Thanks for the thoughts, Lamora! This time of year, living in Oklahoma, my nerves are always frazzled & I seem to be perpetually on edge, monitoring the weather. This year seems to be worse than most years. I'm glued to the Weather Channel constantly & my weather preparedness borders on obsession (or so says my crazy, adrenaline junkie husband, who likes to stay out & video the storms). When storms knock the satellite out, I turn to my computer. If that fails, I'm subscribed to text alerts from TWC & our county's Blackboard notification system. We don't have an underground shelter, but I have 2 interior hall closets. The one that backs up to our bathroom shower plumbing is for us humans & the other one is for the dogs. It's always an adventure to get those 3 mutts to cooperate with me. Two of my dogs are like me & want to hide until the storms go away, but my youngest pup is like my husband & wants to go out in the storm & run the zoomies around the yard in the thick of it all. Luckily, my 4-year-old son's take on things is more like mine than his father's, b/c he will stay in the closet with me & worries constantly about any rain or storm bringing a tornado. I don't shelter him from the news coverage on storms & definitely want him to have that healthy fear. Mission accomplished, especially after the last month's coverage on TX & OK monster tornadoes. We've watched live coverage on the Moore tornado & yesterday's OKC area tornado. If watching something like that live isn't enough to scare you half to death & make you take storms seriously, I don't know what is. Our area down here in southern OK hasn't had any extremely damaging tornadoes hit in many, many years & people here have fallen into complacency. They say that b/c we're in a valley, any rotation that comes our way will just magically lift & go over us. Despite TWC stating over & over again that this is a false statement, many people in my area just don't take the warnings seriously. I fear that it will take a tragedy of epic proportions to put that fear back into the natives of this area, but I have a great fearful respect for these storms, & you won't find me brushing warnings off lightly. Better safe than sorry, in my experience. Living in Oklahoma (& formerly in North Texas), these storms are just a fact of life for us. May is always a bad month for tornadoes, but we've had tornadoes in the immediate vicinity of us anywhere from February to December. All it takes in those "off-season" times to get the weather to go severe is an unseasonably warm, humid day out ahead of a powerful cold front. I find it in my best interest to always stay informed of the ever-changing weather b/c it takes literally minutes for the sky here to go from sunny to scary.

This is j0nd03. I can't log in with my old username for some reason. Toro, your tree is looking might happy! Mine has actually flowered the last two years but did not bear fruit so I guess it is a male. I have four other blackgums planted on the property so hopefully at least one of them gives me some babies in the future!

Trades are getting slimmer. I've been weeding out the plants I don't want over the past few years and haven't got enough of the plants I like to be able to divide much. Hope that changes in a year or two! I can bring: My seed stash 1 black walnut seedling Daylilies (unknown type but definitely not ditch lilies) Mums (yellow) Black eyed susans Grape hyacinth bulbs Lycoris bulbs Small flowered coreopsis seedlings Russian sage cuttings (roots easily in water during the spring) Star of Bethlehem bulbs (can be VERY invasive and is very poisonous to dogs and cats but perhaps in a pot it wouldn't be too bad) Hyacinthoides (wood hyacinth)-white I may not get to dig all of these (time is getting short), so let me know if you want something and I'll make sure I bring it. Diana Lynn

The last one you posted shows a lot of improvement. The only thing to consider with that little short hallway to the bedroom at the end is to make sure you can move a mattress/furniture in with the angles/openings etc. there. I know you mentioned wanting maybe 4 children. Not sure how long you'll be in this house, but if you keep the study/dining room as separate (good for re-sale too), and add a door to the little hallway from the study and a closet you could have a 5th bedroom if you ever need to and also close off the opening to the great room instead. I know people talk about play area and close it off for the mess, but we are making our breakfast area a play area. We eat in our dining room - not formal and the breakfast area doesn't have as much room for when we need a large table. We will live with a little mess in there even when friends are visiting because she will want to play near where we are and if she doesn't we want her to as then I feel it will be easier to keep an eye on things. It is somewhat separate in our floorplan and how we have the furniture. I think you'll be fine since you appear to live similarly. For the laundry to avoid a walk through could you re-work the master bath/closet to swing the laundry part parallel to the garage and have a short hallway/mudroom from the garage to the house. Maybe make the entry into the dining room instead although less than ideal it allows you to use the other area for the bathroom. We are also in a warm weather climate, but have a mudroom entry similar to that with the laundry off to the side and it is great to have. Shoes and bags etc. all are left there and not spread all around the house. We do have a regular door into our garage too so that helps in that we use that entrance even when not parking in the garage.