The Great Flood of 2013

So you may have noticed (if you actually read this) that I missed last Sunday. I'm trying to blog once a week, but last week just didn't cooperate. I won't bore you with the details, but feel free to blame an 11:00 church time and Sunday family time, which forced us to DVR the Broncos game, which forced us to watch it later, which forced me to not want to log onto the internet in case I inadvertently found out the results of the game. We do have PFM (Peyton Freaking Manning), who is somewhat popular...

Anyhoo, back to reality...

If you've lived under a rock you may not have heard that Colorado received a touch of moisture recently. If you don't live under a rock then you may have heard about it and seen a few photos.

Our experience certainly wasn't as dire as some. We're fortunate that our house is built into the top of a hill (or knoll?) so all the water runs down and away from the house. Doug had recently cleaned out our gutters too so it wasn't really an issue, and our roof is newish so we had no leaks.

So the rain started coming down on Tuesday, September 10th, right after the kids and I got home from the school. The boys enjoyed it that evening.

As soon as rain starts falling the boys usually head out to the trampoline. It really poured that afternoon for quite some time. Wednesday we had more rain pretty much most of the day.

Thursday is really when things started becoming a problem. It was still raining when we got up that morning. It was coming down fairly hard. About halfway to the kids' school (it's a 20 minute drive) traffic slowed down to a crawl. We crept along until I saw what I thought was the reason for the delay. The light at one of the major intersections we go through was not working so we were all four way stopping it, which takes forever. Then I saw WHY the lights probably weren't working. The whole intersection was pretty much flooded, especially the right two lanes on each side. One car was even sitting off to the side completely abandoned. I slowly went through the intersection realizing I'd have to find another way home. (They closed the intersection not long after I went through.) The kids were of course late for school, but like an idiot I left them at school anyway instead of just bringing them home and came home via an alternate route.

It continued to rain most of the day so I left really early to go pick up the kids. I needed to put gas in the van and I didn't know how long it would take me to get there. I went back to the school the way I'd come home, which may not have been the best idea. That road was quite flooded too. At one point I drove through a river flowing across the road that hadn't been there that morning. Sorry, guys, no pictures. I don't have a fancy smart phone that takes great photos.

I did get to the school early, and thankfully they were letting us take kids home early. While inside getting the kids another parent told me that the road I'd just come on was closed now because of the flooding so I had to find a THIRD way home, which turned out to be a blessing. It was a pretty good way to come home.

School was canceled on Friday, though I probably would have kept my kids home anyway if the rain was still falling. Friday we didn't get too much more rain, but Saturday it kicked into gear again. I was home so I took more pictures with our camera and even made a video for your watching enjoyment... The hail was insane.

Here's the video of the road outside our backyard. It turned into a complete river during Saturday's storm.

The biggest damage we suffered was to our garden.

Here's a before and an after pic.

 (Yes, it's growing in a swimming pool.)

Truth be told, losing the zucchini plant wasn't such a hardship. That plant just wouldn't stop producing.

Anyway, the storm wasn't as fun as the blizzard of 2003 when we got 3 feet of snow and Doug got to stay home from work while we watched March Madness. Mary was about 7 months old and I wasn't working yet so it was a fun mini vacation from work for Doug. However, it will be years before we forget this storm too.

The Day Finally Came

Alex got his cast off on Tuesday! He was super excited. That cast had been driving him crazy for too long. It was actually on for a bit longer than necessary because we could not get an appointment any sooner.

I forgot to take a picture while they were actually cutting the cast off, but here are the pictures we did take.

The guy who cut the cast off asked Alex if he wanted to keep it, and of course he did because we can't turn down free junk to clutter up the house, right??

Our appointment was over so quickly that we took a few minutes to look around Children's Hospital. This is a model of the hospital made entirely out of Legos. Alex was fascinated. We didn't get to look around the back side too much because there was a group getting a camera set up for some sort of photo shoot for something. 

They also have this AMAZING marble track there. Sorry for the glare off the plexiglass case. The marbles were pretty big, maybe slightly smaller than a ping pong ball. 

Marbles will fall onto that yellow square below and bounce up into the basket thing above and then roll down through the snake's body. 

The ape's arms move back and forth to push the marbles around until they go into the hole.

Before I took him back to school we went to get a few more supplies for the pinewood derby that's happening a couple days from now. (The plan is to post pictures of that here next Sunday.) Then I took him back to school. We had a pretty fun little date.

Things I've learned from school...

as an adult...

School started Monday.

Don't those boys just look cute! I don't remember teaching my two oldest how to use a belt, but Adam needed a few lessons. I guess I forgot about teaching a child to get dressed. Adam has to wear his belt backwards. They have to have black, brown, navy, or white belts to go with the uniforms, but I couldn't find one in any of those colors for Adam. Fortunately, I noticed that a black belt with a big yellow stripe in the middle was reversible and plain black on the back.

This guy's in 3rd grade this year. And he's DYING to get that blasted cast off his arm. Tuesday morning after Labor Day is the big day!!

Technically I didn't take Mary's first day of school picture until Friday after school. It just sort of never happened. Of course by then I made some attempt to be "pinteresty" and told her to hold up six fingers to show she was in 6th grade. That's as good as it gets peeps! Truth be told I'm COMPLETELY intimidated by pinterest so I avoid it at all costs. (Don't try to change my mind. Your attempts will be fruitless.)

Here's Mary with her acceptance letter for student council. She decided to "try out" for that this year. They don't actually have elections. You just write an essay for the teachers in charge and they select five or six per grade from 5th through 8th grades. (Yep, their school is K-8.)

Here's the second thing I learned about school. The teachers promised if the kids are good they'll get to put on a dance at the end of the year. That's when it dawned on me that my daughter is now old enough for middle school and middle school means things like dances. (Yikes!) On the plus side, Mary didn't want them to have a dance because she didn't want to have to go on a date. I did explain that only on TV do you NEED a date for a middle school dance and that she could just go have fun with her friends. (Yes, I'm aware she'll be 16 in a mere 5 years and will then be allowed to date.)

I couldn't find the school lunch menu online before the first day of school so I made a lunch for all the kids. So the third thing I learned is that I should have done a better job of explaining school lunch to Adam. I shouldn't have assumed he knew what was going on. When I picked him up on Monday he said, "Mom, not everyone takes their lunch to school. Some kids get hot lunch. And when you get hot lunch you get fish!" He was really excited to eat hot lunch on Tuesday until he realized they don't have fish sticks every day. Tuesday's chili wasn't as exciting to him. Later in the week while we were eating dinner he asked why we hadn't had lunch. I told him he had it at school, but he informed me that's not "real lunch." Apparently it's only real lunch if it's at home with me. So we had a little date at Target, and he got a cookie as big as his face!

I also learned that switching from half a day preschool to full day kindergarten didn't make Adam sleepy. Nope, his tiredness manifests itself as ANGER, ANGER, ANGER, and more ANGER. Let's hope that settles down. I had to bribe him with a donut from the 6th grade fundraiser to get him to go on Friday!

Well here's hoping for a good year!!

P.S. I also learned that the backspace button on my laptop is threatening to die. Maybe I use it too often??

Mary's Birthday

We celebrated Mary's birthday this week. It's hard to believe she's 11!

The Friday before her birthday we invited a friend over and went swimming and then had pizza and cake. We had a great time. The pool wasn't very busy either.

Birthday balloons have become a tradition in our family. Dollar Tree's totally the place to go! The star shapes also last better than round. Not sure why, but it's true. 

Mary combined a gift card she got from her friend with the money from us and her grandparents and bought "Heartlake High." It's one of the Lego Friends sets. She ADORES Lego Friends sets. The fun thing about this set is that it can hook onto her "Olivia's House" set that she already got for Christmas. You make each little room in a block and then can put it on however you want so she made a castle for a while and called it Hogwarts. It was pretty cute.

Mary originally wanted to make a swimming pool cake like we've made for her before. You basically make a white rectangle cake, cut out the middle, and put blue jello in there so it looks like a pool. Things didn't quite work out as planned with the cake, and the middle was going to be the best part so we decided to cut off the worst edge and turn it into a beach cake instead. It turned out pretty cute actually and much easier than the pool version anyway.

I was a little disappointed in myself for the way I cut out part of the cake where the "water" was supposed to be, but it turned out pretty cool. The ocean floor isn't exactly smooth and level either.

I used a recipe for pudding frosting that I found a few months ago. I found it when I was desperate for Adam's birthday in March when I discovered I was nearly out of powdered sugar in the middle of a snowstorm. I used vanilla pudding but put a bit of cocoa powder in it and crushed up chocolate cookie crumbs so it would look more like sand for the beach. It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. I let Mary put on all the swimming gummy bears in their life gummy saver life preservers or on their fruit by the foot towels.

In case anyone's interested, here's the recipe for the pudding frosting. It came from Kraft's website. My hubby's not a big fan of cake, but he actually helps us eat the cake when I use this frosting.

1 package (3.9 oz) instant pudding
1 cup cold milk
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tub (8 oz) Cool Whip

Beat pudding mix, milk, and sugar with whisk for 2 min. Stir in Cool Whip.

Balloon Festival

The first weekend in August we took a VERY quick trip to Craig, CO. Doug did most of his growing up there, and his mom still lives there. His mom arrived for a visit the last day or so in July on her way home from visiting her siblings in Illinois. We decided to drive her home because Craig was having their annual balloon festival over the weekend.

We took off early Friday afternoon after I finished my work for the day.

The trip turned out MUCH longer than we planned. Mary needed a few stops. She hasn't been carsick in a while, but it came back with a vengeance. So we took a little walk while we waited for her dramamine to work. We walked until we saw roadkill ahead and then turned back.

We finally made it by 8:00 and had dinner. Then it took forever to get the kids settled for bed. Shocking, right? Kid can't settle down on a road trip? I'm sure that never happens to anyone else, right?

We got to bed insanely late and then had to get up early to see the balloons. We missed the actual launch, but we saw some of them in the air.

After the balloons launched they had some other activities at the park. The kids' favorite was the bouncy castle slide. 

Craig has a wood carving festival earlier in the year. Some of the carvers were selling their work and doing a little demo. These welcome bears were ADORABLE.

Of course here's what I want to put out for the sales people who come by the house, especially those pesky siding salesman. No, I can't afford it, and no, I'm not willing to finance it.

The local fire department brought one of the trucks out for kids to "tour." The kids really enjoyed that. 

They also got to do some art. Unfortunately, Mary's the only one we got a picture of. I was frankly surprised Alex even wanted to do it. He's not big on art. Adam as usual painted a picture of angry birds and pigs, his favorite things to draw. He's really getting quite good at it.

So after hanging around the festival for a few hours on Saturday we started the drive home. Fortunately the trip didn't take us as long as the trip to Craig. Mary learned a new trick to take her dramamine. She takes a drink of soda, puts the pill in, and then swallows them together.

It Turns Out

I really don't like camping...

Of course I didn't realize that until AFTER  we attempted to go camping this week.

It was okay the first hour or two while we were getting the tent set up and starting to get our hobo dinners all wrapped up and ready to throw into the fire.

Then a wasp decided he really liked hanging around the picnic table.

After finally getting rid of the wasp (there may or may not have been fire involved and a bag of potato peels) the rain came down

and down

and down

and then turned to hail

and then came down some more

and some more

and some more...

Our fire seemed to be out COMPLETELY.

So as we took shelter in the tent we decided to eat the chips and bagels that were supposed to be part of breakfast and lunch for the next day.

Of course somehow our fire managed to reignite itself after the storm finally stopped. So we roasted some marshmallows and made smores and then went to bed.

After playing around a little the next morning we packed up and came home even though we'd planned to stay another night. I never regretted it, especially when the rain storms hit again that evening after we'd come home.

It's nice to have my own bed and above all my own bathroom. No matter how dirty I let it get, it doesn't hold a candle to the nastiness of an outdoor toilet at a campground...

On the plus side, the sign at the campground said the "host" would come by to collect our camping fee, and he never did so we got to camp for free.

So here are the highlights...

The highlight for the kids was this bridge across the creek. Adam could hardly make it across without holding my hand the first time, but after a while he was running across like a pro. They played the "grumpy old troll" from Dora the Explorer fame and "Temple Run" across the bridge. 

Not sure why the rocks in the creek are orange.

When I woke up in the morning I discovered why the tent was so cold. Alex had gotten up in the middle of the night and opened the window of the tent.