Madness

It's a warm-ish, windy night on the Plains.  The grass is finally starting to turn green.  Last week was warm, and we though spring was here.  On Friday night, we went to our church small group at some friends' house in the country north of here.  When we came out of the house, 5 inches of snow had fallen, and we had to make a long, white-knuckle journey home, barely able to tell the difference between the highway and the ditch.  Hopefully, that was the last snowy drive of many in the nasty winter we've had.  The next day, it pretty much melted away.  The rivers rose really high in the past week, but the flooding wasn't too bad. This state is absolutely crazy about the Northern Iowa basketball team, who beat number one Kansas and messed up everybody's March Madness brackets last week.  Right know, I am blogging while watching an absolute barn-burner of a game between Kansas State and Xavier (in Salt Lake).

Last weekend, I went downtown to see a hot-rod show.  There were some great cars, and I got to see Henry Winkler (the Fonz) and Chip Foose (famous cable-tv car builder).  Although there were lots of beautiful, perfectly polished showcars, my favorite part was the back room full of  "rat-rods", all of which had clearly been driven right into the convention center through the salty slush of Des Moines.  After the show, I went for a long walk through the downtown skywalk system, which is really a strange world on a Saturday afternoon.  It's a three-mile long system of elevated indoor walkways, and you can go  pretty much anywhere without stepping outside (nice in the winter, but still kind of wierd).  This has resulted in a lot of restaurants and shops being on the second floor, instead of on the ground.  I did find a promising Indian buffet in the skywalk to try out another time.

Asher is becoming a bit of a class clown. When I went to pick him up at school yesterday, Sarah held up his paper with a red light on it, showing he had gotten in trouble during the day.  I asked why, then looked down at him.  He had drawn a mustache on his lip, but it was a very... umm... small mustache... right in the middle of his lip.  Sarah said it may be a Charlie Chaplin mustache, but it had a certain Hitler-y look to it.  I had a really hard time trying not to laugh, because he really looked ridiculous. He is oddly obsessed with mustaches right now, and was drawing various types of facial hair on his face with yogurt tonight.

Eva is growing quickly, and already loves grabbing things and gnawing on them.  She has even started stealing Asher's toys. 

When she is happy, she communicates in odd, high-pitched squeeks. Here is her video debut on the blog.  I will upload a better video when I get the time:

Eva's Squeek