Finally. We haven't seen much moisture here over the past few weeks, and the temperatures over the last week have been over 100° F. My poor lawn has been suffering. I've been trying to keep it watered, but the heat is just really tearing into it. I think next spring I'll overseed with some drought tolerant seed. This rain is going to help a bit, though. The bad part about the rain: I was just getting ready to take the boys to the park so they could chase the ball. Unfortunately, with the rain, I'd wind up with two mudballs masquerading as dogs. They wouldn't mind, but I think Brian would be a bit annoyed at mud all over the inside of the truck. Well, that, and I really don't feel up to giving them baths today. At all. So, we have sad dogs. This is Ares being a sad dog. He's being very good at it this morning.

I now have "Riding the Storm Out" stuck in my head. Why? I just went outside with the trash, looked over my shoulder and WOW! Storm clouds on the horizon, and I can hear the thunder as I'm typing this. That's what I get for not looking at the weather report. I was not expecting this. It was nice and sunny outside just a minute ago as I took the picture, and the clouds are already rolling in over the house. I should go put the dogs to bed so the thunder doesn't freak them out. They hate it.

Just realized I was missing a few final updates, so I'll fill you in. Clyde went to go stay with his owner's cousin last Friday. He was a great dog to get to know; if I didn't already have a houseful of pets, he would have been an awesome dog to have. It was hard to have him here, though... Apollo didn't want him near us, and would park himself on the floor so he was between Clyde and us. I couldn't let Clyde off the leash in the house, because he thought cats were something to chase. If I'd had time, I could have trained him not to do it, but I knew he wasn't going to be here for long. I really enjoyed having him here, though. He was a gentleman, and just a super sweet dog. Good luck, Clyde and family! The swamp cooler was finally installed last week, and that made me VERY happy. The guys who came out (to replace the guy who couldn't be bothered to show up) were polite, professional, and wonderful to have here. The installed the cooler, fixed a few problems we didn't know we had (oops, broken water line), and were very reasonably priced. My recommendation, if you live in the area: AWR Maintenance are great handymen. We will definitely call them again. Great work, guys. The swamp cooler was really nice this past week. It got a bit warm around here. Of course, it's been cold and icky the past few days, but summer is on the way. We'll definitely get our money's worth out of this. Oh.. thanks, Mom and Dad, for paying for the installation. That was a big help. That's been our excitement here. My son and his wife came out for the weekend, which was very nice. We really had a nice visit, and it was very relaxing and fun. I'll post pictures of our drive up the Monument later; I still need to pull them off the little camera.

Welcome to springtime in Colorado, I suppose; I let the dogs out this morning, and it was snowing. Not a lot, but snow all the same. I think I'm going to go back to bed.

Just thought I'd share a picture that made me happy. My lilac is budding. Spring is finally here. I love the first little bits of green that pop out; it really makes me feel that winter is finally over. Don't get me wrong, I like winters here. Snow is good, but you really get tired of it after so many months. Spring just makes me happy. Speaking of seasons: spring means summer, and summers here are HOT. Last year, at the end of the summer, our swamp cooler started to die. Not all at once, but it got harder and harder to turn it on and have it actually turn the fan. We finally broke down a few weeks ago and bought a new one, but it still needs to be installed on the roof. Brian and his dad got it up on the roof yesterday, and today we have a guy coming to get it installed. Here's hoping everything works correctly. We were going to install it last weekend, but when they got it out of the box it had a big dent in the side, like someone had dropped it. Fortunately, Lowe's didn't have any problem taking it back and swapping it for one that wasn't damaged, but we had to wait another week for the installation. It's not really hot yet, so that's not a big deal. I'll post pictures of the process. If I'm not working, I should at least record the efforts of those who are. ;)