Wolf

Last night at Pack Night Kade was awarded his Wolf award. He also earned one gold arrowpoint and 3 silver arrowpoints. Today, I've spent the morning--during another thunderstorm--sewing on his various patches at last.

We are SO proud of Kade!

Rain

Sunday, soon after we arrived home from church, it began to rain. There were all sorts of weather warnings issued, and I am to understand these will persist throughout the season. The rain, accompanied by a great deal of noise, continued on through the night and into the following morning. Already you could see the damage to our muddy lot. These pictures were taken Sunday afternoon. The runoff covered a majority of our cul de sac.

Grass

These were taken last week. Already more grass has come in. Our place looks so different with all the green taking over. I love it!

Presents

The moment Kade arrived home from school he insisted it was time to open presents. He loved them all.

Happy Birthday, Kade!

Kade got to open one present before school. Riley was SO excited about picking this shirt out for him. Of course, he wore it to school. It says: The Perfect Day: Eat, Sleep, Video Games. The funniest part is that the guy is eating and sleeping while still playing video games... Kade loves it and insisted that really was the perfect day. :)

our home

We've been hard at work putting our home together...these are some of our latest improvements. The picture has been there from the beginning. Everyone who comes in comments on it. Chea did a fabulous job!

Although the garden looks small, please keep in mind our yard is simply huge. I did all that work yesterday afternoon. We planted our seeds inside--like you are supposed to. But, instead of coming up in 7-10 days...they were up with leaves in 3. AH! Pushed my time frame a bit, and now they are root bound and dying. It is probably still too early to plant here in Kansas, but they are going to die anyway right now. So, they lived through the night, and we are expected to enjoy thunderstorms for the next 3 days.

Milford Lake

Cory came for Easter. We all took an adventure up to nearby Milford Lake. The lake is quite a bit larger than we expected. It was quite chilly and the windy blew a lot...so we only got out once, but enjoyed quite a bit of scenery.

Purple Grass?

While Cory was here this weekend we did some yard work concentrating on our mudslide of a front yard. We shoveled quite a bit of mud out of the street back into our yard and replaced the straw barrier. Today--Monday--we returned from a trip "into town" (meaning we drove into a neighboring town to go to a mall and celebrate Kade's impending birthday), to discover this strange new color in our dirt. We only happened to notice because on our drive Riley noticed purple on the ground near a rural airport. I shrugged it off as some sort of flowering ground cover...perhaps a sort of flox... But, upon our return, we were astounded to see the same shade in our own yard.
What is it? Is it really purple grass? I know I planted some Kentucky blue-grass...but...

We were able to rake a portion of our yard, finally level the bench, and Cory got ambitious and built steps up to it. He also generously spread grass seed around and, remarkably, we seem to already have grass.

Doesn't the bench look wonderful? Thanks again!

brownies

We finally located all the items necessary for creating awesome brownies. Kade was quite helpful--in fact, he actually made the brownies. As a reward, he got to lick not only the beater, but the mixing bowl as well.

Greased Pig?

Although the pictures seems to speak for themselves...I shall explain...or at least try. Riley's skin was all dry and chapped, so I gave her a pot of this awesome Aquaphor stuff and told her to put it on. I failed to take into account the extremely viscous nature of the ointment in the pot...and this is the proud product. She had wonderfully soft, moist skin for several days following. I am happy to report that the shiny greasiness wore off by morning.

News from Kansas

Well, the good news is that we finally made it. For those of you who know more of the particulars, you may understand more fully just what a challenge our move turned out to be. But, we are here, our belongings have arrived, the kids are enrolled in school, and it snowed yesterday.

Kade and Riley love the house. The each have their own room and are currently trying to divvy up the remaining bathroom. They are just so excited! Kade went to scouts on Wednesday and says he really likes the boys in his pack. Riley has heard that ballet is offered in a nearby community and has plans to attend--I have yet to locate this establishment...

Our yard is seriously huge. Despite the builders putting down grass seed, it is still all dirt. The rain, snow, more rain, and more snow ended up washing a majority of the seed into the street. We have plans to lay out a garden area soon and have even begun nurturing seeds inside. (Apparently out here we have to get them started before we put them outside since we have to wait so long for the danger of a late frost to pass.)

As I have sat home and attempted to unpack our mess, I have discovered that we really do live in the middle of nowhere--even if there are a lot of other people who also live out here. When I finally located the TV's power cable, an old antenna, and the PS2--but no PS2 cord or controller (our DVD player)--I decided that we could scan for some local channels hoping PBS was among the free ones. To my astonishment, only one channel was found--and it wasn't PBS. We live so far from a real city that we can't pick up ABC, CBS or NBC. Obviously not PBS either. I even asked my neighbors when they were so kind as to introduce themselves. They confirmed it--no "local" channels out here.

I then discovered that my modem didn't speak the same language as the Kansas internet. I set to reprogramming it and finally succeeded just the other day. Hopefully I will be able to keep in touch better this way. I plan on posting more--when I actually have something to post about.

For now, I'd better get back to unpacking.