April showers

It's been raining like crazy here. In Southern Cali, we don't usually get much rain. A couple inches at most. Most of our water comes from the snowpack on the mountains. Well, this year decided to go like it did six years ago and rain for all of April.

Our lovely flooded sidewalk.

Check out the Doppler radar. We're the circled dot right in the middle of the storm. That doesn't usually happen, and I'm way too gleeful about it.

The storm started, naturally, while I was in the grocery store on Wednesday. With the kids. None of us had coats. We walked out of the store into a cloudburst.

I rushed the basket with my (drenched) munchkins and groceries out to the car, got everything stowed and wiped down. Then A. begged me to take his quarters, which he had left in the car, and please get him some gumballs. So I raced back out through the downpour and got him the gumballs.

By the time I got home, got everyone inside and all the groceries too, I was quite wet. But it was funny, too.

Fun with rain

It's been raining a lot in SoCal lately. Nice, warm, spring rains. Well, the ones we got over the weekend were a little excessive. I knew something bad was coming, because Saturday evening, the sky looked like this:

Just this weird, blank, yellowish light, instead of the usual red or pink. You know the adage about "red sky at night, sailors' delight, red sky at morning, sailors take warning"? When you get that morning red sky, chances are your sunset the night before looked like this.

Anyway, it rained all day Sunday. The kids loved it.

They went out and laughed at the sound of raindrops pattering on their hoods. I let them catch raindrops in various cups and things, until they were cold and tired and came in of their own accord.

Monday morning: flooded.



But it was lovely and warm, so we went out and swept water off the walk.

Alex bailed with a plastic container.

And mama went out and swept water, too, to have a pretense just to get her feet wet in the nice clean rainwater. Of course, it didn't stay clean once we all got into it and stirred it up, but it was fun to play in just the same. We swept enough off that it was dry by that afternoon.

And today: more rain! Alex is hoping it floods again.

Fun with water ... in February

So it rained all day today, and our front sidewalk looked like this.

I let A. out on our little front step with a spoon and a bowl, and left him happily sailing the bowl around and filling it with water. I went inside, did some stuff, and checked on him five minutes later. This is what I found:

I rolled my eyes and watched him shuffle around in the water. He came up to me to show me how wet his pants were, turned around, tripped, and face-planted into the water.

He was very, very wet. I took him in and gave him a bath.