rain

Yesterday we got completely soaked. Here is some of the aftermath. Other clothes were sent upstairs to dry. It started raining mid-afternoon. There was some hail. A bit of lightning and thunder, but nothing like an awesome Kansas thunderstorm. In the evening Brian asked if I would pick him up from campus. Between our front door and the car WITH an umbrella, I got soaked. It was difficult to see or hear anything while driving yesterday. "Downpour" definitely characterizes our rain yesterday. Unfortunately, my picking him up did not prevent him from getting soaked or hailed on, but at least he didn't have to be out in it as long. Today oscillates between gray/cloudy/rainy and clear/sunny/bright just-after-a-rain lighting. I guess the earth is getting all varieties of presents for her day.

spring break: up'n down and seven-toe

One great thing happened over spring break: Mark and Brian got the Commodore 64 going. Oh, it was sweet. It had been many years since I had played these games. I loved hearing the old music. So fun! Barbie Goes on a Date, World Games, Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics, Harrier Attack, Up'n Down (the best of all!). I don't remember which other ones we got working. The only disappointment was that Donald Duck's Playground didn't work. But the important thing is that Up'n Down did. Enjoy a picture.

Mark playing Up'n Down

Enjoy it well because you may never see it again. Because I might have ruined the whole system when I dropped it on the concrete floor of the storage room when we were putting it away. :(

A second great thing. We had been encouraging Seven-Toe (actual name Cleo), seen below, all week to have her kittens while we were home.

Seven-Toe from when she was a little tyke back in November. She has seven toes on each front paw and six toes on each back paw (if you don't know, most cats have five on each front and four on each back).

Seven-Toe is a sweetface.

Finally, the day before we left, this little cat (who was huge with pregnancy) had eight tiny kittens! They were so, so sweet. Seven-Toe is a small cat, but has been able to keep eight kittens fed! What a good mother. We were curious to see if the extra toes was a dominant or recessive trait (assuming that it was quite unlikely she bred with a male cat who has extra toes). We guessed recessive, but three of the kittens are also seven-toes! Cute!

spring break: the pre-home portion

Spring Break was a few weeks ago. At the beginning of our spring break, Brian's family came to visit. They also did us the wonderful favor of driving our belongings here in a moving truck (and this nice gesture was after the nice gesture of, together with my parents, packing it up for us!). We got to move into a larger place and finally have our own furniture again. We are loving our new space. I had forgotten just how comfortable our bed is. I think still, weeks later, in a half sleep state every now and then I will say to Brian, "This mattress is just so comfortable!"

After the weekend was over and our visitors had returned home, we finally had a chance to make it back up into the mountains for some skiing, which is always a fun time. The second day we were going to go, it started sprinkling while we were still in town. Partway up the mountain, it turned to snow and the roads were already getting snow-packed. We made the disappointing but oh-so-wise decision not to continue in our little car. However, I called the bus route and found out there would be a bus leaving in 30 minutes; we decided to go anyway, even though by this time it was mid-afternoon. On the mountain, it was snowing, snowing, snowing. Riding the lift we would get covered in snow. They had gotten 8-10" of fresh powder just that day, so skiing was fun and difficult, and the snow was really stinging on the exposed skin of my face. Fun times, though. We got in 3 or 4 runs before the lifts closed. We boarded our return bus. We headed out. The bus driver stopped in the parking lot to wipe off his windshield. And then we were stuck. After 30 minutes and the application of tire chains and even then still being stuck for a while, our driver was able to get us going and down the mountain we went. What is normally a 20-30 minute drive took us 2 hours total (including the time we were stuck). The roads were quite awful. I slept most of the way home, but I did see at least one small car stuck on the side of the road. We were so, so thankful we had not driven. It's likely we would have gotten stuck or at least had a really tough drive home, and our phone does not get service up there. Good thing we are not very good at getting going early in the day because had we left for skiing in the morning, we certainly would have driven and had no idea how terrible things were going to get.

Brian's brother was actually still in town for a conference, so we got to meet up with him in the evenings. One evening we went to his hotel to swim and hot tub. The hotel has a sweet, monstrous hot tub outside, which was torture getting to and getting back to the building (because of the freezing outside temperature), but was so sweet while we were in it. I love outdoor hot tubbing in the winter. It was fun to grab snow from the ground nearby and see how quickly it would melt in the hot water. :) I can't imagine their electric bill, though.