Water galore

Thanks to wonderful weather, P. and I were able to get into the swimming pool for the first time this year. (Tyler had already taken the other kids a couple times.) She loved it! I couldn't find S.'s sunhat that we bought last year, so I used a baby bonnet our neighbor in Chicago had given to us. She looked a little Amish (wink), but it definitely did the job. Our pool here is really well maintained and not too overcrowded considering the number of apartments in our community. I hope that we will get plenty of opportunities to go swimming before we move. It sure has been hot and humid enough to necessitate a daily dip!
A lesson on Noah’s Flood
We had a really strong storm earlier this week. The two older kids and I just stood at the windows and watched it just dump on us. It didn't take long before we had a water show right out all of our windows (see pics). If you haven't been to our place, we live down a small hill that continues down until it comes to a creek. It was raining so hard that there were waterfalls down all the steps and water "fountains" at every storm drain.This storm made me extremely thankful that we are living here and not in Chicago anymore. If a storm of this capacity would have hit us in Chicago (and we did have a couple), our backyard would have flooded and went straight into the basement. I don't want to ever re-live having to walk through freezing cold water to carry our things up one level. This storm also was a great teaching point with E. when he asked why there was dirt and rocks and things everywhere. The water was rushing so fast that it was picking up pieces of asphalt, rock, and tree limbs and carrying them along. After the water finally drained there was a path of dirt and nastiness left behind. So we were able to talk about the global flood from Noah’s day and how incredibly powerful water is—that it can rip through anything and causes major disasters when there is real flooding. We talked about how canyons were formed by water and valleys cut out of terrains. Thankfully we didn't end up with any canyons or valleys out of our front door. I am even more thankful that God has promised to never flood the earth again as he did in the days of Noah!