When Life Gives You Lemons...Make Tree Caves

Last week Evus woke me up in the middle of the night because there was a storm outside and he thought we should probably check the radar because the wind and rain were whipping the house pretty good.  We got up and I sat down to the computer and just then something like a microburst must have swept over our house...the wind accelerated and roared and then we heared a snap and some metal thrashing sound...WE PANICKED!  I thought a tree was falling on the house, Evus thought the shed by our house was being blown away.  We both ran to the kids' room and grabbed them and ran downstairs.  We slept the rest of the night down there and it took a while for both of us to calm down enough to go to sleep...

In the morning this is what we found:

So we were both right...kind of, and not nearly as dramatic as it seemed in the middle of the night when your half asleep.  BUT when life gives you lemons you make lemonade and when big mean storms break off tons of branches from the trees around your house...you make TREE CAVES!!!

Introducing the best new buddy of my two little boys: Little Miss (or that is what we will call her on this blog, because she is the perfect little girl with the sweet yet spicey attitude that my boys just don't know what to do with half the time)  I am amused watching them interact with her and they look forward to playing with her and want to do it EVERY DAY, which I am a-okay with!!! :) --P.S. her mom and little brother are pretty awesome too so I am pretty much so thankful to have a wonderful new friend myself.

 It didn't take long before my boys decided this was a perfect set up to play "Big Bad Wolf".  Little Miss became the little Piggy and Willard became the Big Bad Wolf.  Here you  can see him blowing down the house of sticks.  (Porky is just an innocent bystander in this one I guess)

 And what fun is it to build something if you can destroy it afterwards, and that is exactly what they attempted to do with their blue bat.  Here Little Miss is explaining to Willard that ladies go first (he wanted to destroy it first or not destroy it at all, but the girl won out!)

I need to listen to my heart...

So, when we told Evus' grandma that we were thinking of going to Nebraska she got so excited and reminded us that we have a lot of extended family in Nebraska.  Now that we are here we've had a chance to spend some time with that extended family.

This past weekend we made the trek over to visit and to find housing for this fall.  We got to meet most of the family as everyone was in town for the 4th.  We had so much fun joining in on their festivities.  The entire idea of joining a party of people that you have never met and just being part of the gang is kind of crazy.  But with family that is how it goes and we felt so included and loved and that made it a lot easier to be away from our own parents and syblings on the holiday.

 These are our newfound aunts (actually, they are my hubby's 1st cousins once removed...but Aunts seems for fitting and definitely easier to say)

 Here our little porky is with his new found cousin and neither of them thought I was at all worth smiling at :(

 Our boys LOVED that everyone had dogs and Porky chased this poor thing around all day! 

 What would the 4th of July holiday be without a gigantic waterslide!!!  Made me miss home and my dad's amazing Walrus-Slide abilities...

These guys went all out on fireworks and our boys loved chasing the (seemingly millions of) parachutes that they shot off...it was amazing and so fun to watch.

 They also did a big pop-rock (is that what they are called...ya know the ones you throw down...) and sparkler fest in the driveway for the kids and our boys were in heaven!

 And a super balloon toss.  Willard and Evus got in on the action.

 It also just so happened that we had other distant relatives from Idaho who were visiting our family in Nebraska at the same time.  We didn't know them before but we sure do now!  Funny that we had to travel to Nebraska to do that...

 We stayed with these fine people and their two lovely dogs.  I guess we would be 2nd cousins...but they treated us like royalty and our boys were in heaven with their two dogs.  They loved their amazing train sets too! We had so much fun just visiting and hearing about all their adventures and they told us all about the town and what there is to do.  It made me so excited to move closer and get to explore more.

 On our last day in the big city Evus had to go to Campus for his grand tour and so the boys and I escaped to the Zoo!

So, you may have been wondering where the title of this post came from.  We got home from our trip and that night Willard came our of his room and we had the following dialogue:

Willard: Mom, I need to follow my heart
Me: um...what does your heart tell you
Willard: uh, that I need to clean my room, and go to bed...and 1 sleep and then I can see Pat and Tuney...and go to Idaho too...then I can listen to my heart.

Who are Pat and Tuney you may ask?  They are two of his newfound Aunts that he got to know on our trip, but he actually uses their names to refer to any and all of the people we met while visiting.  So what was he saying?  He was saying that his heart wanted to go back to be with family--and while he was thinking about it, his heart was telling him to go to Idaho too because in Idaho he is surrounded by family.

Isn't that so true!  It is just good for our hearts to be surrounded by people who love us and a little child is so intune with his little heart to recognize that he is happiest when surrounded by family.   I thought it was a sweet moment.  I wish we could clean our room, go to bed for 1 sleep and then be surrounded with the ones we love but even if it takes longer than that I am just so grateful to have great family and we can't wait to be surrounded by family again, hopefully soon.

What We've Been Up To...Continued

Nothing says Nebraska like "Runza", just like Artic Circle is "so Idaho".  Evus and I were  amazed when we got here that anyone would name a fast food chain "Runza"...like it would give you the "Runza"--Nasty!!!

But everyone has told us its really good and so we finally decided to try it out:

 The concensus: Pretty dang good for fast food...my only complaint is the lack of "fresh ingredients"..."like a salad"  I would have liked a tomato and lettuce on my burger, is what I'm trying to say by quoting Nacho.

 In our neck of the woods they celebrate Nebraskaland Days, which is a pretty big deal, with lots of events...but its basically a great big drinking fest and we don't drink...so not so eventful for us.  But we decided to go have a picnic at the park and check out the parade

 The parade was complete with the "One Armed Bandit" and "Buffalo Bill", the boys loved the tractors, horses and candy the most.  We picked an interesting location (bleachers set up for the local liquor store...we didn't know that at the time), but we had some interesting company and were glad to leave when it was over (it was a two hour parade) and most people around  us weren't drinking lemonade...

 After two hours of parade the boys were ready to be done too!  They fell asleep in their carrying packs on the way back to the car.  Willard didn't even wake up when we got him down and into the car.

 That afternoon we had a pretty good storm and a lovely rainbow...

And it looks like the pot of gold is in the UNL work shed...and I thought it was full of seeds and pesticides...

This is the tail-end of the storm and I have never seen a sky like this.  I took three pictures and stuck them together to show the full view.  Evus and I both ran out into the corn field to check it out.

 While we were out in the corn, our boys escaped outside too and we found them out back.  Willard decided to borrow some of daddy's shoes.

We had a lot of fun celebrating Father's Day.  We made a tie for daddy to wear to church that said "#1 BEST Daddy!" and the boys painted a rock for daddy to put on his desk at work that says "Our Daddy Rocks!"  I made Evus lasagna:

 And Willard and Porky helped me make Chocolate Cake for daddy and they did a great job!  The boys had a lot of fun eating cake and blowing bubbles in their milk...how could I stop them, it looked like so much fun!

 Even daddy got in on the action!  Happy Father's Day Honey!  I love you!

What We've Been Up To...

Wow, I am behind on blogging.  Mostly because I've been sick for the past month.  But despite sickness we have been able to do some fun things.  Evus took a trip to the Winter Quarters Temple a few weekends ago with the youth, and while he was gone we went to the local park and spent some of the money great grandpa gave the kiddos while we were in Idaho.  They LOVED the Choo Choo and had fun on the Horsie Ride.

 Most of the past month we have spent at home.  I love my home!!!  I love that I have a shady front porch and lots of land for the boys to run on. The pictures below show some of our favorite past times. 

The boys love having lunch out on the porch, especially since Grandma G and Mommy found them a little Tupperware Tea Set--I seriously almost sobbed when I found this set at a thrift store for a couple bucks.  I had this exact same set when I was a little girl and I LOVED it!!!  And they are boy colors so its completely cool for them to use them :) 

 The added bonus: my kids have a hard time drinking water, they always want milk or juice.  I only let them use water in their tea set and consequently they will drink a ton of it as long as they get to use their little cups.

 The latest source of amusement is the kiddy pool (They call it the blue bath)!  They love it and I love watching them.  They love to water the trees and flowers with their buckets.

 The other day I had the boys help me weed some flower beds on the side and back of the house.  They were very good helpers for most of it, but after while they lost interest and dissappeared to the front of the house.  It was really silent after awhile and I decided I had better go see what mischief they were into...I found them like this:

 They were just chilling in their lawn chairs watching the tractors go by...I guess I wore them out :) 

As for me, I have enjoyed working on my yard when I've felt up to it.  It helps me feel better when I get discouraged and I always think of my grandma when I go change the sprinklers or just stand with my arms behind my back and inspect my flowers.  I love it!

By the way, I haven't heard the corn growing yet...but it is growing!

We got to meet our family from Nebraska this month for lunch!  We are excited to live closer to them this fall so we can get to know them better.  Isn't family great!