March is off to quite a bang. Thursday night, as we ushered in the new month, Ellen had cooking class for the older girls at our house. We were all getting quite into the class—we were in the midst of three different recipes—when all of a sudden, our stove lit on fire. It was quite dramatic, let me tell you. I had gone outside to dump the trash and had just walked in the door. Before I could fully walk into the house, I noticed fire traveling from the stove top down the front of the stove. Then, fire gushed out of one of the stove knobs. Picture in your mind water gushing out of a fire hydrant. Now mentally change the water to fire and the hydrant to a stove. That’s what the kitchen looked like. The girls started screaming and ran out of the room. Ellen, who had been trying to put an oven knob back in place, couldn’t reach the gas bottle to turn off the gas. She started sputtering, “Turn off the! Turn off the!” Unfortunately, she couldn’t get the whole sentence out, so the girls were clueless as to what they should do. I was too far away to do anything. Ellen managed to safely scoot around the flame and saved the day by turning off the source of the gas. Needless to say, everyone learned a valuable lesson: know how to turn off the gas bottle.
The men and boys went out of town this weekend for a guys’ retreat, so we left behind decided to have a celebration of our own. Friday after school, the girls crowded into two cars and headed off to our water park, a nearby river, to spend the afternoon. It was the perfect day to go swimming—oddly enough, it was hot and muggy. Muggy is not a common weather description during dry season. We had a glorious time swimming in the creek. Nearly everyone got in the water, and each of us definitely soaked in the sun. We ended our day by feasting on chicken and French fries at a local restaurant. Our enjoyment of the meal was slightly affected by a huge rat we saw crawling around in the ceiling of the dining room. While I didn’t allow the rat’s presence to ruin my meal, I’m reconsidering eating there again. For some reason, the rat just affected the atmosphere of the restaurant and meal. The highlight of the night, though, was definitely the short rain storm that we experienced. Finally!—a break in the doldrums of dry season.
Tonight, we enjoyed another short rainstorm, this one lasting about 10 minutes or so. I’m so excited for rainy season to come. Words really can’t describe my excitement! Until then, however, we’ll have hot, humid weather to endure. Friday, the thermometer crawled past the 90s on its way up during the day. Hopefully, rainy season will come quickly to cool us all down!
