weather

The last few days the sky has gotten really dark, thunder has been rolling, and the humidity has been so thick that we’re positive it’s going to rain. It doesn’t. But this afternoon the boys were out playing handball in the front yard after school and suddenly Carter busts in the front door yelling, “Mom! You gotta see this!”

I go out front to see the sky has turned completely dark — the sky is so black that our security lights have been tricked into thinking it’s nighttime, but the darkness is from the dirt falling from the sky. The kids are running around screaming, “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”

I grabbed my camera and shot this really quickly. The camera lens lightened up the sky quite a bit, but you can still see how much dirt is in the air when I focus on the security light. It really was raining dirt. It was crazy and gritty.

About 10 minutes later the sky started lightening up again because it started raining and the water washed all the dirt out of the air. It didn’t rain much and it didn’t last long, but to feel actual water fall from the sky was a novelty. We went back outside and stood under the sparse drops like we do every time it rains in the desert.

We’re planning to go camping tomorrow unless it’s raining up on the mountain. Normally that wouldn’t be likely, but while we’ve been teased with rain here, it’s been pouring up there so we’ll have to see what the weather is like in the morning.

One of the best parts about Josh’s course is that class starts at 7am so he often gets home by 2 in the afternoon. Not so great for him to have to get up early, but fun for us to be able to go do things as a threesome before the boys come home from school. 
One thing we like to do is go sit at Starbucks. We could drink coffee at home, and at $4.50 for a grande cap it’s not cheap, but it’s one of the few places where the employees speak Arabic and they all know Josh by now and chat with him as they make our drinks.


We decided Camille is finally old enough to get her own drink. We started her on the steamed milk — we’ll save the harder stuff for when she turns 2.

I love that the mall is modern and has places like Chili’s and Cinnabon, but the people walking by in dishdashas and abayas show that we’re clearly in the Middle East.

She’s mad because she wants to hold the cup herself, but she keeps trying to turn it upside down or take the straw out so Josh is trying to “help” her. I’ve always told people that she has no problem telling us exactly how she feels . . .

Baby girl loves books. I think Calvin was the same way as a baby, but it’s hard to remember that far back. I’m positive that Carter was not excited about books and all I remember about Caleb and books at this age is he liked taking them and throwing them in the bathtub. When it was full of water. I went 30 years without ever having to pay for a library book and once he came along I had to pay for 3 in 3 months. That stopped my trips to the library until he outgrew the baptizing books phase.

But I see a blooming bibliophile in my little girl and it makes me happy.

Carter is supposed to read for 30 minutes every night for homework. So what book did he check out from the library? The Guinness Book of World Records. I suspect he’s just looking at the pictures of the man with the longest fingernails or the most facial piercings (really gross, btw) instead of actually reading the text. I asked him to bring home something different so next time he checked out Ripley’s Believe It Or Not instead. :sigh: He also counted this time that he was “reading to Camille” as part of the 30 minutes. He is not a fan of the books.
***In the background you can hear Calvin showing off his superior spelling skills. Great reader, horrible speller. 

(The “Hallelujah” is because he finished his homework.)

more music

I set this to upload to YouTube the other day because I was going to post both videos at the same time, but for some reason this one took forever (over an hour) so I wandered off and forgot about it until now.

This is for those of you who wrote to tell me that you keep watching the other one over and over again.

Happy Birthday to me . . .

One of Carter’s birthday presents was the surprise of many musical cards. The best part about them is Camille is fascinated by these “books” that play music and will sit and listen and open and close them over and over again. Anything that keeps her out of the toilet is a present to me.