Scary Stuff!

Somebody was murdered last night a few doors down from us. They don't know why or who did it yet. It's been kind of interesting (and scary!) to watch the police and the crime van and the house marked off with police tape. I think we've even met the victim. They have a dog named Buster who ends up in our yard every few days- their fence does not do so well at keeping the Buster in- so we get him and take him back home.

I'm glad we always lock our doors, even when we are home. Things like this remind me of why we do that.

Sarah and Buster. Buster looks big and mean, but he's remarkably mellow.

Sarah the Scardy-Dog

Sarah the Wonder Dog is terrified of thunderstorms, and we've been having a lot of them lately. In Kansas, most thunderstorms seem to happen late at night or in the very early hours of the morning. Sarah freaks out and wants to sleep in the bed with mom and dad. This would not be such a big deal, but she is a bed hog and during thunderstorms she shakes and gets up to pace all over Cathy's back every few minutes. After being woken up by Sarah at 2 and 3 AM a few nights in a row, Cathy finally moved her dog bed to right beside her to see if it would help any. Thankfully, it did. It seems like she is less likely to panic when Cathy is right beside her, and ever since her bed has been moved, she does not even try to climb in bed with us during the storm. She still wakes Cathy up with her whimpering, but a quick pat soothes that, and she's not walking all over her back anymore!

What We're Reading This Week

Click on the links to read more about the books we're reading this week!

Cathy is reading Forever and Ever, Amen by Sister Karol Jackowski. She can hardly put it down, and thinks Linda should suggest it for book club!

Kirk is reading Robot Building For Beginners by David Cook. Cathy is afraid that soon the dining room table will be filled with robot building supplies, although if he can design one that will clean the house, she won't complain...much.

Jeremy is reading Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

New Garden Discoveries!

Here's some new stuff we found in our garden over the past few days!

We did not know this was a rose bush until a few days ago. They smell wonderful!

Another clematis vine I did not even know was there until I cut down some of that giant grass (Pampas grass?) that is in the corner of our yard. It looks like it is going to have a lot of flowers!

Tornado Update

We have had a surprising number of calls checking up on us to make sure that we are okay! Thanks for your concern, everybody! The town that was hit was not near Wichita, and while we've been experiencing thunderstorms the past few days we are not anticipating any tornado weather right now. The story is very sad- the whole entire town that was hit is gone. We are very happy to have a basement now, just in case.

Notes From the Yard

Here's some pictures of plants in our backyard that I took today. We spent a lot of time this weekend cleaning up the flower beds and pulling weeds. I really like that the last owners put in things that will come back each year. It's kind of fun watching everything come up. We're still not sure what everything is yet. We have been waiting to pull weeds because we're not sure what things are weeds and what things are flowers! It's becoming more clear as time goes on, and we went and bought some roundup for the weeds.

These are my favorites so far. We had purple ones too, but those froze when it snowed a few weeks back.
These are in a flower bed right underneath our bedroom window.

This is the ground cover growing around our deck. Very pretty! We have some white ones too, but the flowers are not doing as well on that one.

I like this one too. I did not cut it back, but I'm going to later this year and get a bigger thing for it to climb up.

Kirk also had to lay down ant and grub poison this weekend- our yard was a huge ant bed. That was not fun, because we had to keep Sarah out of the yard until the poison was dissolved and the grass was totally dry. We also had to chase off robins to keep them from eating the grub things that would come up to the surface. Ew.

Cheese is MISSING!

Cheese the bird (featured in the picture with Cathy) was stolen from the zoo last night, along with his brother, Mac! Poor birds!