Easter

Sorry Mom-- this is the best I can come up with for pictures from Easter!

Even though it was chilly, the sun was shining (which surprisingly doesn't happen all that often here!), the baskets were filled, the trees were blooming, the music was uplifting and the message was glorious... He is Risen... Alleluia!!

Giant hail

So, last weekend brought some severe weather to the Atlanta area. Because we are sound sleepers (and Michael sleeps with the bathroom fan on!), we never heard the round of severe storms that went through on Friday night. We did, however, get to experience the full glory of the Saturday storms. Let's just say, I am so thankful that we live in a house with a basement... I would have hated for my kids to have had to spend their entire Saturday in a bathtub with a mattress over their heads. As it was, we spent a fair amount of our day huddled in the playroom 'puppet theater' (it's under the stairs) surrounded by all manner of blankets and pillows-- and because Glenn Burns (the local weatherman) said so, my children were also decked out in their bicycle helmets (okay, okay-- it seemed like a good idea at the time!!).


We were blessed not to have endured any damage whatsoever considering the size of the hail that we found in our yard after one 'wave' of the storms passed through...

(As a side note, I just figured out I can click and drag to move pictures when I am composing a post instead of the tricky cutting and pasting of html code-- woohoo!!)

This would be considered golf-ball to tennis ball sized hail according to the meteorologists. All I know is it is the largest, funkiest looking hail I have ever seen in my life. I'm especially partial to the one that looks like a sunburst. Obviously they impressed me as they are still residing in my freezer-- I don't have the heart to let them melt. I'm really interested in finding a way to cut them open and count the rings (another trivia tidbit from the weathermen-- hail collects layers like tree rings as it rises and falls in the storm) so maybe that will become a homeschooling activity one day...

Needless to say, it was an interesting day-- which doesn't even take into account the fact that Michael's dad was being transported to Atlanta via ambulence for what we now know was pneumonia and a mild heart attack. So in addition to trying to hold down the fort (or, you know, house) and keep children, dog and fish (oh wait, we just left them upstairs to 'blow away') safe, I was also worrying about the rest of my 'people' out driving through that mayhem. Thankfully they were all kept safe and it looks as though PawPaw will make a full recovery. The other silver lining is that Georgia got some much needed rain so hopefully we can actually use water outdoors this summer.

We are blessed.

Cousins

My girls are so happy to have a cousin... it's hard to tell from these photos but trust me, it's true :-)

An Anna/Nana reading a story to her three best girls!

Two Aunts + 3 Cousins = Priceless!!

I think I may have figured out photo posting but it seems to be a little bit tricky to space it correctly... I'm guessing that there may be some tricks out there to assist with this... Off to research some more...

Would you, could you at a musical??

We had the opportunity to attend a school-day performance of Seussical the Musical this week. It was based on several of Dr. Seuss' books and it was super cute with lots of colorful costumes. Going with friends made it even more special!! I love that home schooling offers us a lot of relatively inexpensive opportunities for 'culture'!

Okay... truth be told... while I am happy to share this information about us attending Seussical (which, by the way, takes me 3 tries to spell correctly each time I type it!)... I am really trying to practice inserting photos into my blog post...so far-- okay... I was hoping the photo would be after my first paragraph, not at the top of post-- so obviously, I still have much to learn!!

And so it begins...

Here we go... I am officially moving out of the land of the lurking into the land of posting! I am making my first effort at learning actually how this blogging thing really works in hopes of being semi-proficient by the time we make our big 'family trip' out west this summer.

Hopefully this blog will provide a venue for family & friends to keep up with us as we trek cross-country-- provided I can figure out how it all works by then!

And who knows... maybe I'll have found a new hobby!