Thursday Morning

I hope today is a beautiful spring day where ever you are and that there are tiny surprises all around you.
It has been a busy week. It will be even a busier weekend starting tomorrow. Ron's vacation starts. My lists are nothing compared to his.

I didn't get photos so maybe that is why I haven't blogged about it. But on Monday night we had a tornado. Not anything to compare with what the Midwest experiences but it was pretty awe inspiring for here.

 Monday afternoon, my son Elliot and I cleaned up the tumbleweeds and the trash that the wind storm brought in on Sunday. I washed down sidewalks and the porches. Today when Peter does the lawn he will be able to get all of the broken tumbleweeds that are every where. My poor sister in law next door had a worse mess than I did. She hired a boy she knows to help her. She worked four hours on Monday after she got home from work.
She had no sooner got in the house and sat down when the tornado hit.

We on the other hand were next door trying to get the swimming pool clean. It was full of dirt and was just so yukky. I looked up at the sky as Ron was dipping out leaves with the metal pool handle. The cloud above us was going green.
I said, " Hey look at that cloud above us, you think we are going to have a tornado" ? He looked up, and said, " Look what I am doing I am holding a lighting rod in my hand, we have to get out of here."

The boys were out in the pasture taking Sasha for a walk when the green cloud overhead started thundering.
We don't get thunderclouds very often either. The boys came in and came up on the porch with us. The cloud was stationary. You could hear the storm as it got closer then the wind started blowing. We could see out in the pasture when the warm air hit the cold and the funnel started. It dropped down from the thunder cloud and started toward the house. It kept getting bigger and then as it got to the fence and the trees that one stopped.
Peter said he wanted to go look out in the pasture to see what it had done. He ran down to the gate when a bigger one started almost in the same place. Peter said" this one is huge!!" It was picking up all of the huge tumbleweeds that we haven't cleaned out of the pasture. As it went from side to side. We could see it coming and I yelled for Peter to run to the house. He turned and ran as fast as he could. It was moving faster than Peter was running.
There were so many tumbleweeds going in the rotation of the funnel. In fact it almost looked like they were weightless as they passed over.
As it got to my front yard, guess what it did? It dropped 25 or 30 huge tumbleweeds in my yard. It dropped even more in my sister in laws yard. It tore up flowers in my flowerbeds, the flowers are so bedraggled now.

 The tornado stopped and then came the cloud burst. It rained and rained. The flowerbeds that were filled with topping and had looked so amazing, the rain quickly filled the flowerbeds and the mulch washed back up on the porch and out in the yard. All the work I had done was now undone. So now for the third time I will clean up every thing again. I write this so next year at this time, I can go back and I can laugh at all of these things that have gone on and I will be able to see that it didn't matter one little bit.

  I am so thankful that Ron is going to be home. He is so calming on me. He never gets upset, he never panics. He is always so level headed. He will be here to make me laugh at myself and of course to hold me when I cry. He is a calming influence on everyone. I really do think my favorite part will be working with him. He has so many good ideas. My brain doesn't have any good ideas anymore.

I think laughing really is the best way to reduce stress. Now I have to start making hanging lanterns. Lots and lots of hanging lanterns for all of the shepherd crooks. I wish I had kept the ones I made for Megan's wedding.
Have a lovely Thursday,
~Only a tiny bit stressed, Kim~