Enough Snow Already!

Lets see, this week was just another normal week, right? NOT! But it was filled with a lot of joy!

We had more snow, and more snow, and more snow! The picture of Meghan is with our tribute to the Eiffel tower, the closest we could get to a snowman. The snow on top was wet enough to pack, but everything under that was pure powder. One thing in abundance this week was community spirit. Most of the neighbors helped each other dig out after the repeated snow falls. The picture on the right was from today - Mark from the end of the street (his wife has my old job) using his tractor to help scoop snow, Mark and Jenna helping Mr. Holmes dig out. Randy also had a tractor out once in a while to dig out. Hamilton doesn't have anything capable of clearing heavy snow, so I wasn't expecting town assistance. Mayor Tim surprised me with a large backhoe with a blade that cleared the street with one trip down and back. Unfortunately, it pushed the snow across the driveways, so everyone was helping to dig out from that. It definitely helped make the street drivable again for the people without 4 wheel drive.

Jenna's birthday was relaxed - that's her licking the bowl. She wanted a confetti cake. The girl's had a great Christmas, opening everything in a very short period of time! Our neighbor joined us for Christmas dinner. We made it into Mount Vernon for speech Sat, snagged some after-holiday stuff at Home Depot and came home again. We've managed to get out every 3-4 days so the cabin fever isn't too bad. Mark officially has work tomorrow. They don't work if it snows, and he doesn't get paid if they don't work, so we're glad he's working again. It was nice to have him home though.

Winter Wonderland

Well, another 2 weeks have gone by, and I took almost 250 pictures in 14 days! That took a bit of sorting through! We went to the Lights of Christmas, Lucas' party at Jungle Playland, the kids played at Kendra's since they didn't have Christmas teas at school, Jenna's party at the Children's Museum and SNOW, SNOW, SNOW!!! We have had 4-5 times as much snow as we usually get all winter in just the past week, and they are still calling for more. Mark worked Tuesday last week, hasn't worked since - that's also the last day the kids had school! They're scheduled off this week anyway, but missed 4 out of 5 days the last week. Mark doesn't get paid if they don't work, so thank goodness he hadn't taken vacation yet - he's using that up, but it's only 8 hours instead of the usual 10-12 he normally works. The poor van gets unburied just to get covered again. We've had strong winds that created drifts, especially since it was so cold the snow is powder. The wood stove has been going constantly for almost 2 weeks - it's a balmy (if slightly staticy) 72-80 inside the house, while outside it's been into the single digits. The forecast is lower 40's around Christmas - then more snow! The top picture is Meghan trying to walk across the front yard - it's gotten deeper since then. Next is one of her rock star positions - she's really into air guitar. Jenna's pic is from her party (Thanks, Sue), blowing out candles that Mark eventually helped her with. It seems impossible that Jenna turns 4 tomorrow - they are both growing so quickly. I'm really trying to slow down and savor every moment with them. I especially love their laughter - it's the best thing in the world for anything that ails you!

Tis the Season

Well, the tree is up and decorated, the lights are up for outside, the boxes to be shipped are ready to go, and the Christmas cards are almost done! Now I get to get caught up on the chores which have not gotten done, and get ready for Jenna's birthday party.

The Boy Scout popcorn is pretty much over now (thank goodness!). I made the last trip to Everett to "close out" Thursday. As I'm going down the road, I can hear the window cracking! We had a nice circular crack from a rock hit, and it was really cold that morning - the thermal shock from cold outside and hot inside (Mark had turned on the defroster full blast for me) did it in. Fortunately it just split sideways, not enough to impair vision. We got it replaced on Friday. The picture of Jenna is from the 2 hours we spent at McDonald's waiting for the van. We did get a car to use, but I really didn't have many errands to run, and there they could play while I got things done, like cut apart all the school pictures!

The picture of Meghan is from today. We were watching Kung Fu Panda, and she decided to spear her french fries. She used a paint brush handle to do the spearing - I think it was a chop stick thing.

Time Flies Again

Children's Museum, drum room

So, another 2 weeks went by! We all had a stomach bug. Mark thinks it was some bananas I bought, so the remainder promptly got composted. He was the last afflicted, and less so than the rest of us. Meghan missed the 2 days of school she would have gone last week.

Thanksgiving was none eventful, since we all had tender bellies. I got a ham, since Mark gets a turkey for Christmas from the company - why buy one when I'll be getting one? I made a little stuffing, some potatoes from the garden, and that was it. Black Friday I went shopping, something I haven't done in a very, very long time. The girls came with me, and we all did very well! I got some great deals on clothing and coats, and the girls got stuffed puppies that they waited in line almost an hour to pay for! We hit 8 stops before Mark got off work and picked them up. Usually I have most of my shipping done by now, but I didn't this year. Now I am just a few things shy of shipping! We made a list of what to get people, and that made it a lot easier.

I took the girls to the Children's Museum one day, and their friends Carson and Evan came after a bit. They had so much fun playing there! Meghan's discovered the crane has a working microphone, so she loves to talk into the mic. I've book their party room for Jenna's birthday party the Sat before Christmas. The next day they were invited to a party at a place called Jungle Playland. The party was cancelled due to illness, but the girls stayed and played anyway. It has a huge play structure with 3 different slides, and a ball pit that you can send balls up to a barrel above the pit, and periodically it dumps the balls back down. Meghan and Jenna were literally swimming in the balls.

Some of the neighbors have lights up, and ours will probably go up this week. This Christmas season may actually be less busy than the months before it, which would be a nice change of pace so we can enjoy it.

Santa Sighting

We went to Sears Sunday for one of their "friends and family" nights - they have extra discounts, and the store is open later than normal. Mark took the girls to the "kids corner" they had set up - face painting (Meghan has a smiley face, Jenna a heart), some other things, and pictures with Santa. Last year we tried to get pictures at the hardware store in Woolley - Jenna was fine, but Meghan got scared when we wanted her to sit in his lap. We'd been talking about it lately, just to get her used to the idea for this year. We weren't expecting to have pictures taken, but what the heck! Apparently both girls had a blast. I was looking for something for Jenna to wear to have her school picture taken today, but didn't find anything better than what was already in her closet. I gave her 4 choices this morning - she picked the black velveteen dress. Her pictures are going to be so cute! I went to help her teacher since I knew it would be a little more crazy than normal, so I got to see them take her picture. She's such a ham!

Other things that happened this week - Tuesday was council night; the latest flood watch was in effect, everyone was preparing for a possible evacuation! I went to Everett Wed to get popcorn from the BSA office that would be needed Thursday, Thursday we sorted and delivered $25k of popcorn in 4.5 hours (while the river crested about 10 feet below the level of the warehouse)- I had help doing the deliveries this year, and it went great! I took both the girls out of school early since we couldn't get them at normal times, and they helped cart the smaller boxes around. Friday I kept Meghan home since she's got a cold, didn't get much sleep; Jasmine from down the street came for the afternoon so they could get wood in. Meghan's school was having a movie night - Kung Foo Panda, which the girls have wanted to see - but we didn't go since Meghan wasn't feeling so hot (so we bought it Sat, watched it at dinner - it's pretty good). Sat we went to speech, ran around dropping off more popcorn (the council had made our order short, so they had 6 cases of popping corn shipped to our house!), and stopped at a flooring store that was having a grand opening sale - ended up coming home with the laminate to do the living room! So there goes another room of icky grey carpet! I also moved my craft desk out to the living room, so we have room to open the wall and fix the leaky pipe in our shower, and replace some drywall under the window that I got wet watering seedlings. It's not ideal having it out where the kids can get to my stuff, but it may help me get more done in the evenings instead of spending all my time on the computer!

Other than dealing with some last popcorn issues (another trip to Everett tomorrow), this week should be fairly quiet! Hah! Meghan's still not 100% from the cold, and Jenna now has it - she coughed half of last night, still coughing tonight. It's just a question of when for me to get it, Mark has a scratchy throat already (he's lucky; 2-3 days of sore throat, a couple of coughs, some NyQuil and he's fine!). But there again, that's normal for us, so it's what we're used to!

Was it really my birthday?

It's been another busy week, and this one looks almost as bad! Tuesday we got the girls off to school and headed south to get firewood (our main/only source of heat is our wood stove). You see, the Dept of Natural Resources hands out firewood permits occasionally. We've been trying to snag one, but they didn't have any. Finally, they said,"Come on Monday." I showed up at 10am and snagged the very last one. The bad part is it is outside of Monroe, 1.5 hours away. Mark made a trip by himself, to see what kind and where it was. We rented a trailer Tuesday, thinking we could haul home a lot of wood. We ran out of time, since we needed to be back in time to get the girls off of buses. I called a friend to get Jenna, since we wouldn't make it in time for her. That also gave us time to stop and have lunch! So, pick up Jenna, go home and unload and split and stack what we got (big logs!), and return the trailer to Mount Vernon. Then we went to Sears and got the camera I've been drooling over for a few months - a Canon A590. We stopped at Fred Meyer to get dinner, and cupcakes and ice cream for dessert. What a day!

Wednesday was calm, a nice change from the day before. Thursday Mark and I went to breakfast after the girls went to school. Then I had dinner with Sue and Kendra - we were there for 2 hours, talking about all kinds of stuff! Friday was parent class, a meeting with Kay to discuss problems with Meghan's afternoon class, and Jenna's IEP meeting. Saturday Meghan was assessed for speech therapy before Jenna's session - the kid who was coming in before Jenna stopped, so we can slide Meghan in that slot, have the session's back-to-back. I'm confident that private speech will help Meghan much more than the school district is doing.

Today all of us went for firewood. We loaded the truck, which handled better than Mark thought it would. The girls had fun helping roll the pieces down the hill to the truck, and just being outside. We thought it would take another trip to finish filling our woodpile, but we can't fit another row on the pallet, so we're done! Our woodpile is up on pallets, it's 2 pallets wide, 1 pallet high and 4 pallets long - about 3.5 cord total. We've never used it all in one winter, so we alternate which end we take it from every year to make sure it doesn't sit forever. The picture of the rainbow is just one of about six we saw on the way home!

The preview for this week is council meeting, law and justice council meeting, $25k of popcorn to sort and deliver, PDA town meeting, and Kung Fu Panda movie night at Meghan's school. At least some of it is fun!

The pictures are from the new camera - they are probably much bigger in file size. If you have trouble seeing them, let me know, and if enough people have problems I'll save them as smaller files before uploading them.

Post-Halloween Crash

It's funny face season!

The one thing I didn't get for Halloween is a shot of the girls dressed up as pirates! So I'm going to wait til the clothes make it through the wash and then we'll dress up again!

Halloween is crazy for us - I made 3 pinatas, one for each girl's teacher and one for us. We had a party Thur afternoon with 11 kids and 7 adults! It rained a little, but the kids didn't care, played outside if they wanted. We made necklaces, had coloring pages, eat goodies and broke the pinata. Most of the families were here for about 2.5 hours - all in all, very good! All but 1 of the kids (and he's older -10) went/is going to Good Beginnings. Jesse, the older one, got to keep the pinata - it looks like an alien chicken. He's creative enough to create a body to go with it!

We've had lost going on these last 2 weeks - new mattress for Jenna, new love seat in Meghan's room, teacher conferences (I could/might write a whole post about that!), flu shots (they were troopers!), popcorn orders and of course Halloween!