Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Spring Blessings

As beautiful as the spring season is, with its blessings of blooming gardens and the relief of warmth from the wintertime, it also can harbor very threatening storms and tornadoes, like we've been hit with in the Mid-South.

We spent the better part of last night snuggled up in the closet under the stairs with our dogs. With live streaming radio on the iphone as our only entertainment and candles as our only light, we waited out the tornado as the sirens wailed and the wind and rain whipped against the house. Storms don't typically phase me, but this one was the worst that I can remember in a while. The lightening was constant and the thunder long, but as "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" filled our little tight space, I felt a little more calm and safe. Otis can do that to me.

We peaked out of our front porch when we felt it was safe and saw a huge turtle floating down the middle of the street! Water almost reached the doorstep of the neighbors across the street. Luckily, we fared a little better.

Sean received word early this morning that school was closed due to flooding. The schools are surrounded by lakes of water and streets all over town are flooded. I have the day off as well, with our office without electricity and all the schools and day centers closed. I've been waiting for a free moment to share some spring time pics from around our place, so its a little ironic to show you how gorgeous everything was a week ago but look out the window to see a slight disaster!

Sean took his entire spring break and fenced in our yard, a huge project that he took on with the help of his dad.

They worked every day for as long as they could to fence in our property and give our dogs a place to run.

Don't mess with a man and his power tools!

It was a very tiresome job, but we are so thankful that it is done. We love it!

Now our yard feels like our own and not like a shared property with neighbors.



And our boys love it! We like to keep our door open and let all the light in when the weather is nice.

It took 3 weeks of repetitive raking to get all the leaves out of the flower beds to prepare them for blooming. I lost count of the bags after the first few boxes we went through. I took on the front flower beds while Sean handled the back yard.

It was like a magic trick. We made all the leaves disappear, and they reappeared in an instant. I will probably NEVER do it again. The job was too big! Sounds like a good job for one of Sean's students to do next year for extra credit...

But it paid off. The azaleas bloomed (most of them anyway) and the hostas are huge. We put up colorful hanging baskets for the porch.



Our Clematis grew all over our mailbox! Probably my favorite spring surprise.

They don't look so great now after the storms, but they were beautiful for a while!

Can anyone tell me what this is? I'm not good at identification and everything was already planted so all I have to go by is what it looks like. It's gorgeous and smells amazing every time I walk into the house!

I don't have any problems identifying these:)

So you can see we fully embraced the spring season. Our cabinets are getting a creamy white update, courtesy of me, and I can't wait to walk into a light and airy kitchen. Sean and I renewed our workout routine by starting Insanity together, along with a new diet. As a wedding get-ready plan for the next 2 months, we're taking the Insanity challenge with Shaun T so stay tuned for our before and afters!

If we can make it through the rest of the day, the week ahead looks promising. As our region recovers from the latest round of storms, we are praying for everyone's safety.

XOXO,
Katie

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