Spring Has Sprung!

Hooray for spring finally being here!  We enjoyed the beautiful weather this weekend and spent as much time outside as possible.  Let's hope this nice weather is here to stay for awhile. I'm going to warn you now that this post may be all over the place.  I'm flipping through our recent pictures, so who knows where this will end up.

The kids had their spring break last week, and since Doc was able to take a few days off work, we were able to keep them for a few days.  First order of business?  Building a fort in the living room.

Wyatt organized a basketball game that was scheduled to be played at 5:00 the following day (giving me enough time to get home and change clothes).  Anna and Wyatt were chosen as team captains and got to draw their teammate out of a cap.  Our teams ended up being Girls vs Boys.  We also had to draw from the cap to get our team name. 

Anna and I were the Fighting Geezers and drew red and blue as our team colors.  I thought the excitement over the match-up might die down while I was at work, but I was wrong.  As soon as I walked in the door, everyone was waiting on me to change clothes.  Wyatt had made signs for everyone's uniforms and a scoreboard.  Doc's iPhone was the official timekeeper.  But before we could play, team photos had to be taken.

The Fighting Geezers, in red and blue:

 

The Wild Chickens, that were supposed to be in black and white:

It was an intense game.  We played two 10-minute halves and in the end, the Wild Chickens ended up beating the Fighting Geezers by around 5 or so points.  I thought Anna and I did pretty good, though, considering we don't play basketball nearly as often as our opponents do. 

After the game we took a walk to the park.  Anna enjoyed posing with Lolli on the playground.

Lolli wasn't so sure about hanging out in the fort part of the playset...

...so Anna helped her find a way down.

I love it when the spring flowers start showing up everywhere.  I am especially enjoying these flowering trees in our neighborhood.

This picture is a few days old, but I still like it.  Lolli and Henry have decided they'll be friends.  Thank goodness, since they get to spend a lot of time together.  I caught them napping side by side at my mom's house.  Of course, Lolli had to look up when I took the picture.

Henry had a bit of a scare this weekend.  My mom texted me Saturday morning around 8 and told me he was missing.  He had been out since 6:30 and I guess when she realized she didn't hear him barking like normal, she and my dad went out looking for him.  He was nowhere to be found in the backyard.  My dad was supposed to be meeting Doc at the golf course, but since they couldn't find Henry, Doc went to their house to join in the hunt.  I think they all walked the neighborhood calling his name, but he never came running.  Finally, when my dad and Doc were driving the street behind my parents' house, Doc spotted him in the corner of someone's backyard.  Doc said he was so frozen he looked like a stuffed animal.  My dad jumped the fence and even as he approached him, Henry wouldn't move.  He never barked.  He had one leg tucked up underneath him - Doc thought he was missing a leg at first.  He was pretty glazed over, but they inspected him and didn't find any blood or bruises.  When he got back home he relaxed and has since returned to his normal self.  There has been a huge owl hanging out in the neighborhood.  My dad has seen it himself on a couple of occasions and several cats have turned up missing.  Could the owl have helped Henry over the fence and to the neighbor's house?  Who knows?  All we know is that something happened to poor Henry that frightened everything out of him. 

Once we were all satisfied that Henry was ok and would fully recover, my mom and I headed out on a shopping spree.  We were in the mood to find some junk pieces to fix up and headed out looking for some yardsales.  Unfortunately, we only found one and it didn't have any furniture.  So we headed to some junky antique stores.  I like looking at organized antiques, but I'm not sure that I'm cut out for the junky stores.  They were way too gross and creepy for me - I think I pretty much ran out of one when I saw a huge hole in the ceiling.  I think I was terrified something might crawl out of that hole and I didn't want to stick around to see it.

We didn't have any luck with the yard sales and antique stores, but we randomly stopped at a Going-Out-Of-Business Sale at a local furniture store, and it's safe to say we found our luck!  Two U-Haul trucks full of luck, to be exact.  This store is closing in 3 weeks and everything had to go!  (Is it just me or all furniture stores always going out of business?  "Everything must go!")  We took a few things off their hands - a couple couches, coffee table, end tables, tv stand, and 4 mattress sets.  It was a crazy, spontaneous move on our part but we felt like we just couldn't pass up on the deals!  I'll let you in on our plans for this new stuff soon. 

We left the furniture store without a clue as to how we planned on getting all home.  No one in my family owns a truck.  I called Doc to figure out his whereabouts (he had been out playing tennis), and it turns out that he was pretty close to a U-Haul store.  He rented a truck and headed over to the store to get all of our goodies.  Unfortunately, they only had a small truck available for him and there was no way everything would fit into it.  The distance from the furniture store and my parents' house (where we decided to take our new items) was just under 2 hours round trip.  So that's how we ended up spending our Saturday night - the crazy decision that mom and I made that afternoon didn't put Doc and me at home until around 8:30 that night, and we were exhausted!

Since the weather was so nice yesterday afternoon, I decided to rinse out our kitchen rugs.  Doc looked at me like I was crazy but I reminded him that I was the one there when Minnie got sick all over them on her last day.  Even though I have scrubbed them like crazy, I still felt like it couldn't hurt to give them a good rinse.  So that's how we ended up with this in our side yard:

Doc helped me get them up on the ladder and also came up with this idea to give them a good cleaning:

Don't worry, we poured the last of the windex out and filled it back up with regular soapy water.  It was awesome!  Who knew pressure washing some rugs could be so much fun?  Unfortunately, they are still dripping wet.  By the time I had them both done, all of the sunny spots in our teeny yard were gone.  But they'll dry eventually and then they'll (hopefully) feel like brand new rugs!  Until then, we'll just keep cooking in our bare and echo-y kitchen.

I told you this post was going to be all over the place.  From basketball to dogs to U-Hauls to rugs.  Between all of that I completed a fun craft project.  I'm working on a post to show you all the details next.