When It Rains, It Pours

Stay away from me people! Everything I've touched lately has broken, vanished, or otherwise turned to crap. I am the opposite of Midas! In the past week, these things have all happened:

1) Our range broke. No stove or oven function whatsoever for several days. Slim pickings for meals my friends when you can't cook anything. We went through an entire bag of charcoal in that time frame, grilling meat in 40F weather. Once Mike brought our propane cooktop we use during camping trips into the kitchen to cook something. The whole house smelled like gas for hours. New range installed yesterday though, so now we can wean ourselves off the microwave.

2) I lost my keys. Keys to the house and each vehicle, plus key FOBs for each vehicle. I found them the next day smashed to smithereens half a mile from our house. The cost to replace the key FOBs and the vehicle keys (which have some kind of chip technology) is astronomical. I don't understand the point of the chip, other than to screw people out of their money when they already feel stupid for losing their keys in the first place.

3) Realization that my happiness is too dependent on Facebook. The short story is that for months, no one would reply to anything I wrote on Facebook. I seriously thought all my friends and family were ignoring me. Then I discovered that no one could see what I was writing because I had inadvertently changed the settings on my account. The relief was a little disturbing. I need to find more tangible ways to connect with people besides Facebook.

Well, that's enough for now. When it rains it pours, right? On the positive side, the weather is warming up and signs of spring are everywhere. We are embracing the sunshine and getting outside. Today I took the kids to the Botanical Garden and we saw daffodils, blue bells, magnolias, and cherry blossoms all beginning to bloom. A couple days ago we went to the Zoo. Carter kept calling the prairie dogs "fairy dogs". Nora likes the monkeys the best.

We've got a crazy few weeks coming up. Lots of trips out of town and projects around here going on. I'm sure we'll have lots to share the next time I post something. In the meantime, click HERE for some new pictures.