Uhm...put the lawn mower away and grab the. . . .

Chainsaw and Snow Shovels!

We had hurricane force winds here last night.  It felt like the house was just going to be picked up and blown away.  This morning we woke up to a fairly substantial branch that had broken from the forces and was attached to the tree by a few wood fibers.  Don't ask me how but the van was not injured in this process.  Branches large and small are scattered all over the yard.  As soon as it warms up we will be doing some major storm clean-up.

Please note that it is just a few days away from the end of April!  APRIL! and this is what we awoke to this morning.  It has all mostly melted now but it is so cold!  Makes me want to build up a fire in the wood stove. I wonder if this is what April's showers look like what May's flowers will bring.

Note:  For those interested pictures have been added to the Science Fair post

It might be time to mow the grass when. . . .

photo courtesy of Jamie Brelsford via stock.xchng

a sweet grandma from down the street comes to share with you that she and her friend were discussing mowing the lawn and how important it is to keep up on it and not let it get too long.  So she thought that maybe we needed to borrow her lawn mower.

I just hope she didn't look too closely at my flower beds 

 because after the wasp stings on my fingers 

I won't be weeding them anytime soon!

Science Fair 2010

Equipped with his five senses, 

man explores the universe around him 

and calls the adventure Science.  

~Edwin Powell Hubble, The Nature of Science, 1954

The older two boys have been hard at work exploring and making observations for a science fair project.  Their friend SP joined with them and the world can now rest assured that they have sufficiently tested and proven their hypothesis.

So just in case you ever need to know:

Hot water does indeed dissolve candy 
at a faster rate than cold water.

and further more, if you happen to need candy to quickly dissolve your best bet is "Pop Rocks" (this of course is limited to the types of sample candy tested in their experiment).

Last Thursday they were able to set up their finished display board and share their findings along with others in the school who participated in the Science Fair.  There were quite a variety of projects.  Some that stand out in my mind is coloring vanilla ice cream (brown and pink) and having 3rd and 6th graders identify the flavor (most were fooled by the coloring into identifying the ice cream as chocolate and strawberry), there were several experiments testing density of liquids (most notably oil and water), a group explored how clouds were made, what shapes made the best bubbles, and so many more.

It was so fun watching the boys get animated as they explained their project over and over again as other students, teachers and parents came by.

So now, watch out 'cause we've got scientists in the house!

 

Tra-la-la la-la-la -- Life goes on. . . .

Things are still really tough here and yet we are making our best efforts at keeping life moving and working hard at finding joy each and every day.  A few days ago I commented to a friend that I did not know if we would ever find "GLEE" in our life again.  Yet, there is joy in our life it is just more sparsely peppered in amongst the heartache and pain right now.

Some things that have been soul healing are long walks with the boys looking at the birds in the nearby nature preserve, playing at the park (the weather has been wonderful, healing sunshine, cooling breezes, and wonderful spring flowers beginning to color the world), we've been (albeit slowly) weeding flower beds and beginning to think about planting some veggies.

It has been a work in progress but I think we have a good plan for the re-design of the boys' room.  They want it to be blue, green and yellow (which in and of itself is a wee bit of a design challenge).  But when you throw in the dinosaurs, volcanoes, hot lave, sunshine, star cruisers, etc. . . .it gets to be a bit much.  We went and got the rest of the paint today and got about half of the blue painted. 

Painting the room was a fun thing, all of the boys were excited and wanted to "help" with each and every step.  Whilst I was shopping for supplies I swear I was inspired to pick up some watercolors for the Tyrant.  So while we were painting with the real latex paint, he used his water colors to decorate a wall we were not ready to paint yet.  I have hope that it might look nice when it is all finished.  I'll post pics when we get to that stage.

In other news, the Comedian was recognized by his Teacher as having "The PERFECT Paper" of the day.  He was so proud of himself.  The recognition was accompanied by a free certificate for a kids meal at Texas Roadhouse.  So that is where we went for lunch today.  I honestly was not impressed with the food but the atmosphere was nice and most importantly Mr. Comedian felt really great about himself.

Mr. DJMan is out again tonight.  He's playing for a small High School's Prom.  I'm glad he enjoys his second job and with all of the challenges lately the extra money will be nice but I really miss him when he's gone.

Please keep us in your prayers. . . .

Could it be that God loves broken things?

We are all pretty broken here.  Shattered into infinitesimal pieces.  Don't ask please. The details are not for public consumption.  If you need to know or we need you to know you already do.  Please love us through this, don't push, just know that we need prayers more than ever before.  Pray with us that God can make something greater than we can envision out of our brokenness.  Pray that we will keep praying and keep believing that He can lift us above all of this.  I thought I knew what hard was...but now I know that I had no idea.

Tents pitched for Conference 2010

This year with Conference falling on the same weekend as Easter we listened to the Saturday morning session on our way down for the family Easter pic-nic at Grandma's house.  On Sunday we once again pitched our small tent in the living room as we listened to our church leaders give us guidance and direction.  On Monday night, as has been our family tradition for the last 3 years, we discussed the messages we heard and came up with points that our family needs to remember and work on for the next 6 months.  Most of these points were generated by the Engineer and Comedian.

April 5, 2010
1.  Jesus can help us in hard times
2.  We pray for help.
3.  Momma and Papa take care of children
4.  We can repent from poor choices.
5. Jesus is my friend.
6.  CTR  (Choose the Right)
7.  Praying and reading scriptures help us keep the spirit close.

Mother Nature got in the Spirit of the day

Two weeks ago, I packed away all of our boots, coats, gloves, etc.  We had been having such nice weather that I thought surely our jackets and raincoats would see us through the rest of the springtime.  Little did we know that Mother Nature had taken note of April Fools Day this year.  We woke up to the following scene outside.

So I think that today Mother Nature definitely pulled off the biggest joke of all.