Turtle Time

With the weather warming up, the girls have been so excited to discover the turtles again this year. We saw several turtles last summer in the yard and wondered if they'd show up again once it got warm enough. I wonder why we even have turtles around here -- don't they usually need some sort of water source?

Anyway, the girls just found their second turtle of the year and it instantly became their new pet. Of course, the turtle insantly hides in its shell the minute the girls pick it up.

They did discover that they could get the turtle to come out if they set it on top of the whirling air conditioner outside.

The new dimension to finding turtles this year is that we now have a dog. And that dog seems to be pretty intent on claiming turtles for her own (although I don't know how much she could actually hurt it...) So in order to try to keep the dog away from the turtle, the girls either lock up the dog in the fenced dog yard area, or they lock themselves in there with the turtle.

When I went out yesterday to see what they were up to, I discovered that they had set up quite the little habitat for their new turtle friend. The put the turtle in the wagon (to keep it from escaping) and added all sorts of things -- flowers, grass, rocks, dirt and especially some plastic turtle friends. One of these things is not like the others...

Today the dog did manage to get her jaws around the turtle and carried it off. I still don't know if the turtle survived the encounter. But fortunately, the girls had a new "pet" to entertain them for a while:

This little horned toad also managed to escape into the bushes before too long. I'm sure they will be searching for it (or other new friends) at the earliest opportunity! As long as they stay away from the snakes...

Butterfly Beginnings

For her birthday last January, Hannah received a butterfly "kit" -- a little habitat for hatching butterflies and a coupon to send off for some real-live caterpillars. Or "calapitters" as they're often called around here. We decided it was too cold to hatch butterflies in January (is "hatch" the right word? hmmm...) so we put it aside and almost forgot about it!

I came across the habitat cage the other day so we hurried and sent off for the caterpillars. They arrived in the mail on Monday and the girls were SO excited, to say the least!

The caterpillars are safe and snug in their jar of special caterpillar food and growing bigger every day! Here is the difference from Monday to Friday:

As soon as they form their cocoons on the lid of the jar, we can move them to the habitat and watch them transform. We can't wait!

Backyard Campers

Last weekend was the Father-Son campout. It was done on a stake level and held at one of the Boy Scout camps about 2 hours from here. (One of McKay's reasons for never being disappointed in having another sister was that he wouldn't have to share Dad on Father-Son campouts.)

McKay and Brian left Friday afternoon and the girls and I had a girl movie night (they picked "Sleeping Beauty"). The boys got rained on overnight and our older, smaller tent they took leaked so they got pretty wet. But they seemed to enjoy it nonetheless and didn't see too terribly miserable when they got home.

The wet tent got set outside to dry out and later on Saturday, McKay pulled Hannah outside to help him set it up again. They the two of them begged and pleaded and begged some more to be allowed to sleep outside in the tent. I was worried it might rain again or get too chilly, but we finally gave in to the begging.

Courtney begged too, but unfortunatley there was only enough room for two in this tent. So to help appease her, I suggested that she and Hayley could switch bunkbeds and sleep in Hannah and McKay's beds. They seemed satisfied with that compromise (whew!).

The two campers were so excited to go out to bed. They both were very well prepared with MP3 players, books, flashlights, etc.

I have no idea how late they stayed up, but we didn't hear from them during the night and they came in before 7:00am the next morning. I guess that's one advantage to camping in the backyard -- easy access to the comforts of home!

Sing, Sing

It's that time of year when we make multiple trips to the school to hear various musical performances. In the past couple of weeks, we've been to see Hannah in the 1st/2nd grade program and then to see Courtney sing with the Kindergarten at one of the weekly "Fab Friday" assemblies. (McKay's 3rd/4th grade program was back in November.)

The programs are cute and short and thankfully very low-stress for parents (no fancy costumes or lines to memorize).

Here is Hannah singing in her program:

And Courtney (in bright blue) singing "Guacamole!" with the kindergarten:

I have to add a little P.S. that I got a big kick out of watching Courtney and wished I had brought my video camera as well as the regular camera. She was certainly getting into the actions and swinging those hips!

Another Story by Hannah

Hmmm... it's been too long since I last posted, but there hasn't been an awful lot of excitement going on around here, so I thought I'd share another of Hannah's stories.

Here is Miss Hannah herself a couple of weeks ago, when she decided to make herself a "house" underneath the piano. (Notice she brought everything she could possibly need!)

She wrote this story quite a while ago and didn't finish it initially. When I asked her if she wanted to finish it, she said she would, but did the ending in a hurry.

So, without further ado, I present:

Ruby Rabbit Has Problems

by Hannah, age 8

She even made a back jacket page for it:

Ruby has problems. How will she solve them?

Once there was a kind rabbit named Ruby. Every day she went along her business. Mopping floors, helping neighbors, and taking care of herself.

Everything was fine, until! One day Ruby couldn't find her mop, wasn't taking care of herself so Ruby was very tired one day and didn't want to help her neighbors! All day she was very lazy. Ruby Rabbit has problems! Her neighbors would say.

One day bumble bee tried to help, by making her a new broom. But accidentally she spilled honey on it . Daisy Deer tried to help by offering Ruby a treadmill. But she used it too much and it ran out of power.

But Daisy Deer got Ruby some batteries and bumble bee mailed a broom. And Ruby got back on track.

The end

Even though her ending is a bit abrupt, I love the great message in her story! Take care of others and yourself too. (And what a problem to use a treadmill TOO much!)

In addition to writing stories, Hannah is also turning into quite the little artist these days. She is very good at looking at a picture in a book and trying to replicate it. She's also learned recently how to draw horses. Here are some pictures she recently brought home from school.

I can't wait to discover what other talents this girl has to share with us!

It's Warming Up

A sure sign of warmer weather:


Lots more time being spent outdoors!

I swear, we scrubbed and scrubbed this little girl's feet last night and we still couldn't get all the dirt off. I think she will have permanent dirt the whole summer...

Windmill Progress

I thought it was time to give a little progress report on the windmill project. Brian's parents have been here the last two weeks (they just left yesterday) so his dad could work more on the windmill. It has turned into quite a big project (as usual)!

There has been lots and lots of welding, steel cutting and grinding, searching the salvage yard for pipes, ordering special bolts, etc.

They attached the hydraulic rams briefly in the shop to make sure it all fit together.

This is the bottom section (on its side) with some big bolts they had to have specially made.

On Friday, they moved the two big pieces out of the shop. This is the support section:

And this is the main center tower minus the top section (Brian had to provide some counterweight on one end as they moved it).

On Saturday morning, while I was gone to a Primary meeting, they used a rented extending fork lift to raise the support poles into the previously anchored base piece.

They decided to wait until the concrete was poured before trying to set the center tower into position. This is what is in the hole -- the concrete will fill up to the base plate.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time and Brian's parents needed to go back home. I'm not sure how much Brian will get done on his own, but we'll keep plugging away!

Happy Easter

Easter celebrations at our house this year were a little quieter than usual. We didn't even get an egg hunt in for the kids. In the past, we've had either a ward, community or extended family egg hunt to participate in. The Saturday before Easter was a very rainy day, so we didn't even want to try to go outside and even do a small hunt here. Oh well -- it's not like they needed all the extra candy. (And, the girls did have their own "hunts" inside for several days prior to Easter once I got out the box of plastic eggs -- they put everything from Cheez-It crackers to tiny toys inside the eggs to hide them for each other.)

We did manage to dye eggs on Saturday. The kids had fun doing that, and Hannah was SO excited that we were going to make deviled eggs out of them for Sunday dinner. (And she certainly ate more than her share of them too!)








The Easter Bunny found our house and the notes the girls left with their requests. (Since when do kids leave notes for the Easter Bunny?) Hannah set out a little bead rabbit she had made with her "Pix-O" beads and her note said she would give it to the Easter Bunny in exchange for a whole box of Peeps. The Easter Bunny took the bead bunny and left her two extra Peeps instead of a whole box.



Peeps are a definite favorite of the girls (but not me -- ugh!)


This year the kids got big chocolate bunnies in their baskets for the first time. In past years, they've gotten a toy of some kind, but I think the Easter Bunny decided they had enough toys (either that or he was too busy to shop around much...)

The other tradition we didn't do this year was get new Easter dresses for the girls (or a new tie for McKay). I have enjoyed finding matching (or similar) dresses for the girls in the past, but it just didn't happen this year. I was a little sad, but I suppose I could look at all the money I saved! So instead Courtney and Hayley wore some past Easter dresses (worn initially by Hannah and Courtney) and Hannah wore the dress she had last year.


We hope everyone out there had a Happy Easter too!

What Next?

I guess it's time for the latest damage report. (Sigh.)

We've had a couple more days of pretty ferocious wind. Last Thursday, the wind was howling away again and Brian headed back up on the roof to try to save more shingles from flying off. I heard the nail gun going for a while, but then I heard a big thud. That didn't sound right, so I hurried outside and ran as fast as I could around to where Brian was (and the wind was trying to blow me the opposite direction, so it was hard to go fast!).

I looked up and saw Brian hanging on to a big chunk of something -- I didn't know what it was at first. He hollered down that it was part of the chimney and that it had glanced off his back as it fell. He was able to tie a rope around it and we lowered it down along the ladder.

Here is a picture of the chimney "before," just after we lost some shingles on that section:


And here is the chimney "after," when Brian was covering up the damaged area with some plastic because the rain was coming:


And this is the piece that fell off (I put Hayley in the picture to get a better idea of how big it is):


It's mostly concrete and quite heavy! Brian thinks that the mortar was just old and loose and so the strong winds were able to knock it off.

As I mentioned, we also had some rain -- our first real thunderstorm since we started this project. It rained pretty hard yesterday and we even had some small hail for a short time. There was only one section of leaks (which Brian wasn't surprised by) -- where the old roof meets the new roof and hadn't been completely sealed yet. But I don't think we had too much water damage from that.

I think we're all wondering now, "what next?" Personally, I'm hoping for some sunny, calm days!

Wicked Weather

This Amarillo wind is nothing if not relentless. We survived a couple of days of pretty strong winds, but then last Saturday came upon us. Our area was under a "High Wind Warning" as well as a "Dust Storm Warning" (which we knew thanks to our trusty weather radio). When they said high wind, they weren't kidding. (And there was a pretty big wreck on the freeway due to a huge dust storm that caused it to be closed for quite a while.)

I think the official report from the Amarillo Airport was a top wind speed of 64mph. Brian thinks we had gusts higher than that here at our house (which sits up on a ridge). The couple of times I stepped outside, I felt like I could have been back in Houston in the middle of a hurricane (minus the rain).

Unfortuantely, our roof suffered more damage. We lost more shingles off the new section, but then parts of the old (existing) roof began to come flying off. This was a part of the roof that no one had even touched with all of our remodeling efforts (and this house is about 10 years old).

Brian felt it necessary to get up on the roof and try to save it from further damage. (I'll admit this makes me very nervous and worried.) The first time, his ladder got blown over and he said he was even contemplating jumping down until I happened to go outside to check on him and found him trapped. I couldn't lift the ladder back up by myself in the ferocious wind, so I got McKay to help me and the two of us barely managed to get it back up. (After that, Brian anchored the ladder to the house and tied a rope around himself.)

He nailed down some plywood over the old section that was coming apart (we will probably make an insurance claim at this point).


Our yard is now strewn (again) with shingles:


When he wasn't out trying to save the roof, Brian was up in the new section trying to brace the walls and roof better from the inside. He said the wall that was taking the brunt of the wind felt like it was just bending all over the place. But we figured that, barring an actual tornado, this might be the worst the wind gets, so if it held up this weekend, it ought to be pretty secure.


Starting Saturday night, our power would intermittently go out for a few seconds at a time. This happened all night long and into Sunday morning, until it went out for good shortly after the morning session of General Conference started. Brian was able to pull over the generator from the shop so we could watch the afternoon session huddled up in our blankets to stay warm. Our power came back on later that evening, but then the phone lines were down. We found out that the power pole at our nearest neighbor's house had an insulator wire come loose and hang down. The wind was then blowing it into the ground wire, shorting it for a few seconds before it would swing back. (Or something like that -- I'm not sure I understood all the details.) We're fortunate there wasn't a fire started or that we didn't have any major damage to our appliances.

The joys of weather and "country living"!