Just before the storm blew in...

.....Patrick was working a clubhouse for the kids.  Not the kind that comes out of the box with directions in English, Spanish and Chinese or the kind that is mass produced from fluorescent red plastic that fades into pink after just one summer but instead that kind that he imagined up one night built out of pvc pipes, sheets of plastic for walls and very soon the artwork of three very excited kids. The kind of house that little kids can help attach a pipe here or tape a wall there and later brag about building it "on my very own".

The very night the walls were to be constructed and the kids were dancing around the house like little monkeys anxiously awaiting the invitation to come on in, the winds started. Not that winds in the desert are anything new really but winds on a late June night? That seemed a little off. Soon after came the dark clouds and lightening. And later still the shockingly strong gusts  threatening to pull the little house apart at the corners or worse yet turn it into a hot air balloon lifting over fence and landing in an unappreciative neighbors' tree.

With an unhappy Claire wailing from her exersaucer to be picked up and the other littles trampling underfoot a little scared of the howling wind but still excited to help, Patrick and I slowly lifted and carried the ballooning house stopping every few seconds to hold tight through the strongest gusts and carefully wedged the blowing walls and shaking roof between our house and the fence.

Once there Patrick began the job of taking apart the walls of the newly constructed house for fear that the wind would tear them apart at less forgiving points.

Sophia, ever the little adult, stayed outside with Daddy making sure the job was done just right.

And just after they finishing tearing down the walls and laying it's former windows and doors in the rocks we received the first bit of rain we've had in months, breaking the longest drought on record since 1892. And all it cost was a little homemade playhouse.