"April Showers Bring May Flowers"

We have been getting a lot of rain. More rain than sunshine, particularly this past weekend.

On Saturday we and the fam went to Jaired's office for a spring clean up. It started to rain about halfway through the morning, but we still managed to get all the outdoor work done. I think we worked faster because of the rain than we would have normally. The indoor work all got done, too, though there wasn't as much of it. Mostly just a thorough cleaning of the whole building. We were able to hang Jaired's diplomas and other documents that we had finally just recently gotten framed. And Kimberly cleaned the chimney. I think she got about 30 lbs. of ASH out of it. Really? How was there ash in the chimney?

Saturday night the rain got really crazy. We even got hail, which, though it is sometimes in the forecast isn't really that common in this area. No tornadoes though, thankfully.

When we moved into this house there were four or five places in the basement that leaked. We thought we had taken care of all of them, but there is still one left in a side room. It turns out that the leak is in a different place than I thought, but I believe I have it pin-pointed now. We have to go down there a few times a day to vacuum and mop up the water that comes in. But things got even more wild when the back yard and patio flooded up to the house and water started pouring into the schoolroom. After frantically trying to scoop it up faster than it came in I happened to glance over at what we have always thought was some odd hole in the patio floor that was kept covered with an old pot. Willing to try anything I pulled out the pot and watched with relief as the water began to pour down the hole. We don't know where this drain goes, but it seems to work well. Hopefully we aren't flooding something else.

We had a very simple Easter. Homemade sticky buns for breakfast, then off to church where Edmund joined a couple of the other boys in singing "He Reigns" by The Newsboys for the congregation. Back at home we got a fire going in the fireplace and Jaired and I relaxed with our books while Edmund and Nathaniel watched a Curious George movie. In the evening we had an Easter egg hunt. This was Nathaniel's first hunt and the first one Edmund has had in a long time (since we lived in Virginia). Because of the rain we had all the eggs inside. I am really bad about taking pictures of these kinds of things because I am so focused on them and making sure they know what is going on and that they are having fun. They did have fun and they didn't have any trouble figuring out what to do. (Sometimes I wonder if I worry too much?) They opened their eggs by the fireplace and seemed to be as excited about the new cars and bouncy balls as they were about the candy.