Storm Shots

We had a really quick - but powerful - storm blow through here tonight. The storm itself lasted maybe 15 minutes, but it was pretty brutal. I've seen reports of winds anywhere from 60-90mph in the area, but I'm not sure what we got right here where we are - all I know is that it was really windy for a short time.


We got off pretty easy here at our house. A few small branches, but nothing major. But when I looked out the side door, I saw that Nice Neighbor had some pretty big ones down in her driveway.  We waited until everything calmed down and then went outside and helped her drag it all to the curb.

Nice Neighbor's driveway.

Kind of hard to see, but this is everything that we dragged
out of her yard and over to the curb.

While we were standing in her driveway talking after we dragged everything to the curb, there was another loud crash from her backyard - we looked and there was an even bigger chunk of a tree that had just come down, so the kids helped me drag that around to the curb too.

After that, we headed off across town to check on The Dude and his mother to make sure that they were ok - and they were. They only had a few small branches down.

This one actually landed on his truck.

Down the street from The Dude.

Betting this guy is homeless right now.

Then we took off to go to another friend's house - I had seen pictures that she had posted on facebook and so we wanted to make sure that she was ok. She's fine, but her roof and porch have seen better days.

Notice how it landed in between the two houses?

Meanwhile, around town...

There's a boat under that tree too, along with the trampoline.

The calm after the storm....

After we got back home, I climbed up onto the garage roof to get the branches down from there. Unfortunately, I couldn't reach all of them so I'm going to have to get out there with the ladder tomorrow to get the rest of them down.

Just another day in the life around here....

You have reached Attitude Central.....

Ay yi yi.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these.

All I wanted to do today was go to the library to return the dozen or so movies that were due, maybe go to a park for a while, and then do some work in the yard. Easy right?

Ha.

They all woke up with attitudes. And I'm not talking just cranky or irritable or whatever. We're talking 5 full-blown selfish, picky, disrespectful, angry, antagonizing, vengeful, snotty attitudes.

I had told them what I wanted to do. They were excited about it for a few minutes. And then someone got cranky with someone else and it just went downhill from there. So I decided that they were going to do chores, and lots of them. And I told them that when they were done (to my satisfaction) then we would go to the library.

Both bedrooms got cleaned. Of course, there were a few temper tantrums involved. And maybe some yelling and stomping of feet. Those may or may not have come from me. But the bedrooms got cleaned. I straightened up the kitchen and bathroom at the same time. So at least things started to look better.

We did finally head off to the library - on foot. I thought that maybe getting them outside and into the nice fresh air would help.

Wrong.

They were still acting up at the library, so I grabbed a couple of movies for myself and we left - and the kids were empty-handed. They'll get over it.

We didn't go to a park, but instead went straight home, where I *thought* that I'd put them to work again.

My ghetto-riffic yard has been looking mighty, well, ghetto-riffic lately. I really wanted to get the area around and under the one front porch cleaned up today, so that was my main goal.

Those bushy things to the left are NOT supposed to be there. But they just keep coming back. I'm pretty sure that they'll survive any kind of apocalypse that may or may not eventually destroy the earth.

Make a mental note of that "gate" behind the downspout while you're looking at this picture.

When that gate was removed, this is what the area between the porch and the garage looked like.

Ew. Just, ew. I spent hours cleaning this out when we first moved in because it was just full of trash. But this is mainly stuff that I either didn't pick up the first time or stuff that the kids chucked down there, thinking that it would be funny.

Anyway, I got to work. It really wasn't as bad as I initially thought it was, but it was still a pain. I raked all of the crap out, tossed the garbage that I found into that box, and kept anything that was salvageable (basically the basketball and a birdhouse made out of a gourd). In the meantime, my neighbor came over and he helped me to get the leaves bagged up and out of there so it ended up looking pretty decent.

Oh and I decided I might as well clean out the gutters while I was out there getting filthy dirty anyway. It's not like it's a horrible job - jump up on the porch railing, over onto the garage, clean out maybe 10' of guttering, and hop back down. Although I do have to admit that I get some really funny looks from people as they're driving by the house and see me standing on the garage roof.

I just realized that I didn't get a good "after" picture from the front, but that's mainly because I was trying to escape from the conversation with the neighbor. He's a nice guy, but he can talk and talk and talk and talk.....and I really just wanted to get inside and get supper started because we still had a lot of stuff to get done.

In the meantime, Alex's father called and informed me that he was going to come get Alex for the night. Uh, hello? What happened to "I get my schedule on Thursday, so I can let you know then what my plans are for the weekend"? I not-so-politely reminded him that I need to know in advance when he wants to take him - I'm not going to sit around and wait for him to decide to show up, and it's too hard on Alex not to know what's going on, now that he's old enough to understand it.

Anyway, we finally got in and I got supper started and then Emily had to go to a costume birthday party - which I found out about LAST NIGHT. So she made the girl a present and we scrounged around for ideas for a costume and came up with something simple and cheap free. Would have been better with a football helmet, but it worked.

We took her to her party, and stopped at a little old cemetery that we drive past quite often. I knew that it was old, but I had no idea how old. So Sarah, Jared, Daniel, and I stopped and scoped it out. We want to go back with paper and crayons and do some rubbings because some of the stones were almost impossible to read.

Ex1 and I shifted some weekend time around so that he could take the kids on a camping trip in a couple of weeks, so I get the rare treat of taking the older three to my church tomorrow - they never get to go with me anymore, so I'm looking forward to it. I just hope that they all wake up in much better moods than they did today.



On a side (or bottom) note: it's 11:00pm, and I have a minimum of 3 loads of laundry left to do tonight. How does that happen?

Mechanic'n and Sewin'

You might remember a few weeks ago when Alex broke my van. I finally ordered the new piece that I needed to fix it after I gave up on trying to find one in a junkyard.

The nice shiny new part finally arrived today. I was a little hesitant about it, because it definitely did *not* look the same as the old one, but I was assured by the dealership that it would work, so I took it and headed home. Some friends had offered to come over this evening to help me replace it, because I knew that I was going to need a second set of hands to hold the weight of the van door while I switched the parts.

Anyway, I went outside early this afternoon and started messing around with it - I figured that I could get the job started, and then when they got there we could just finish it up and be done with it. While I was scoping out exactly what I needed to do, I heard a voice coming up from behind me. It was my neighbor's son - the one who came over a few months ago and cut down some of the annoying trees out in front of my house for me). Anyway, he asked what I was doing and I showed him, and then he yelled across the street to my other neighbor to come over and help, and between the three of us we got the part changed out in just a few minutes.

So I now have 2 fully functional sliding doors - and I will sell the next child who slams either one of them.

The majority of the day was spent doing laundry (*muttering under breath as I realize that I still have two loads of mine in the washer and dryer*) and cleaning and making supper and doing dishes and all of that fun stuff. But in between all of that I did manage to finish the other set of quilt blocks for the Christmas quilt block swap. I'm not completely crazy about this set, but that's typical. I never like my own stuff. LOL

Tomorrow is going to be a fun and crazy chaotic day. We have to all be up early so that I can drop Jared off with his father at 8:45 to do a Cub Scout thing, and then the girls are running in a 5K at 10:00 (I'm sitting this one out since I have Alex and Daniel with me). Then there are a couple of quilt shows that I'd like to go to, plus some friends are having a holiday open house for their Scentsy and Mary Kay businesses so I want to stop there. Alex's father is supposed to pick him up at 2:30 - we'll see how that goes. And I know that there was something else that I was supposed to do, but it's not in my datebook so if I forget something important, it's the datebook's fault. Uh huh. Yup.

I can blame the datebook, right?