A Few Random Things

I was out taking a few pictures of the storm that blew in last night. The clouds were amazing to watch, but the video I took didn't do it much justice. The storm didn't last long, but was very powerful in our area, I've heard up to 80mph. There are trees down, power lines out and quite a few signs broken or damaged in the area right around us. We lost a few small branches, nothing much.

I'm including this picture because I had a request to see the pink house. It definitely stands out in this photo, even though you can only see a small portion of it. Most of the house is that lighter - hot pink. It looks crazy and reminds me of the pink house in "The Secret Life of Bees." I wrote about that once here. I'm pretty sure they painted it to match their over-the-top Candyland Christmas decorations that start coming out around Halloween. You can see in the picture that the house next to it is currently being painted as well (a trend in the neighborhood after the crazy hailstorm a few months ago). We will probably paint ours as well after we get all of our insurance/warranty roofing details worked out (long, boring story) - any votes on a new color? Hot pink? Yellow again? Earthtones?

The day after I wrote the post about weird things I went out to get the mail and saw an elderly gentleman in army garb wearing a construction helmet and pushing a baby stroller with a computer in it. I was worried about him, it was such a strange sight - so I thought I'd check his mental capacity with a "hello, how are you?" He replied, "doing great as long as it doesn't rain." It was raining.

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Jackson: "Mom! Guess what?! The alphabet has all of my letters in my name!"

Lincoln: "Hey! Me too!"

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They boys are in gymnastics right now. I thought it would be better for Lincoln because it doesn't involve any grass or other outdoor allergens. They are both loving it. The second visit was a huge improvement from the first. I think all of our anxiety levels had settled by then. Jackson is so tired by the end of the day. Being at school all day wears him out already, so by the end of gymnastics (only 1 day/week) he is D.O.N.E.

Home School Too

Lincoln has been fighting with his asthma issues for the past few days. He went to the ER on Monday night because we couldn't get his breathing back on track with out usual home methods. Today he is feeling great, but he isn't allowed to go back to school yet because he was there for a short time yesterday and he "had a fever" (100.4 while the air conditioner was broken). I feel so lucky that we got this day together though. He is in great spirits and feeling fine, so we've done some really fun things together that are also helping him learn a few things (sneaky mom). We did a word treasure hunt. Each time he found a card with a word on it that led him to the next card. He really had to work on reading some of the cards, but figured others out really quickly. I was amazed how quickly he figured out the word "fireplace." It can be hard to get him excited to just sit down with a book, so I'm trying everything I can think of! He is building letters out of legos right now and we've enjoyed several other fun games together. It has been nice to have some one-on one time with him.

Home Church

We were all dressed and ready for church. We made it about 2/3 of the way there and decided that everyone's coughing and sneezing would probably not be too welcome there. We headed right back home and have been having a real day of rest. We tried to have a little lesson of our own and as Lincoln and I were discussing some things about the temple we looked over to see that we bored the rest of the group to sleep.