Mother Nature, I Apologize For Whatever I Did

Last year I was getting frustrated because my kids were bringing home unfinished work from school on a daily basis. I tried every tactic with them: kindly reminding them on a daily basis, punishing them, nagging them, threatening them....it was exhausting. Finally my dad came up with an idea: The warm fuzzy jar.

I took 100 cotton balls (AKA fuzzies) and placed them in a "Fuzzy's to earn" jar. I then had a second jar titled "Warm Fuzzy Jar". Each day when the kids came home from school, if they finished their work, they got to take a warm fuzzy and put it in the "Warm Fuzzy Jar". As soon as they filled up the jar we could do something fun. They decided they wanted to go to Hollywood Connection, which is a local miniature golf, arcade, bumper cars.... place. Some days the jar is a great incentive and works really well. Other days my kids just didn't care and we'd go days at a time without putting a fuzzy in the jar. Finally with the start of this new school year, my kids have been recommitted. We put the 100th warm fuzzy in the jar this past week. It was a happy time!




Looks like we get to head to Hollywood Connection sometime this week. I've already started the warm fuzzy system over. Let's hope it doesn't take another 8 months to complete it this time! ha ha!! Who am I kidding....

Yesterday we went to "This is the Place Heritage Park" for the Jackson family reunion. Sam's mom's maiden name is Jackson. It was fun, but oh-so-hot. When we got in our car to come home the thermostat read 100 degrees.

We rode the train around the pond:



We panned for gold:





And we rode a trolley around the village. It was a good time had by all. But seriously though, it took a good couple hours after leaving before I felt my body temperature cool down enough to where I didn't feel like freaking out all over the place. :)


However, today wasn't hot. Nooooooo, today was Mother Nature's way of playing a practical joke on us. It started out like a normal Sunday....Sam had meetings, I got kids ready for church....went to church, it was great....After church I could tell we had a storm brewing because the wind was CRAZY!

We got home and saw several neighbors in our yard. I thought "hmmmmm, this can't be good" and then I noticed that our HUMUNGO Cottonwood Tree was not towering above the crowd of people. OH, and then I noticed a big mound of grass mixed with roots laying on the ground. Houston, we have a problem. And then the rains came down (how many are singing a Primary song right now???!!!)!

Let me tell you about the way this tree fell. We are so extremely lucky and I knew it the minute I saw the fallen tree. This huge tree could have fallen directly East. If so, it would have smashed right into my bedroom. Or, this tree could have fallen slightly northeast, if so, it would have smashed into Cameron's room. As luck would have it, it barely hit the roof on the corner of the house, smashed our ghetto chain link fence, and into a tree in the backyard (which is still standing). Seriously, as my neighbor said "It could have been a lot worse, this is the best case scenario for a tree to fall" and he was absolutely right. I'm really going to miss the shade this huge tree provided, but I'm so thankful nobody was hurt. I'm also so thankful to wonderful neighbors and family who put their dinner plans aside to help us cut the tree up so the pressure was off the house, fence, and backyard tree. We have our work cut out for us tomorrow night to clear everything away, but it won't be as bad as it could have been due to the help we received today.

Good thing we had a lesson in Sunday School today about only saying kind things to others and keeping a positive attitude because that was on my mind as we discovered the tree today. I'm pretty sure that's why I could be so calm about everything. As I've said before, Sam's quotable quote comes to mind "It just shakes up the day"!