Flooding and Other Spring Adventures

To celebrate our elementary school's 25th anniversary, we held a bike parade. Here is Michael with our guest judge, Miss Frizzle. Not shown was his awesome scooter expertly decorated for the event.  Poor Sadie was going to participate, but got sick. :(

Joseph's cure for every boo-boo is an ice pack. Apply for 5-20 seconds, until the chill factor outweighs the pain factor. Problem solved!

After an unusually dry, warm winter, we have had an unusually cool, wet spring. A week after Matt (and others from local congregations) helped out flood victims in East Texas, he was at it again in our very own neighborhood.  A bizarre storm hit the area and dumped 18 inches of rain in one night. The lightning struck every two seconds the whole night (that is not an exaggeration!), thunder boomed incessantly and there were several tornadoes close by. The river that flows near our house, Cypress Creek, overflowed like it never has before and lots of homes flooded.

 Above is a picture of the park at the south end of our neighborhood . It was totally covered in water. (For perspective, the normal banks of the river are nearly a half-mile from here. It went from a 30-foot-wide river to a 3,000-foot-wide river overnight.)  We had friends who were trapped in their homes for nearly a week. We were bringing food to them door to door in boats. School was cancelled for the week since there were lots of families trapped, lots of roads under water, and lots of people cleaning out flood-damaged homes. It was pretty crazy.  Thankfully, we were on the other, higher end of the neighborhood, so we didn't have any problems and were able to help others who weren't so fortunate.

This is a picture of the LDS temple near our house.  The grounds are adjacent to the flooded river, but miraculously, no water got inside the building. Like an island, it stood as a beacon of hope above the floodwaters.

One side effect of all the rain has been lots of mud in the back yard. I tried keeping the kids inside for a few days, then finally gave in and let them out. Children are washable, after all.

Since Michael turned eight, he has joined cub scouts and proudly wears his scout uniform to his weekly meetings.What a handsome guy!

Here we are at Michael's first cub scout pinewood derby.  Dad was out of town, so Poppie stepped in to help carve and paint the car, and Uncle Stephan came to help with last minute prep.

Michael's car, the black and white one at the end, had an excellent showing, coming in fourth place!  Good job, men!

And, of course, we had to celebrate by going out for ice cream.

Adelaide celebrated her preschool field day last week.

Also last week, Michael, along with all the other GT kids, presented his independent research project that he has been working on all year. Michael chose to study space and, specifically, the Mars Rover project. Here he is showing off his model of the Sojourner Rover and his power point presentation.

Sadie has finally learned to climb the "big tree" in the front, and she is very proud of herself.

Adelaide has learned to climb the "little tree" on the side of the house, and she is also very proud of herself.

And here I am, with six weeks to go before another little girl joins the family....I wonder if she will turn out to be half monkey like all her siblings.

And here are all four of our beautiful kiddos patiently posing for Mom. I love these sweet kids so much!!!