before we head off to Ghana for a month and when we get back it will be nearly Thanksgiving.  A month of the Ghanaian heat to face our cold back home...talk about shocking contrasts!  We continue to have severe weather pass us by daily.  This leaves us with some spectacular sunsets

.  Sometimes I feel like this is the eye of God peering at us through the clouds...could it be He's winking at us ?  I've said before that seeing the sun breakt through the couds always brings me hope sometimes.  I particularly love it when there are rays breaking through like it did this evening because it's not just a breakthrough but a forceful breakthough!  These kinds of rays are more amazing to me than any special effects lasers on a Sci-Fi moviebecause it's all natural and without any kind of special effects...it specially painted by Godand it's right there for anyone to take notice and appreciate...and I really did appreciate this one!  The problem with the unpredictable weather is that with the heat index up lately Lovely and I like to walk in the evenings to avoid the heat and that's just when unexpected storms can pop up and surprise you.  This has happened to us more than once and can be pretty scary

especially when we've got quite a ways to go to get home!  We've had to run home with the wind rising and the lighting being pretty scary before

!  I often run home just to get my camera to try and capture that elusive lighting photo.  I would say that my success has been limited at best.  I spent some time as this storm passed clicking away always missing it by just a little bit

.  None the less it was spectacular to witness and we were relatively safe since this storm passed nearby and spared us most of the dangerous other counties to the south east of us had to deal with.  Gabby looked at my pictures and said that it was "baby lighting"...I'd have to agreeLOL!  Not all is dark and stormy however.  We have a little nature drama going on.  We have had a pair of Magpies move in and they have claimed this territory as their own

.  They fear neither other birds nor cats and in fact spend much of the day tormenting the local cats.  I actually find their antics pretty funny.  Lovely had her donated some blood ironically before we went to see "Eclipse" which by the way is a pretty good money.  You can sure see that they've got more budget to work with since the first of the "Twilight" series movies.  We have been gathering some friends and hitting the midnight release.  It's insane but it's kind of fun.  I am not a fanatic...I just enjoyed the series and like to see what they are doing with it in the movies.  This one had a lot more action then the rest which was kind of cool too.  I was able to get some last spectacular sunset shots.  There wasa golden light that came with this one that was so spectacular.  There wasn't a direction I could look where something artistic wasn't going onand some how it felt like something wonderful was going to happen

but all I saw was the sunset and the wonderful light this provided.  I wish you all a wonderful 4th of July!  God's blessings to you!