Stormy Days

I've always liked storms.  At least as far as I can remember.  I like the sounds of rain and thunder and the sight of lightning.  Pretty awesome displays of the power of MY God.  Rainy days make great sleepy reading days...though I don't have those as much anymore with the girls running around.  I can remember being frightened (only a little as best as I can remember) as a little girl a few times when we lived in TX.  A lot of the volunteer firemen and their families gathered at the fire station to ride out the really bad ones together.  The men would stand outside and watch the crazies speeding to their destination and watch the storm roll in.  Of course, they made the women and children hide out inside.  There was one Hispanic woman I remember who would always be hiding behind a mattress praying.  I'm thinking she had been through some rough ones.  Hurricane Opal came through my hometown in Alabama in my early teens.  I remember Daddy going outside and thinking he was going to get knocked out by a flying black walnut.  We had SO many trees that fell, one on our well-loved trampoline, and one on Daddy's little brown Toyota, and 18 or so others, but none on the house.  Amazing!  At FC, a hurricane came through.  My friend, Marla and I still trudged through it to the cafeteria.  Me, for food, she to see her then boyfriend :)  I'm not sure that was about liking the storm, but more about wanting some food!  These days, even though I am a mother, I still enjoy storms.  Thunder is God moving His furniture around.  Lightning is His flashlight while He is camping.  I just think that God will take care of us.  I don't think I am invincible.  Just that if He is calling me/us home, there's no stopping Him.  Today was supposed to be pretty nasty.  Basements here are few and far between.  We don't really have an interior room.  So, we made a fort in the hallway/bath area out of our mattress and lots of pillows, in case we needed to take cover.  However, we got a beautifully, sunny day.  Late in the afternoon, it got really windy and blew in some clouds.  We did finally get some rain about 6:30, but nothing bad.   

Storms: Love 'em, hate 'em, in between?

In other news, the girls finished up their ear infection meds so hopefully we are all better.  We all still have sinus drainage, sore throats, and coughs, but I think that's just a result of the odd weather and temperature changes.  Autumn has cut all four of her molars now.  She has been sleeping better it seems.  We also stopped playing music for her.  Adam decided that may have been waking her in the mornings and I think perhaps he was correct.

Here's a picture of Autumn in a dress my dad's mom made...for my aunt, I think, who is 40ish!  Still looks dandy I think :)  

This is Chloe "pretending" to curl her hair.  Maybe I should try it one day soon!  She'd look good with curly hair.  

My DONE list has gotten a little longer.  I've:

Gone through the closet storing games and other odds and ends  

(when I finished that closet, Chloe said, "oooh, Mama, that looks nice."

Completely organized the large shelf in our bedroom

Cleaned off the top of the dryer

Cleaned both w/d

Organized shelf of cleaning supplies

This week is supposed to be nice, so I hope to get lots of yard work done.  I did mow our front and side yards for the first time on Thursday.  It didn't look too bad, but I wanted to get the remainder of the leaves up before they killed the grass.  Thursday the girls helped me sand and wash our front door in preparation for PAINT!  That's my project for tomorrow.  I'm pretty excited about it!  Hope it looks as I envision :)