Playing Catch Up

As you all know we had a terrible line of tornadoes rip through Alabama last Wednesday. Thankfully we were all safe and sound but hundreds of people lost their lives, several hundred are still unaccounted for and entire areas were demolished. Seeing the pictures are just heart breaking. We had lots of warning but with a tornado over a mile wide staying on the ground for ever it seemed no amount of warnings could save everyone. Puts so much in perspective. And say what people will about the back woods, conservative south - we take care of each other. It has been totally amazing to watch all the churches and people come together immediately and get to work helping people. No one is waiting around for someone else to come in and get to work - everyone is just stepping up and meeting needs the best way they know how. This is how it should always work.
Thankfully we were able to ride out the storms at the home of friends that had a large finished basement

As you can see the kids had no clue what was going on.

The Sunday before the tornado was Easter and I never got a chance to blog about it.

One of the many attempts at the family shot :)

The whole gang with out nephew Sam

Here they all are after they got their Easter goodies - We don't do a ton of candy but Easter has become the time to replenish our gardening tools and play bats and balls. All the boys got a new rake, shovel, and hoe as well as new bouncy balls and a carrot bat just for fun :)
We've been talking a lot to the boys about what Easter is really all about and James is really the one that is understanding more. I think the part he took in the most this year was that Jesus died on a cross. I kept talking about the fact that he rose from the grave on the third day and is alive today but he just stayed on the whole "Jesus died on the cross" part. Maybe by next year we can move on to the empty tomb part :)
Gracie got a little puppy dog with bunny ears since we know she loves her some bunny!

Cheesing for mommy with a mouth full of waffles :)

We did an Easter egg hunt as well which they all loved. The boys remembered from last year that jelly beans were in the eggs and it didn't take Gracie long to catch on! We went to a friends church the day before Easter for another hunt and fun crafts and even a pinata full of candy (James LOVED this). I think the kids got more candy from Easter festivities than they ever get on Halloween!

This is our life right now - our brood of 4 hanging out on the couch, snacking on pretzels
Gracie's favorite thing to do right now is show us her belly button. She doesn't realize she doesn't need to pull her shirt up quite so far :) I can't tell you how often she walks around the house like this looking for someone to tickle her belly!
THE SNAKE
Just for my memory's sake I wanted to blog about this - no more fun pictures.
Last week the boys came running up from the corner of the yard and James was yelling that he had just seen a big snake, to which my heart almost stopped! I saw our dog Goldie down the way barking his head off so I sent the kids inside and went to check out the situation. Sure enough there was a rather large snake (large to me, I mean, I didn't measure it but I'm pretty sure it was several feet long) ready to strike at Goldie and he was just barking his head off! I was thinking, dog, you are crazy, why are you messing with this snake! I then realized that there was a small bird or chipmunk down that they were fighting over! I tried to snap a quick picture on my phone to send to Jeremy so he could see what was in our yard - just as I did Goldie swept in and picked up the animal and walked off. The snake surprisingly never struck him. We think it was a rattler of some sort - as if I have nothing else to worry about! Now the boys are not able to "explore" quite as much as they used to. We have so much land who knows what all is out there. We had a long talk about snakes and not touching them coming to tell mommy immediately and that they have poison and could kill them. To which my oldest son replied, "like Jesus on the cross". Well, yes, I guess you would die like Jesus on the cross, but unlike Jesus you won't rise on the third day.
(Sorry mom I hadn't told you this story yet, I knew you would love it - forget about worrying about the ridge :)