the rain came back!!!

I MISSED THE RAIN ALL WINTER AND IT'S FINALLY COME BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i cannot begin to tell you how exciting it is to have rain again. (and actually, since the rain has returned we've had another heavy snowfall, but i am too excited about the fact that it's getting warm enough to have rain again to be bothered by that fact haha. if it rained once it will rain again soon!) i have always loved the rain, and have so many fond memories of it. i think because my dad loves the rain i've always had positive feelings about it. rain is so calming and peaceful - doesn't matter if a thunderstorm is going on, it still seems peaceful to me :) i love it.

i remember staying up really late one night with megan when we shared a room growing up. a thunderstorm started while we were talking and "trying" to fall asleep and we got really excited and decided we should watch the rain. we both laid with our heads upside down and hanging off our loft beds so we could see out the window we opened and watched the rain and lightning. it was so cool :) i love that memory. i think the storm went on for quite sometime, but it got to a point where we couldn't lay with our heads like that anymore. i'm sure we drifted off to sleep listening the sound of the rain tapping on the metal awning covering our window. that sound is one of my favorites - makes me want to go get a metal awning for our tiny little basement window!

another rain memory from when i was growing up is from a sunday afternoon one summer. we got home from church and begged mom to let us go outside and play in the rain that had been falling all morning. she said we could if when we came back inside we came in the laundry room so we could dry off and change and not get the carpet wet all through the house ;) so my sisters and i all went outside to play in the rain. we splashed in puddles in the driveway, and became fascinated by the river of rainwater that was rushing through the gutter by the curb in our front yard. we waded around in that for a bit and discovered that our flip-flops floated down this mini river if we set them on top. we decided to have flip-flop races and timed our shoes to see which one was the fastest :) i remember having to chase one down the street because the current took it away quicker than we had expected!  i remember the missionaries looking at us pretty strangely when they drove up for a Sunday visit and all four of us were dripping with rainwater having a marvelous time splashing around in the gutters hahaha. we were thoroughly soaked by the time we decided to head inside, but we were happy and had made some awesome memories.

this memory is a little more fuzzy, and i admit that it could be not a memory at all, but rather a dream or a piece of someone else's story that i converted to a pseudo-memory :) but i have this thought of a time when my family was together and i woke up in the night and heard my parents' voices outside. the place we were staying had a porch with really nice rocking chairs on it so i went outside to see what they were doing. there was an amazing rainstorm going on and my parents were sitting and talking on the porch while enjoying the rainstorm. i'm sure i joined them and enjoyed it equally as much :) if that's not a real memory, then oh well. i guess i'm getting old. but it makes me smile to think about it so maybe we'll have to do it sometime and make it a real memory :)

i have so many memories from my mission of rainy days (shocking, i know). i loved serving in a rainy place! there were lots of rainy days, but not very many thunderstorms, so i remember one night when we actually were graced with a thunderstorm. i was in a trio at the time and me and one of my companions ran outside to enjoy the rain and lightning and the other begrudgingly joined us since we had left the apartment and she had to also :) i remember just standing in the rain and laughing and talking and singing. then as we were driving home from the airport on the day i returned to VA from my mission, i remember the most incredible thunderstorm and thinking that Heavenly Father was giving me a really great welcome home present :)

when mike and i went out to the west coast for Anny's wedding we enjoyed several rainy days :) the house we were staying in was right on a lake and it looked so beautiful with all the ripples caused by the rain! we were borrowing a friend's jaguar to get around while we were out there and we loved the automatically adjusting windshield wipers that the car had - if it rained harder, the windshield wipers would speed up with no adjusting. if it stopped raining, the wipers stopped. wow. we have since reflected on all the rain we experienced on that trip as well as how nice it would be to have those windshield wipers on our cars!

i know i have plenty of other rain memories, but these are the ones that came to me first. from what i've heard, it's supposed to be a stormy spring here in MN so i'm really excited to make more rain memories this year!! I LOVE RAIN!!!