It was standing room only at Vermillion Primary school today...and I must not know the right "people" because even though I arrived 30 minutes before the program started, I did not get the VIP seats. I ended up standing to the side, so I could get capture some video and still pictures, although it's hard to juggle a video camera, still camera and a BlackBerry at the same time. I was trying to take pictures on my phone to send to Scott (who was Indianapolis this week) in "real time."

The theme was Rainbow Rock, and each song had to do with color. Adam's been informing me that he has some cool "moves" as you can see below. I only included about 30 seconds of his antics, but they dance around for about two minutes. Adam is carrying a red guitar. If you are reading this in your e-mail inbox, and the videos did not come through, click here to visit the blog.


Here's a little purple people eater:


And a couple of still pictures. These are actual frames from the video. (How many of you just sang FREEZE FRAME like the song from 1981?) My still pictures did not turn out well.

Tornado sirens went off three times tonight. Emergency alert system broke in on our TV, something I have not seen in a really long time. Adam informed me that funnel was another word for tornado. We ate dinner in the basement. Lots of rain, thunder and lightning. I think I hear hail now. Our views:

Question: How do you get boys to help you do yard work?
Answer: Buy a bunch of dirt.

I've always wanted to grow a garden but my thumb was always the wrong color (unless green thumb means you like to spend money). So I decided to take the plunge this year. It helped that two neighbors and another friend were also going to try their hand at gardening, and also saved us money because we were able to buy dirt and compost in bulk.

Have you ever bought dirt? I called a place that someone had recommended because they sold dirt for cheap (dirt cheap). I was quoted $12 a ton. Have you ever tried to figure out how much a ton of dirt is? It's not as much as you think. The helpful person asked me how much dirt I wanted to purchase, and I gave her the dimensions of my raised bed. She gave me a formula to figure out the amount of dirt I would need, but I asked her if she would just calculate it for me, because my math skills were not up to par (although I did get an A in both geometry and trigonometry, but I think those are classes that I learned what I needed to know, and the promptly forgot it). Since I was ordering topsoil for three gardens that were the same size, and also filling part of the beds with compost, we agreed that I would need 1.5 tons of dirt. That seemed like a lot to me, and I was envisioning this huge mound of dirt on our driveway.

We had the dirt delivered to my house on Friday. A big dump truck arrives, and I call the boys up to the front to see it...and this little pile of dirt falls out. That's it? The boys were not as impressed as I thought they would be. I asked the driver if this was, in fact, a ton and half of dirt, and he looked at his delivery slip and said, "Actually, it's 1.55 tons of dirt!" It did end up to be just the right amount.

Dirt must have some kind of electromagnet pull with human males. In about five seconds, Adam and Zach, plus our two neighbor boys were digging, shoveling, scooping, sliding and playing the dirt. They did manage to fill up our wheel barrows so we could take it to the backyard.

On Saturday, my neighbor and I borrowed another neighbors truck and headed out to Single Tree Stables to pick up compost. We pulled up to the farm and about four or five dogs come out to meet us, one which looks like Droopy Dog and was tall enough to stick his head in the window of our truck. The others were a mix of different breeds who happily followed our truck very closely out to the pasture. The farm hand (is that PC?) filled the the truck up for $25. Back at the house, the boys were my little helpers again. Adam filled up the wheelbarrows...compost is so much easier to shovel than regular dirt! Once the dirt was in the bed, Zach helped me turn it and rake it all out.

I planted tomatoes (and yes, you CAN plant tomatoes this early...there was a debate about it, but we confirmed it to be true), onion and lettuce...and next month I'll plant zucchini.

This was just too funny NOT to post.

I'm in the basement this morning. All of a sudden, Zach burst out crying, and then Adam. Next comes screaming, more crying and stomping. It continues to escalate and I thought people were getting hurt. I hurry upstairs to find Zach in his room. Here is how the rest of the conversation went:

Me: "What happened?
Zach: "Adam said that 10-12 is wrong."
Me: "What do you mean?"
Zach: "Adam said that you can't subtract 10 from 12, and I say you can!"

(Adam arrives...hysterically crying.)

Adam: "Zach says that you can do 10-12. BUT YOU CAN'T! IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!"
Zach: "YES YOU CAN!"
Adam: "Mom! Tell Zach he's wrong!"

Me (trying hard not to laugh): Well, if you subtract 12 from 10 you get a negative number, negative two."

Adam: "No. You don't know what you're talking about! The biggest number always comes first. That's what the rule is!"

I sent them both to their room to settle down and then Scott and I had a good laugh.

Happy Rainy Easter everyone!

We started our Easter festivities on Tuesday, when the boys and I dyed Easter eggs. We put rubber bands around them to make them striped, but they didn't turn out quite as good as the picture in the magazine.
On Saturday, we had a soccer game at 10:45 am, and then had to rush home for our high noon Easter egg hunt with our next door neighbors and their cousins. Between us and them we had more than 150 eggs and six boys between the ages of 5 and 9. Surprisingly, all the boys ended up getting about equal number of eggs and there were no squabbles until they decided that however had the most eggs had the most "power."It was a good thing we had the hunt on Saturday, because today it has been a steady ran since early this morning. The Easter bunny left baskets for Adam and Zach: sidewalk chalk, water guns, fun coloring pad, money and Star Wars lightsabors! Wow! Grandma Agnes came over for a lunch of lasagna, salad, fruit and bunny cake! I know, lasagna is not typically something you would serve on Easter, but I wasn't going to make ham. As for the bunny cake, just call me Martha Stewart! Now the boys (all three of them) are watching golf, and attempting to play golf in the basement. Zach brought in the junior golf set and when I said that wasn't such a good idea, he had informed me that Daddy said it was ok.

On another note, I have purchased wood to make my raised bed garden this year...there is no turning back now. A group of four of us in the neighborhood have all decided to try and grow our own food. We all went to Lowe's yesterday (with the help of one husband) and picked out our timber. Next is getting topsoil and compost and then planting. I'm going to try tomatoes, zucchini, onion and some kind of leaf lettuce. We'll see how it goes, since I've never had much of a green thumb.