Never a dull moment

Our lazy Sunday evening turned from a fairly peaceful one to a few moments of excitement and screams...

The evening started off with me trying out a new recipe - a casserole I found from The Pioneer Woman's website. It's called Creamy Chicken Spaghetti Casserole. You can check out the recipe here. I've tried a couple of her recipes and so far have had excellent results. As always with her recipes, and my lack of cooking experience - something I'm working on, it took a while to make. I wasn't as big of a fan as I have been in the past, but I still thought it was pretty good; the biggest plus was that we had plenty of leftovers which means less cooking for me this week.:) The hubby absolutely loved the dish. I think he is enjoying this new hobby (can I even call it that with how little it occurs?) of mine.

Here's a picture of it. I forgot to take one when it came out of the oven, so the leftovers will have to do.

After dinner and some more down time, the hubby told me we should probably close the windows. It's been a gorgeous days with the windows and doors wide open, pups in and out all day with panting tongues and grins from exploring their yard. Just as we were closing the windows we saw flickers of lighting and bam! Is that rain? Nope. Hail. Major hail. Holy hail! At first it was like snow, then the size of large ice cubes. Then, for a couples minutes, golf ball size. It was so loud the dogs were barking and we were backing away from the windows. The news reported that some people had tennis ball size hail. We are thankful we didn't lose power like many in our area did. 

 We are now under a tornado watch and probably will be throughout the night as there will be more storms rolling in. I love this kind of weather, Spring storms, with the excitement of hail and potential bad weather. What can I say, I'm a Kansas girl. My dad still runs outside, even when the tornado sirens are blaring, to try to get a glimpse of something exciting. I have a distinct memory of when we moved back to Kansas during one of our first storms. The sirens going off while my dad stood outside watching the clouds and my mom yelling at him while gathering my sister and I, the dog, our baby pictures, and her grandmother's vase, making us sit under the basement stairs. She is a California girl. I will say it is a little scarier now that I have a house of my own and my weather-watching father 15 minutes away usually getting the storm after us.

To add to the excitement, after the first string of storms calmed down a bit, I let the dogs outside. I yelled at them to hurry up, and they continued to take their sweet time. Finally, Gertie wandered in...with feathers sticking out of her mouth. Oh no.

I screamed. She (thankfully) dropped the dead bird. She ran and hid under the coffee table while I screamed and yelled for the hubby to get his hiney up here now!! Like I've said before, I don't do well with dead birds. Giddy was not far behind her, paws covered in mud (of course). I'm not entirely sure the girls killed the poor bird. I'm guessing it was the storm. And being Beagles, I know they couldn't resist. They brought us a present. Thank you girls, I love you too, but please don't out do yourselves again.

Now I'm off to climb into bed and fall asleep to the soft rumble of the thunder. Thank you God for a {mostly} peaceful and lazy Sunday.