A Little Adventure

Everyone who lives in Texas should know there are fire ants everywhere. Everyone also knows that you don’t want them to get on you because they will swarm and then bite you. Fire ant bites really, really hurt.

A couple of weeks ago, Holly and I went to the park for playgroup. One of the little girls who is just learning to walk somehow got into a pile of fire ants. One of the ladies in the ward said, “oh, quick put water on her.” Then she said to wash her feet with soap or hand sanitizer. After you could see the little ant bites on her feet. I felt so bad. It was that day, I learned how you deal with fire ants if they get on you. Get water on them and then wash with soap or hand sanitizer. I put that away in my brain for future reference.

Yesterday, we were making cookies and timing it to see how long they took for Milo’s homework. While we were waiting he asked if he could go outside and play. I said sure, I’ll come get you when it’s time to put the cookies in. A few minutes later he comes in to tell/show me that he had ants on him…fire ants. I said, “quick, buddy go outside, we need to get water on you.” They were all over his shirt. Luckily it was Wednesday and that happens to be the day that he always wears his long sleeve “My Sister is a Monster” shirt. The ants were on his shirt, not on him. I turned on the hose and started to get him wet. I said we had to do it to get the ants off. We then took his shirt off and got the last remaining ant off him. I had him take off his pants to make sure no ants were on him anywhere. I took him upstairs and got him in the bath and washed his whole body. I didn’t see any ant bites and he didn’t seem to indicate he was hurting anywhere, so I was very happy.

Milo told me that he was on top of the play scape looking at the dogs (yes, the one that got into our yard) and the ants were on top of the play scape. I told him we couldn’t go out there until Dad got home so he could put out some ant food so they would go away.

I feel like we were blessed because if Holly would have been out there, first of all she doesn’t wear long sleeves and usually wears shorts. Second, she wouldn’t have known to come tell me she had ants on her so quickly. She surely would have gotten bitten by them and then that would be been a very bad thing.

We had a great Easter this year. It started out with a great Easter Egg hunt at a nearby park. Milo was out of school last Friday so he was able to come too.

Holly got the idea of going to find eggs until she realized that the eggs had candy in them. She stopped hunting for eggs and start eating. I did manage to get her to find a few more.

Here’s Holly holding onto an egg.

Milo did well finding the eggs. He had a great time.

Milo was content to stop for a picture, Holly on the other hand wanted to keep running around.

I told Milo if he would stop licking his lips, then I’d take him to get a slush at Sonic after the Easter Egg Hunt at the park. He was really excited and we worked really hard to get his lips better. They look great now. For an extra incentive, I told him if he kept them looking good (in hopes he can break the habit) I’d take him to get another slush this Friday. We are making great progress!

After the hunt was over, we played at the park for a few minutes. Milo had a few friends from church and he was happy to be able to play. Holly wanted to just sit on my lap and eat candy. I finally told her that was enough. She, of course, got mad at me and threw her bucket and it broke (it was easily fixed with some packing tape). She really likes candy… Later that afternoon I heard Milo telling his friends about how he went Easter’n or Easter Egg’n. It was really funny.

We also had an Easter Egg hunt in the house on Saturday. The eggs were hidden in the living room, kitchen, the study, and the entry way. The kids were excited to go looking for eggs.

Here’s Milo and Holly before they started looking for eggs. Holly was excited to find one on the stairs.

Holly got the right idea this time. It took her a little longer before she realized the eggs had candy in them.

Milo’s bucket was so full that the handle broke on it. We had a lot of eggs.

Holly loves eating candy.

Holly kept eating and eating. She would carry around chocolate in her hand. We did manage to get her to stop soon after this.

Holly loves Easter Eggs and realizes that there is usually candy in them.

Milo got a new Star Wars book for Easter and both kids were excited to listen to some of it after our Easter Egg Hunt.

Grandma Little made this cute little dress for Holly. She actually likes her pretty dress. Thank you! When we were getting ready to leave for church, Holly was more interested in getting fruit snacks out of Mom’s bag than standing still for a picture. You do get to see the back of the dress.

She did find something else interesting and she turned slightly so you can see the front of her dress. She did manage to leave in her barrette. She kept checking to make sure it was there, but didn’t take it out. Although at first she didn’t like the ribbon on the front. She stuck her arm in between the dress and the ribbon during church. It was crazy.

We had a great Easter dinner after church. We had ham, cheesy potatoes, rolls, honey butter, green salad and cookies. We had a great and memorable Easter!

I decided that I wanted to make a couple more table runners for a few different places in our house. This next one was for the top of our roll top desk. It took me quite a while to finish it, but I finally got it done. It looks pretty good, but it is no where near perfect. My sister-in-law tells me that it has character. It certainly does have that.

The table runner for our roll top desk.

The next table runner I’m going to attempt is one for Milo’s chest of drawers. I have the fabric I just need to get started on it. It might take me a bit longer to get done. We shall see.

We decided to go on a little hike on Saturday. It took us 45 minutes to an hour to get to Hamilton Pool. The hike was short and the pool was pretty. It was nice to get out for a bit.

Of course, Holly wanted to get into the water. She is fearless. Milo was just happy to get out and be able to use his backpack.

Holly and Scott wading around in the water.

Here’s a couple of different views of the pool.

We have survived our first hail storm. Luckily Scott had decided to come home a few minutes early. Within about five minutes after he got home, it started to rain. We were watching it out the back windows when we decided to move to the front porch. We watch the hail start coming down.

It came down pretty quickly. It covered the everything on our street. Everyone in our house came outside to watch. It was amazing and a lot of fun to watch.

Here’s the hail just coming down.

Here are some of the big ones.

This is what our neighborhood looked like after.

Scott went out in it and was throwing hail balls. A few of our neighbors came out to see it after it was all done. We realize this is the closest we are going to get to snow while we are here. This is what we found out of one of our rain gutters.

The mess we had out of the rain gutter.

We had quite the pile on our front porch. The kids enjoyed playing in it, but got kind of cold.

After the storm had moved on, there was a beautiful double rainbow. The second rainbow is really faint, but it was there.