My crazy weekend...

WARNING: This post is very long and random!  If you only have a minute or two....you need to come back when you have a little more time.  (:


Well I have had a very busy last few days!  Saturday, as I was sitting outside on the patio table, I looked around and noticed how many branches and twigs we had laying on the ground from the microburst we had on Friday night.......  For those of you that don't know what a microburst is (like moi until a couple days ago :)   it is basically extremely strong winds that are capable of doing lots of damage!  The wind regime is the opposite of a tornado, which is illustrated in this picture:

And that is EXACTLY what it did at our little farmhouse!  We had gone to see Ivan's dance performance downtown (which was excellent, BTW!) and when we got home, it literally looked equivalent to our home being a dollhouse and someone using a leafblower on it for about 10 minutes!  I'm NOT kidding!  Our driveway  is a typical driveway you would see at old farmhouses.  Our house sits back from the road a ways, so the driveway is kinda long and a little curvy.  Well, as we pulled into the driveway, we saw TONS of HUGE branches and some trash that had blown into our yard/driveway.  I remember thinking it looked very odd.  As we pulled around the house to park, our patio table was moved about 5 feet across the patio and all of the chairs were laying all over the yard.  It looks as if someone had picked each of the chairs up over their heads and just threw them with all their might!  I was SO relieved to see that the glass top on the patio table wasn't broken!  I read in our newspaper the next day that some of my neighbors thought we were having a tornado and actually hid in their basement!  I guess when they finally came out of their basement, they had damage in their yard/fence and really thought we had had a tornado.  How scary!.......................Aaaaanyway, now that I'm done playing meteorologist, I will get back to my story:  So like I said...I noticed that there were still TONS of small twigs/branches in our yard, so I got the rake with the intention of just doing "that little area,".....HA!  Yeah RIGHT!  After raking up that "little area," the area next to it just didn't look right.  So I raked that up too.  Then The area next to THAT looked ugly....  So I had this larger "clean" area and was just not happy with the rest of the yard.  At ALL!  So I decided to rake up all of the yard.  Then....(can you guess what happened??)  Yep, I just wasn't happy with the way the DRIVEWAY looked!  The kids were helping me and I think I know exactly what they were thinking when they saw me eyeing the driveway (:  Remember I mentioned that "long and windy" driveway??  The yard looks AWESOME all the way from the mailbox (at the entrance of the driveway).....BOTH sides of the driveway... ALL the way to the huge dumpster at the back of the house, and then around to the "original" small area!  We all got blisters on our hands from the rakes...but that's ok.  The yard looks great!  Those twigs I noticed at first snowballed into this HUGE job!  Here are some pictures I took.  I pRoMiSe that the piles were HUGE.  It really doesn't look like it in the pictures, but THEY WERE!!

If anyone reading this has ever worked in the fields, you know exactly the way we felt when we were done.  Absolute exhaustion!!  And a tall glass of ice water never tasted so good! Wow.
So after all of that physical labor, we went inside and cleaned the whole house and I made the kiddos something to eat.
Then as if THAT wasn't enough, and I am NOT kidding...I made tamales (with my mom's help) that evening for dinner!  Thank you mom!!
I was exhausted after the crazy yard work, but as soon as I had my shower, I got my second wind in a bad way and had so much energy!  It was crazy!  I would have posted pictures, but I cannot find them!  I must have accidentally deleted them as I was organizing my memory card....I was so bummed!!!  Well
My kids had one more present for their uncle Danny's birthday that they wanted to give him, so when he and my mom came over, Marko asked me to give him 5 minutes to come outside with his gift for Danny.  I didn't know why, but I said "sure."
This is why my sweet, handsome, brilliant son wanted 5 minutes:

He literally learned the "Happy Birthday" song on his guitar so he could play it for his uncle Danny as Tita gave him his gift!  How sweet is THAT?!  He always makes me very proud, but at that moment, I was extremely happy and beyond proud of my son.  He's amazing!  And so very generous.  Thank you Marko for being so special honey (:  I love you!

Well, Sunday we went to a "town" that isn't even on our state map.  I mean, I have never looked for it on the map....but I really doubt it's there.  It's THAT small (:
On our way home, we crossed the Poudre River.  There is a 21 mile trail that runs alongside the river and you are allowed on this trail on anything that isn't motorized like a bike or rollerblades.  We have had warnings for a while now of the river being very very full and of the possibility of a flash flood.  Since there currently isn't anywhere to divert the water, the threat of a flash flood is very possible.  I've posted before of all of the rain we had been getting and this is just one of the consequences of that.  This isn't near my house, so I am very thankful for that; however, there are houses that are just a block or so from here and I can only imagine their fear.
Here are a few pictures to give you an idea.  This is the trail:

 And it winds around here:

 through here:  Notice the water!

 And yes....that would be my very strange family.....

 This is the trail and it is completely covered in water!!

 The trail is blocked off with warning signs:

 I pray that this situation doesn't escalate to anything worst than what it is now.

That evening, we went to Lori's house to hang out.  We all had a lot of fun.  Lori and I gave the kids a bath
in bug spray because there were TONS of mosquitos out.  Lori even put some on herself!  I was the only one that didn't use any bug spray and I didn't get one single mosquito bite!
This is my favorite picture of the kids because I LOVE the expression on Claire's face!  Too funny!!  Claire is the one right smack in the center. 

 This is my Marko, Jake and Eli being silly (:

And this is also one of my favorite pictures of the kids.  Lori and I do not dress our kids like this with "shawls" when it's almost 90 degrees out, but I am NOT at liberty to tell the real reason.... (:

 Love these girls!

So...did you have a crazy weekend like mine?  Or was yours a little more relaxed?  Either way, I hope you had a blessed weekend.

One favor I want to ask:  If anyone reads this post, please keep my cousin Enrique in your prayers.  He was diagnosed with cancer 2 weeks ago and will be having surgery today (Tuesday.)  Please pray that God guides his doctor's hands during the surgery and that he makes a complete recovery.  Thanks and God bless!