Summer at last!

Hey, it finally got warm!  And you know the saying, "April showers bring May roof leaks!"  Woo hoo!

Luckily the roof was put on right before we got the house so there is a 10 year leak warranty on it.  Unluckily the company seems very surly and uncooperative.

After about a week, they came out and took a look.  After about another week they came back and "fixed" the problem. The next rain, I checked and only 1 had been fixed.  After 2 weeks of not responding to my emails and calls, they sent someone out (without notifying me) to "fix" the problem.  Again.  That was yesterday, I'm about to head into the crawlspace and check on the "fix".  Here goes.

Looky-there, fixed!  Sweet.

Also, the first two pictures on the left are when we took a walk to pick up the van from getting an oil change.  We stopped in a swampy area to look for frogs, but didn't find any.  Ben was angry the rest of the walk because of it (as you can see in the picture).  He's back to the out of control anger thing, we're working on it.  This of course was one of the lovely inadvertent traits passed on by me, which brings us to the...

Next order of business: bugs.

I thought for sure I wrote about this, but apparently not.  Some time ago, months, Julia was with Beth in Ben's room and Beth saw a little asian beetle.  Immobile mind you.  And jumped and screamed a little.  She's not scared of bugs, but it caught her off guard.  Well from that moment on Julia wouldn't go near spots on the floor in case they were bugs.  It cooled down a bit, but then got a booster when Julia got buzzed but one of those beetles (or possibly a bee) while in the garage.

I'm not blaming Beth of course; we all pass on one or two unfortunate reactions here and there.  Being around the kids more I've passed on more than my fair share.  I think Beth feels bad that she may be the root of this particular one...but whatchya gonna do?

Hopefully it will tone down some though.  Preferably go away of course.  ...cause it causes problems.

For instance, I got Julia a baby with a stroller from a garage sale yesterday.  I took her to the park with her pushing her baby the whole way (she kept hitting my foot, stopping, saying "sorry daddy" and coming over to hug my leg).  The problem was, she would stop every 2 or 3 cement spaces and say, "Ant!" and freak out if they came near her.  It took quite a while to get to the park, and she started screaming hysterically when one of the ants turned out to be a spider and took a hop towards her.

Being that it's summer, more or less, we went out yesterday afternoon to get Ben and Julia squirt guns.  Ben being the good brother that he is, helped Julia out by using his to squirt ants off the sidewalk.

Bugs aside, it's summer!  Gotta get my fishing liscense online (Ben's big into fishing, so I'm gonna try to laten his bedtime a little and maybe take him out some on the weekends).  AND I'm sincerely hoping I can find some time this summer to get some beach volleyball in.  If I could have any career...that would be it!  Going to the park and the pool all summer with the kids isn't bad either though.   =)