Close call

Jim took Lucy out yesterday morning for her morning potty break. He stepped in the door and not 3 seconds later a loud boom occurs and he looks out to see a huge tree branch on one of our pecans out back snapped off. Would have killed him if he'd been under it.

Jim surveys the damage.

Gives you an idea of the size of this branch.


It looks like the back door was covered, but there was actually a space of about 4 feet or so in front of it.


Snapped the porch umbrella in two.

Luckily the tree guys who are already scheduled to come out this Wednesday were able to come out that afternoon and cut the branch up. All we can figure is that it is a bumper crop of pecans this year, and the weight of them dragged the branch down. Alex was worried when he saw our two metal chairs underneath it, and cried when he saw the kids picnic bench that had been flipped over by the branch (undamaged, but flipped nonetheless). I wish I'd gotten a picture of the view out the back door - it was like looking into a dense forest.

Just some pics

Alex lately has been wanting to fall asleep downstairs for nap, versus going up to his bed (he doesn't want to miss out on the fun I guess). Here's how I found him sleeping the other day:



And here he is today on the couch in the front room:________________________________________________________________


Despite Alex's initial misgivings at us getting a female dog, he loves the little girl now. She gamely takes it all from him with no complaints.


Just about the only time she actually will bark is when the kids pull out their little push brooms. She goes nuts anytime she sees either one of them. And it's not just the snail on the end of Alex's broom - Grace's caterpillar features fell off hers long ago, but it still sets off the barking. Lucy doesn't bark at a regular broom though.

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Both my kids are NUTS over the Power Rangers. We have a lot of mock PR fights at the house, accompanied by lots of "HYA! HYA! HYA!" sounds, which if you've ever watched an episode you'll know is the sound the Rangers make with every kung fu move they do. Alex has perfected the slo-mo collapse when you defeat him. Grace was showing off some PR moves to Jim today:



I'm not sure what the significance of the hula hoop was. Maybe just to prove her prowess at the killer moves.

Meet Lucy

Oh my lord we have a dog. We drove about 40 miles east yesterday and got ourselves this beautiful boxer puppy. Since Grace named her Lucy we let Alex pick her middle name. He wants to go with "Licky", since that's what puppies do. So here is Lucy Licky Hutchinson.

Two new links

Wow - two posts in one day!

I'd save this one but chances are I'd forget to post it for another week.

I want to showcase my two new links on the right. I'm replacing Elisa's K Stuff blog with her Elisalou one, mainly so I can more easily check it every day and to show off what neat stuff she puts on it.

And I'm welcoming Christi back to the blogging fold with Little House. We've missed you!

Frustrated

I'm going nuts with my email. Luckily we still have Jim's desktop Mac to use here at the house, so I now have no problem checking messages. However, if I don't pay attention when I send an original message (vs a reply to someone), the computer defaults to Jim's email address as the sender. And if someone replies to me through it I don't ever know, since Jim no longer uses his home email address - he's a Gmail man now. If I were to check his now-unused address, I'd probably end up downloading 1000+ spam messages, along with the select few directed to me. So I'm afraid people think I'm ignoring their reply to me, when I'm actually not getting the message at all.

I do have my own Gmail account now. I just want to sit down and enter in a few more email addresses so when I send a notice of my new address I'll hit most everyone at once. Then my husband will quit hounding me about switching over, and I can stop sending the "Oops, this was sent from Jim's address" follow-up messages to people.

So if you get an email from Jim at the 5504 address, know that you can forward your reply to my address and call me an idiot for sending it incorrectly.

Small blessings

I discovered this week that while thieves took off with the camcorder, they didn't get the tape with Grace's dance recital and Preschool graduation on it. We'd loaned the camera to friends about a month ago, and had taken the tape out then. Since we are so bad about actually videotaping the family, we'd not used it since then and the tape was still out. It was a nice thing to smile about.

One more headache

So I came to realize today that whoever took my laptop has accessed my email at least once. It's the only way to explain the recent emails people sent me that I never received. So if you sent me a message that I didn't reply to, chances are I may have not ever received it.

All is fixed now. And if anyone has any webhosting needs, I highly recommend WingSix, simply because they have been extremely nice people both times I've had to call them recently.

How incredibly boring must it be to read someone else's email. Once you wade past the spam I get, I can't imagine much of what I receive would interest anyone other than me.

Bastards.

Heartbroken

Well, I was all ready to post a couple new pictures of our caterpillars in their latest form, only to come home last Thursday to discover our house had been broken into. The fence had been hopped in the back, the unlocked window found, and they were able to get in and out without setting the alarm off. Not a lot of stuff was taken, but definitely things that add up. Both my and Jim's laptops, our nice digital camera, the Playstation 2 (doesn't get used much, so no big loss there), most of my and Jim's dvds, the digital camcorder and the entire contents of my jewelry box.

Strangely, I'm not upset by the fact someone was in my house going through my stuff. I'm more upset over the sentimental value of some of the things taken. Irritated at the inconvenience of the laptop and camera being gone, but sad because the tape in the camcorder had Grace's last dance recital and preschool graduation on it, and no telling what else.

I'm most heartbroken over the loss of the jewelry. In addition to my new diamond earrings I got for my birthday, I had things like both the necklaces I received from Jim to honor of each of my kid's birth and all the gifts Jim has given me throughout the years. All the rings and necklaces I got for birthdays growing up are gone too, plus stuff I got from my mom and grandmothers. I had amassed a nice collection of earrings and necklaces for every occasion made by my friend Maja that is now gone. And I get so sad when I think about how one of Grace's favorite things to do was get my jewelry box down and try everything on.

This was the first break in we've had that the kids are aware of. They got a little traumatized because when I realized what had happened I whisked them out of the house to wait until the police showed up. Grace was concerned they had taken her "soft bear", and once we came back inside with the officer she was relieved to be able to point out all the things of hers that weren't taken. Alex just wants to "mush those bad guys."

Oh, and please send me an email if you read this. I once again have to rebuild my address book.