Two more reasons we love SC- June.

We came up with two more reasons we like South Carolina. And believe it or not, both of them are bug related.

1. The ticks down here don't carry Lyme Disease. If there are even any ticks down here. We haven't see any yet. It's so nice not to have to check hair, armpits, and groins every time we go outside.
2. No mosquitoes! Okay, there are a few and most of them are enormous, but they're nothing compared to the mosquito breeding ground that was the East side of Madison, Wisconsin. Our neighborhood wanted to be green, so there was no spraying and we also had rain gardens everywhere to prevent runoff.
That generally meant that summer was three months of constant attacks. Mama swears that she once saw a swarm of mosquitoes align in a hand with a finger pointing straight towards Bubba.

These pictures are two good examples. The one of me is after papa opened the car door to take Henry inside. The door was open for maybe 15 seconds and when he came back out to get me, there were 6 mosquitoes on my face. The picture of Henry was the day before a doctor's appointment when mama counted 31 bites on his body.

But don't worry, South Carolina. You've got the rest of the country beat on every other bug. Last week a cockroach the size of her palm flew into mama's hair, papa ran over a yellow jacket's nest (and got stung 21 times), and Henry met the wrong end of a bee. The good news is that we seem to have packaged enough of our food in tupperware that the sugar ants haven't been back to our kitchen (knock on wood). That, or maybe our new dark countertops hide them effectively so that no one knows they are there.

Summer Days-mama.

We have a joke in the Turner house. We say that for once we just want to live somewhere that doesn't have record-breaking weather. We broke the Wisconsin snow record by about 20 inches in the winter of 2008 when we received 105 inches of snow before it was all said and done. North Carolina had a very wet spring last year. And now, South Carolina is setting heat records for June. Even the natives think it is way too hot. Hopefully this means August will be very mild (ha ha).

But there are three things we are thankful in South Carolina. First, my pregnancy induced eczema doesn't stand a chance down here in the humidity, so that has cleared up nicely.

Second, we finally live somewhere with good soil for blueberries! (I haven't been able to pick fresh blueberries since I lived with the monks that summer in southern Indiana.) We visited the local blueberry farm and picked 5 pounds. I think the next time we go, they're going to weigh June before and after because not a single blueberry made it in her bowl. It was a great time until Henry got his first bee sting of the season and screamed so loud and so long we probably scared away the rest of the customers for the day.

Finally, South Carolina has an abundance of blue hydrangeas like I've never seen before. We were lucky enough to meet a neighbor that lives behind us and she gave us a huge amount of flowers that didn't even make a dent in her bush.

This isn't a very good shot, but it does show the enormous bouquet we made. When we lived in Wisconsin, I used to think about how little blue occurs in nature. Looks like we just lived in the wrong part of the country.

It's been so stinking hot that we haven't ventured outside too much for fear of melting instantly into a puddle. The kids have been coping as much as they can, though they are already getting stir crazy. When he is stuck in the house with his sweaty mom, he's been busy putting together a lot of puzzles. He's got this construction puzzle memorized and can put all 100 pieces together in about 5 minutes. He earned the Spiderman puzzle by dusting all the blinds in the house. Right now, he's working on a 300 piece puzzle. He's about 80% done and insists on doing the whole thing himself. In fact, I put one piece in while he was asleep. When he came down in the morning, he immediately noticed what I'd done and pulled the whole section apart because puzzle building is his job. Over one piece!

Luckily for Henry, the first Vacation Bible School of the season started this week, so he has 5 days of Galactic Bible missions to look forward to.