new family members!!!

Let me introduce to you Wilbur and Olivia, our new family-members/pets/food-source. I recently saw at the local Kroger store that you can buy up to 4 (if I remember correctly) life/health insurance policies for your pets. When the young fella behind the counter saw me reading it as Wifey was paying for our groceries, he piped right up and informed me with a wink that "Hey, you need that insurance, 'cause animals are people, too!" I just thought that cheeky bit of sarcastic advice was pretty funny coming from a 14 year old boy (unsolicited, I might add) behind the counter; maybe the world isn't necessarily going to fill up with panty-waisted mama's boys, after all. I know a few youths that give me hope, as well. :) But I do wonder what the insurance adjuster would say if when he asked you the "reason for loss" you replied "Bacon".

In other news, here is one that is a bit of a blow. Friday morning around 1:00 am, we had a bit of a blow (heh) here at the house. The careful observer will notice in above picture that the East end of our shed is neatly wrapped over our swing set. Even though the wind was almost directly out of the south, the east end of my uncompleted shed blew out and landed directly on our swing set. The whole shed is wracked, or twisted somewhat. My only consolation is that my swing set is still standing. I actually think there may have been some smallish tornado stuff going on because I had several little trees get broken over, and one blown the north, and another to the south. Here is a closer look at it. Notice the total lack of the first truss on end. It snapped off

the end wall posts at ground level and delaminated the corner posts.

We woke up from the noise of the wind sounding like someone laid railroad tracks right up to the house, and Brynn remembered another precious family member; a geranium on the front porch (I wonder if Kroger has plant insurance available? hmmmm) I couldn't hardly be stirred of course so she goes out to save the helpless little bugger. I could feel the air "pulsing" or pressurizing into the house because the door was open. After several minutes of this, I finally dragged myself out of bed to see what was happening. I came out to see Brynn panting, out of breath and shaking, next to the door. She had been trying with all her might to pull the door shut for about two minutes. She had pulling long enough and hard enough that she has blisters and cuts on her hand from the handle, if that gives any idea about the strength of the wind. Anyway, praise God that there was no damage to the house and nobody was hurt! It would be much more inconvenient to live in a half finished shed while rebuilding the house, rather than living in the house while rebuilding the half finished shed.