Memorial Day Weekend-Day #2

We merged two flower beds in our front yard into one large bed. We wanted a less symmetrical look, slightly more natural. Final touch was some stepping stones for the mail lady.

Memorial Day Weekend-Day #1

Nathan's koozie-"Everytime I find Mr. Right my husband scares him off."

How many people can fit into a junior tent? Five.

The gator koozie.

Six of us went boating on the river and then camped on One Mile Island. Got a little rain this a.m., but overall the weather was nice and we had a blast.

Nice, Nathan

Ever wonder what someone would look like that went straight from a baptism to boating on the river? Wonder no more.

Yesterday at work...

Yesterday at work, I was getting ready to leave and heard this:

The National Weather Service in the Quad Cities has issued a tornado warning for Dubuque County until 5:51 p.m.

At 4:43 p.m. the public reported a tornado one mile south of Holy Cross or about 13 miles west of Dubuque moving east at 25 mph. The tornado will be near Sherrill and Durango around 5 p.m. and Sageville around 5:05 p.m.

The sirens began to go off and all staff had to begin emergency protocol (moving people to our east building, securing all staff areas, etc.) Some guy had the nerve to come up to me and yell over the tornado sirens (as he is holding the hands of his two young sons), "I just want you to know that this is totally ridiculus! We just got here!" Well, yes, we refunded peoples tickets if they wanted them, but come on, there is not really anything anyone can do about the situation.

Please family and friends reading this, don't be this guy.

I miss you Bree!

Bree has been able to email and send pics so I thought I'd post some here. She says the camels are in migration in Kuwait right now. I think they appear quite scruffy, but cute. Bree, we are hoping that you are safe, we miss you and please come home soon! (She's the second from the left in the deployment photo.)

Ticks

Most of you know that I absolutely despise the scare-tactic email. You know the ones I'm talking about: they have a subject like, "Ladies! Must read! What to do if you are ever locked in the trunk of a car!" And end with something like, "Send this to 10 people in the next 30 minutes to have good luck!" Those emails are lucky if they even make it to my inbox (auto spam filter puts them right into a junk folder). Therefore, I don't like doing this, but it's something very real that we are dealing with right now.

I've had one tick in my life. It was a wood tick on the back of my ear. I was on a week long canoe trip in the Boundary Waters. In the last week I've had two ticks. One was attached and one wasn't. Now I realize that we are somewhat outdoorsy people, and I work with a lot of the same type of people, but realize this: our employees are doing twice daily tick checks and still are reporting huge numbers of ticks on themselves. The day I got the one tick my co-worker had six. Two days last week a different co-worker had two each day. On a field collection day my boss only said that at one point when he brushed his shoulder with his hand he had three and when he got home he changed in the garage and left his clothes there for 24 hours. He said his clothes were absolutely "covered". Another co-workers grandson was diagnosed with Lyme disease two weeks ago, pretty scary. Fortunately he's doing fine and the ticks we are seeing more of are wood ticks, not deer ticks.

Why so many ticks? Back in December we knew we were going to have a problem. A deer hunter had a tick. In the second week in December that's a problem. The weather was simply too warm to successfully destroy tick populations. Pair that up with the population numbers of the white-tailed deer (lots of hosts for hungry parasites) and you have exploding tick numbers.

So, again take this for what it's worth...I don't want to scare you like I did to Andy the other morning. Abby-"Turn the light on! Turn the light on!" Andy (dead asleep-jumps up) "What, what!?" Abby-"Oh, I just had a tick walking on my back. I got it. You can go back to sleep." I just thought I'd share it as it is something very real, as well as gross and disgusting, that we are dealing with here.

Andrew's First Gray Hair

Enough said.

Cash in the pool for the first time

He loved it! He would drop his rawhide in and it was just like bobbing for apples!

New Bathroom

Here are a few pictures of our upstairs bathroom. The first was after Andrew had ripped up the cruddy linoleum. It seems a lot bigger and much cleaner. We haven't done anything with lighting yet. Probably will update many light fixtures in the house in the future (ie after the wedding).

Omaha Conference

I wanted to have a post-update before I left town, but it didn't happen. Oh well, I'm in Omaha until Friday for a work conference. Andrew is holding down the house along with our new roomate, Paul. Paul is Andy's friend who just got back to the U.S. after a year in Kuwait (Navy). We didn't get the paint job in the guest bedroom finished before he paid his rent, but I talked to Andy last night and he told me it is now finished. I'll post some pictures of the new rooms when I'm back home. (Yes, the upstairs bathroom is done too!)