Storm!

We've had some very strange weather around here over the last few weeks. 2 Sundays ago, while the kittens were being born, we had a crazy drop in temperature with hail and blizzard-like snow, then some nice warm weather (including Saturday at our family dinner - which I hope to post on soon), hot weather up to at least 24 deg. yesterday and then today another drop with really strong winds. It was almost tornado-like the way it came whipping through our yard (probably remnants of the tornadoes down south).

The kids had a very hard time concentrating on school because of all the wind noises and seeing all the things the wind was doing around us, so we decided to stop and ended up reading The Hobbit for a while. We had the kittens in the house with us too because it was getting way too crazy out there. Tiger had taken one of the kittens from the cat house and put it in the blue box on our back porch, so I went and got the rest of them for her. A short time later, the cat house went whipping around the house and almost into the field. Then even the blue boxes were being threatened, so I took the whole box in the house with the kittens. Of course that helped distract the kids for a while.

We've finally come up with names for the rest of the kittens. (We are planning to try to sell them, so of course these are only temporary names, but you can't have kittens around without knowing what to call them).

Here is Joanna with Lewis (as in C.S. Lewis).

And Josiah with Tolkien (yes, as in J.R.R. Tolkien).

Sarah, with Bucephalus (as in Alexander the Great's great black stallion),

And Esther with Smudges (as in black with smudges).

And here is watchful Mamma Tiger.

Tired kittens, cozied up in the doll car seat. (11 days old)

At one point, the girls were going to go outside, going out through the back door by the playroom. Joanna realized she had forgotten her shoes and ran back to the mud room with Sarah to get them. Esther waited in the open doorway for them. As she stood there, the big pine just a little bit outside that door was torn out by the roots and fell across the yard. We praise God for protecting our girls from that tree! They could've been right in its path if they had gone out any earlier.

A little later, John was outside looking around and suddenly one side of the barn slowly tore off and crashed into the field right by the barn. Very soon after, half the roof collapsed in as well. Needless to say, our barn looks quite airy now, sporting a very open-concept design.

After the wind slowed down enough for us to go out without getting blown away, we inspected the damage together. Well, at least this makes a very pretty spot to take a picture.