Midwestern storms

Here in the Midwest, storms are typical. Bad storms even more so. As mentioned in a previous post, Daddy was gone to New York. Before he left, he set the sprinkler system up for us to where it would hit the garden just perfectly. All we had to do was turn on the faucet. Easy enough. Jelly Belly and Life Saver took turns doing this nightly chore. We had to wait until around 8pm each night because it was sooo hot outside. 

One night, we were sitting outside and in rolled some clouds. Ok maybe not just clouds, but storm clouds. 

 Considering we still had a great amount of sunshine as well behind me and there was neither thunder nor lightening, I figured we had a few more minutes of outside time. Sure enough. This cloud blew right over us as if to tease us with the though of some much needed rain. Oh well. The kids got to stay outside playing and the garden was getting water by the sprinkler.

Until about 10 minutes later. Then I heard thunder and in a matter of minutes, we got even more storm clouds. The temperature dropped FAST. We turned of the sprinkler and ran inside just in time. The skies opened up and poured. Finally rain. Then came the hail. And more hail. And even more hail. Needless to say we could have done without the hail. Many of our neighbors are already having their roofs replaced from our last 2 hailstorms. So far we haven't needed to do so.

 

 While I do LOVE where we live, I could do without our typical Midwestern storms.

Our Family Garden

This year our garden got planted REALLY late. We had non stop rain for what seemed like FOREVER!! Finally when it was time to plant, we had troubles finding plants to purchase and it was too late to start from seeds. My mom was able to purchase 2 nice sized tomato plants from our Farmer's Market downtown. My dad was able to find several tomato plants down where he lives. Daddy was finally able to plant!! Jelly Belly and Lifesaver helped. They planted corn and pumpkin seeds. While Daddy was planting, he noticed several volunteer plants from last year. He transplanted those and we have tons of tomato plants!!! YAY for tomatoes :)

Our garden has grown like crazy surprisingly after such a late start and then a long drought. Daddy even took a week long trip to New York and Mommy didn't kill the garden while he was gone. You see, I do NOT have any sort of green thumb. I am the type to kill a cactus. Finally, we are now getting natural good for the garden RAINWATER!!! We have lots and lots and lots of green tomatoes if you like those sorts of things. We personally do not. We just cannot wait to have red tomatoes!!!

The corn stalks are actually beautiful as far as corn goes. I mean I have never really thought of corn as being beautiful myself. Corn is corn, right? Wrong. Once I saw the corn stalks my children grew, I saw the beauty in corn. Ok, maybe not so much in the corn, but the idea my children grew something and the beauty of their faces when they see their fruits of labor.

As of this post, we have at least 6 good sized pumpkins growing. They are overtaking the yard by the garden bed. The kids are excited knowing they are growing their own pumpkins for Halloween this year. I mean it is pretty cool to have your own pumpkin patch in your own backyard. 

The only item I haven't mentioned are our watermelon. We have only 2 so far. Why do I say so far? Well this is because we cannot really see how many watermelon there really are. You see, our watermelon have grown into our backyard pumpkin patch!! Never the less, the kids are thrilled seeing their work. And we are one proud garden growing family!!!

Summer fun part 4

Almost on a daily basis, the kids have asked to do some sort of painting. Finally to their surprise, Daddy said "let's paint". After I picked myself up off the floor, I got the paint supplies ready!!! You see, Daddy normally does not like to do such messy things with the kids indoors. Considering it was 96 degrees outside, he really didn't have a choice but to stay inside!! I found it pretty funny how much newspaper Daddy put all over the place so the kids wouldn't get the table messy!!

Daddy was so worried they would get paint all over their clothes. As you can see, he opted to not use their paint smocks. In fact, he didn't realize we had any. I really need to get Daddy more involved in our home schooling!!!

The kids enjoyed spending an hour painting away. Much to my surprise, Daddy cleaned up the entire "mess". All he had to do was roll up the toss away paint containers within the newspaper. You see, Daddy told me this is the reason he placed so many newspapers all around the kids... just to make clean up easier!!! Maybe, just maybe, Daddy can handle the "messier" areas in our school days :)

Summer fun part 3

The temperatures this summer have left so much to be desired. Grammie and I took the kids out for a car ride just to get out of the house. Thank goodness the air conditioner on Grammie's van works well!!! Here is why:

 I am not a fan of summer. I do not like hot weather. I do not like humidity. In fact, I loathe hot weather and humidity. I love Fall weather. I love Winter weather. I love Spring weather.  However it seems Spring weather is a thing of the past!! We go straight from Winter to full blown Summer.

So on sweltering days, we entertain ourselves indoors in the comfort of air conditioning. We have spent many days upstairs in our house. For some reason, our upstairs is much cooler. The kids LOVE dressing up. I got to witness a fashion show.

Jelly Belly was first. He wore his costume a good part of the afternoon. He didn't seem to mind getting hot while wearing it as he was too occupied being a super hero!!!

 
Then there is Life Saver. She rarely can leave any of her dress up clothes on more than 5 minutes. However, with the outfit she is modeling, she wears it daily. In fact, when Dancing With the Stars is on and she hears the music, she runs to put on this outfit!!! She twirls and twirls and twirls in it. I may be a bit biased, but I think she looks pretty in it!!! It does make me a bit teary eyed from time to time as I imagine her grown up wearing an outfit pretty similar.

This is how we spend our days of summer indoors!!! Of course this is also how we spend our days of winter indoors as well!! The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE their dress up clothes.

Summer fun part 2

Lunches seem to be a huge deal around here. I can rarely get the kids to eat anything. I stumbled across a website where a lady made spaghetti noodles with hot dog bites. She called them something like sketti dogs. Of course I had to make them. So simple. I figured since the kids love sketti and hotdogs, this would be an all around winning lunch. Wrong!!! Jelly Belly wouldn't try it for anything. Not even one tiny little taste. I even ate one in front of him. Surprisingly they were pretty tasty. Life Saver tried them and loved them once she stopped giggling about how they looked!!!


First step is to take spaghetti noodles (I used thin) and break several in  half. Take a hot dog and cut into 4 or 5 pieces. Thread the noodle through the hotdog!!

Next place them into boiling water until the sketti noodles are al dente.

These pictures show

our final product.

Summer fun part 1

The kids Great Aunt sent them a sand activity kit. They couldn't wait to use it. Daddy wasn't home so we had to wait until the next day. First we thought about going to my Aunt's house because she has white carpet. Colored sand on white carpet would be oh so pretty :) Surprisingly, the sand wasn't that messy. However, I bet it would have been a disaster if Jelly Belly and Life Saver did the activity indoors!!!

Here are some pics of their finished products.

Jelly Belly was more than proud of his. Life Saver, a bit grumpy!!! She just wasn't in the mood for a picture!!!

Thanks again to Aunt/Great Aunt Bev :)

Neighborhood parade

Where we live, there have been a lot of Indian families move in. They truly are much nicer than most of our typical American neighbors. They are very friendly and caring. They wave and do not snub their noses up at anyone. I could have an entire post dedicated to what we have learned from the different cultures!!!

Well over the last few days, there have been signs at the entrance to our neighborhood. The signs were about an Indian parade. Of course the word parade got the kids all excited. We didn't know what to expect so we tried to explain to Jelly Bean and Life Saver how this parade would probably be much different than the Disney parades they are accustomed too!!

All morning the kids were excited and kept asking when the parade would start. Around 11am, Grammie and the kiddos head out the front door. I finally joined them a bit later. 2 hours pass and still no parade. We decide to pile in the van and drive toward the parade route. Mistake!!! The parade had started and was heading towards us. One of the volunteer men basically ran us out!! I cannot much blame him. While we were driving, we noticed all the water hoses and sprinklers running. Wasn't sure what that was about.

So we drive home and decide to wait in the van until we could see the parade. About 20 minutes later, we finally see the start of the parade, or so we thought. Instead we saw a truck with a holding tank pull up to the fire hydrant. One of the men undid the hydrant and pumped water into their holding tank. Of course this really had our curiosity going!!




Until we saw the first part of the parade. Women were walking with their brooms. They appeared to be cleansing the street, but I cannot confirm this.


While the women were walking, the men were taking the water hose coming from the tank and spraying the women and the men (which you will see later) on their feet. See the temperature here today was almost 90 degrees during this parade. Because of this, the street temperatures were even hotter. Some of these people were walking barefoot as is normal in their culture. The water was too cool the ground off before they walked upon it. We finally understand now why so many of our neighbors had their water-hoses out in the street!!

The next pictures are from the parade. As I do not yet understand much about this culture, I am not going to make myself look bad and attempt to explain any of the pictures. I can say a young man came up to us and asked us if we had any questions. He explained to us their culture is often mistaken for being muslim, which they are not. They are far different. I cannot imagine in today's society how they must feel being mistaken for such. Please understand I am not a prejudice person and I am not placing all muslim population in the same category.







Now I do admit this was unlike any parade I have ever seen. I was pleasantly surprised. In several sections of the parade route, there were tents set up for the participants to quench their thirst. There were also several pick up trucks filled with ice and water and Cokes!!! At 2 different times, men walked up to us with their hands full of drinks offering them to us. We politely declined and explained how the walkers had to be far hotter than we were!!! One man walked up to us and told us we had to try the drink he had because we had probably never had one before. He was right, we hadn't. It was a mango juice and it was pretty tasty!!!

My favorite part of the parade was the next picture. It really is worth a thousand words!!!

A flyer was placed in each of our paper holders under our mailboxes inviting everyone in the neighborhood to the Temple just outside our complex to enjoy food and drinks with the community. We could not attend as we had previous plans, but we did drive by and there were all sorts of tents and decorations!!

I am glad I got to experience a new cultural event today and especially happy I got to experience it with my children. They really enjoyed watching the parade!!