Today was beautiful. After working outside all day I realized (too late) that I should have used some sunscreen. But I was so happy to see the sunshine, I forgot. After working, I cooked steaks and veggies outside and the kids and I ate. Mmmmmm!!!!!!! I was thinking about how beautiful everything is now, compared to how it all looked last December during that terrible ice storm, where we had no water or electricity for 10 days. This is my back yard after the storm. Things sure can change. Just look at the pictures; and to make things worse this ice storm happened while Ritzy was away training for this deployment. It was just me and the son at home. During Ritzy's 10 day leave for Christmas, I bet you can just guess how that was spent,,,,,yup cleaning up this mess!!!!! I had been telling him how bad it was but he just had to see it to know what I was talking about. We had our electricity back on just a week before Ritzy came home. We did buy a generator on the second day after this storm hit, though. It was rough, but we made it. It would be ok with me to never need that thing again. After the loss of most of the trees in our yard last year in which we lost all the limbs off our papershell pecan trees (after having one of the most productive years in a long time). It's gonna be a while before I see any pecans fall from these trees. This year everything is beautiful now that spring is here and summer is soon to follow.......