Outdoors in March

I feel like I have gone on and on about the amazing weather we've been having, but it seriously has just been soooo beautiful. You would never know it was technically still winter! The temps this week have been in the 70's/80's and we have been out enjoying every minute of it.

Cameron came home (after learning about St. Patrick and his day, of course) 

and decided to build a leprechaun trap.

 He worked very diligently using sticks, pine branches--whatever he could find!

Colin and Ethan spent some time on one of Colin's new favorite pastimes: paper airplane building.

And can you guess what Mommy and Daddy were doing? 

(Mostly Daddy, since it was his mess? *coughcough*)

Seriously--does anyone else's garage look like this after the winter time? Between bikes, scooters, wagons, bats, gloves, balls (of every shape and size), leaves, Shane's tools and lumber, lawn and garden equipment...it looked like a bomb went off in there! Yikes.

Lola, meanwhile, was having such grand time in her swing.

She never wants to get out!

Colin and Ethan took a break from airplane flying....

....to help out with the leprechaun trap. 

Cameron told me that he had to stash these binoculars in the crook of the tree....leprechauns are very tiny and he 'just might need these' to see one if it got caught in his trap. That kid!

 

And yes, those are Christmas lights still on our tree. We don't take them down until about now, remember?

Ethan, standing next to a tree that was his size just four years ago when we planted it. Last year, it bore us three whole apples. *grin* It is budding already, and this mommy is hoping for a great crop this year!

Is the weather as gorgeous where you are as it is here? We sure hope this early spring is here to stay!

April showers . . . . more like torrential downpours

So, ummmm....it's rained a bit the last few days in our little corner of the world....

Muddy Dirty FILTHY

Seems like this time of year, I am always talking about the rain amounts.

We get a ton of it every May--and that makes some great puddles.

Puddles make mud.

And mud, much to the dismay of this lady-in-charge-of-laundry, is a little boy's best friend.

We have a field behind our house, and yesterday, Shane released the boys to 'have at it' with the puddles.

And have at it they did.

Then, they went back for seconds.

They ran. They jumped.

They fell down.

They had a blast....

...but they were disgusting!

Then, they went back again.
(Ethan joined for round three.)

Boys love filth. Just a fact of nature, I guess.
I'm convinced--they would live this way, if it weren't for us.

Or, at least, I thought they would. After a few minutes, it occurred to Cameron that he didn't like being this dirty. Not one little bit.

So, it was strip-down time.

Some liked strip-down time....

...more than others.

*grin*

All in all, they had a great time...and did their best to give Momma some good pictures and great memories!

The beauty after the storm(s)

Funder, Whitening and Toe-madoes--Take Two!

We had some crazy storms roll through here last night--major enough to apparently make some news on the National Weather Channel! Here are a few pictures that we snapped while we were supposed to be "taking shelter in an interior room on the lowest level of the house" out of our back door during the storm, and shortly after.

Clouds circulating....they were so low and moving so fast!

This is right over our back yard--you can see the swingset in the lower corner

Lake Merritt has returned! To the boys' dismay, however, it was gone by this morning.



Shane checking out our neighbor's tree across the street--it split the whole tree in half

Another tree split right around the corner. Literally, there was damage on every side of us, but we had NONE in our own yard! We were praising God for that!

Welcome to Catlin! Don't mind our mess, please.

Here is the link to a local article (and better picture, actually) of a train that was derailed by either vicious winds or a tornado that touched down. This is one mile east of our house....tornadoes were touching down all around us, apparently, but thankfully there was no major damage.

You can see part of the train is half-sitting on the tracks....

....and those are the cars that were all tipped over on their sides.

They said it overturned 40 cars total, out of about 75.

Mangled cars


And, from the opposite angle....

(By the way--yes, we were totally checking out damage as soon as the storm was over! Shane would definitely be 'that guy' you see in all the Weather Channel videos that is like, 10 feet from the F-5 tornadoes with a wriggling video camera, saying things like "Oh man.....it's tearing the whole building apart! Oh, man!! Oh, man!!!)

Ahem.

While it was more than devastating for Cameron to watch his precious swingset being torn into pieces and blown into the field behind our house, we were more than thankful that that was all the damage that was done!

Local storms bring cool clouds....

....and have given way to lots....
and lots.....



and lots.....

of cool pictures**--right out our back door!

**No photoshopping here, by the way! Don't even own it. That's just how cool the sky was.