Ticks, ticks, and more ticks...yuck!

Has anyone noticed a massive amount of ticks recently?

It's crazy! We have been in our house almost 6 years, and in all that time I never saw any evidence of ticks. However, in the past week, I've found several on our dogs. My husband also found one on himself after mowing the lawn.

I applied a dose of tick preventive on my dogs today, so hopefully they don't get bit anymore. Is there any way to apply something in the yard to minimize them too? (Something that wouldn't be harmful to children and pets.)

I'd seen it mentioned that this should be a bad year for ticks, due to the mild winter. From what I'm seeing recently, that's definitely true. Yuck.