Weekly Review February 27 '10

Valentine's gifts from last week:

All the boys got cards and treat sacks.

I got lots of chocolate and a digital photo frame.

Look what popped up in the front yard this week!

I was getting ready for bed last night when Seth walked in the bathroom looking like this. I had to get a picture! Isn't he cute?

Right now (as I'm writing) he's taking a nap!

Wow! February is almost over! I'm glad, because that means we are just that much closer to spring! We had two different storms predicted for our area this week, but both of them mostly missed us--we got a dusting of snow on both Thursday and this morning. Guess what? I didn't hear a single person complain about those storms missing us!! We did get very strong winds on Thursday / Friday, and a couple of schools had to close early on Thursday because of power outages, but thankfully that didn't effect us. In spite of the fact that temperatures have been very cold, I discovered crocus blooming in the front yard this week as the snow receded (see photo above). I am also seeing lots of green spears poking up in the flower beds. So winter is going to have to give up soon!

Update on the last day of school: The school board has applied for a waiver of the 180 day school year, and they expect to get it. Because adding two days on to the end of the year puts the last day of school on a Monday, they asked for that day to be included in the waiver. If it's granted, that means the last day of school will be Friday, June 11th instead of Monday, June 14th. I'm hoping that works out! As soon as we find out for sure, we will buy plane tickets. At this point, we are hoping to get tickets to arrive in Utah sometime around June 15th and we hope to stay about 2 weeks, so we'd leave to come home around the 29th. Mom, we haven't discussed all your other questions as a family yet, but we plan to do that tomorrow and we'll e-mail you all our responses as soon as we do.

On Sunday while we were at church, Seth was struggling to get off Frank's lap (he likes to crawl under the pews and run down the aisles, if he can escape) when the back of his head hit Frank really hard in the nose. Frank said he "saw stars". His nose has been very painful all week. At first we thought it might be broken--it was so tender that he couldn't breath through his nose--but now we're pretty sure that it was just badly bruised. It's feeling a lot better now, although it's still very sore.

Sunday afternoon Scott was finally able to get his patriarchal blessing. (If you lost count, that was the 5th appointment we made to get that done!) It was worth the wait; he received a beautiful blessing. I know it meant a lot to him; he was visibly emotional when the patriarch finished the blessing. As his mom, I am really grateful for all the counsel he received. Of course, we are looking forward to getting the typed copy of his blessing so we can remember more details.

The rest of the week has been busy--we finally had a full week of school with no snow days, early releases, or delayed openings! We got to bed pretty late Monday night because Tanner had forgotten / procrastinated a school project. I had to take him to go get some supplies from the store and then we helped him get his project put together. The project was part of an assignment he had to read a biography. (He was done with the reading.) He had to create an image of the person he read about, using an empty bottle. The biography he read was about Shaquille O'Neal. I think the Shaquille we created out of an empty juice bottle was pretty cool, but I forgot to take pictures. Maybe when he gets it back I'll take some and post them. He did say that when he turned it in, he thought that his person looked a lot better than most of the others.

My friend Marci, who moved to Kentucky in November, was here visiting this week. Her husband had to come back to Frederick to work this week so she came with him. I got to see her on Monday and Tuesday; we did some shopping together which was very fun. I love going clothes shopping with Marci! She's good at finding deals and has a good sense of what will look good on me. I was looking for jeans and long sleeve shirts, since nearly all the jeans and long sleeve shirts I own are getting very worn out. We were successful in finding me three shirts that were only $3.50 each (normally $34 each) so that was great. I got one pair of jeans also, but I'm not positive I'm going to keep them since they don't fit as well as I'd like. Marci was supposed to be here until this morning, but her two oldest kids got sick, so they decided to go home early--left Thursday afternoon. I'm glad I got to see her and hope she'll get to visit again. I've really missed her!!

Scott wasn't feeling very well on Sunday and by Monday morning he was really not doing well. He had a sore throat, head ache, and a lot of congestion. He went to Seminary Monday morning but then he came home and went back to bed. He slept for several hours. He missed school on Tuesday also, but he was feeling better that day so on Wednesday he went back to school. One thing that was convenient about him being home those two days--I could leave Seth at home napping while I went out with Marci.

I took Snickers to the groomer on Tuesday. That turned out to be really convenient because my visiting teachers came that morning while he was gone, and one of them has a son who is terrified of Snickers. Marci was with me when I picked Snickers up. The groomer said to me "I just have to tell you that he is the most beautiful Maltese I've ever seen." I think that pleased Marci (the breeder) even more than it did me! Snickers is going to have another new set of siblings, by the way. They were actually going to get his mom "fixed" because she had such a large litter last time (7 puppies) but she went into heat earlier than they expected, so I guess she's going to have one more litter.

Book chat was on Wednesday. I was late because I had a busy morning so I was still making my contribution for the potluck lunch when I should have been leaving. (I had a visiting teaching appointment and had to go shopping that morning also.) I tried a new recipe--corn cakes. They were a kind of pancake made with fresh corn and chopped onions. You put salsa and sour cream on top. They were actually pretty good--I'll probably make that recipe again. We were discussing the book "Eat Cake" so we had decided that for the potluck, we should all bring some kind of cake. Our lunch was mostly dessert, as you can imagine, but we did have some potato cakes as well as my corn cakes along with all the more traditional cakes such as cheesecake, chocolate cherry cake, and pound cake. It was yummy!! Now my group is reading The Help, which I already read a few months back. I am thrilled about that because that means I will have time to finish the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I read Return of the King a lot this week, and I only have 3 or 4 chapters left. I am really enjoying it. When I get done with that, I will read the book I just bought at the LDS book store last night.

The boys had YM / Scouts Wednesday evening. When I went to pick them up, all the young men and young women were eating these huge hunks of vanilla ice cream. I found out that they had done a "Winter Olympics" and had finished up with a "sculpture" contest, using vanilla ice cream. So after they were done making the sculptures, they let the kids eat them. I guess they each received about half a box of ice cream to make their sculpture, so they got to eat a lot.

Frank and I were able to go to the temple last night; we did initiatories. I got finished about a half hour before Frank did (they only gave me 6 names, for some reason) so I had to wait a while, but that turned out to be great because while I was waiting in the main hallway, I got to see several people from our former ward in Delaware. There was a meeting at the temple for the high priests & wives in their ward that evening, so many of them came early to go through an endowment session first. I saw my good friends Yvette Hadley & Linda Moyes(and their husbands) as well as our former bishop and his wife. There were others who looked familiar to me, but I didn't know them well enough to remember their names! Anyway, it was fun to visit briefly with the ones I did know. After we left the temple, we went to the bookstore (quick visit) and then we found a restaurant to eat dinner. It was very crowded by then, so we had to wait a long time, but if we had driven home right then we would have been stuck in rush hour traffic anyway so that was a more pleasant way to spend that time. After we had dinner (Mexican food--it was yummy!) we went to Frank's boss's house to pick up some things Frank needed for work he's doing. We ended up staying there a long time talking, so we didn't get home until 10:00. It was a nice evening, though, to be out alone together.

Jared spent the night with his friend Jack last night (went home from school with him) so he wasn't home but when we got home Tanner was watching a movie with Seth and Scott was fast asleep on the couch!

Frank has been very busy with work again this week. Ever since the snow storms cleared out, he has been innundated with work. He has spent a good part of today doing work, and he still has a 4 hour project to do tonight. He has been working from here most evenings this week, also, after putting in a full day during the day. I hope things settle down a little for him soon!

I've had a busy day running errands, helping Scott with a big school project (yes, he procrastinated also), and doing Primary stuff. Now we are watching the news coverage in Hawaii of the anticipated Tsunami caused by the earthquake in Chile. We are glad that Juan was not in Chile when that happened, and we hope that his family is ok.

Weekly Review February 20 '10

We started out the week with a nice Valentine's Day. We gave each of the boys a card and a bag of chocolate candy, including a chocolate lollipop. Frank spoiled me with Dove chocolates, Turtles, and a digital photo frame. I've always wanted one of those photo frames, so I was thrilled! We had fast Sunday a week late, though, since church was cancelled last week--so I had to wait until later to try the chocolate! I gave Frank a card and a promise to take him out later. It was hard to know what to get him since he told me not to get him any sweets. We had a nice quiet morning, since church was later than usual. We had family night before church since our home teachers were coming after church and we knew we'd be busy until bedtime. It was very nice to go to church and see our "ward family" again!

My totally accommodating second counselor had her baby Monday morning (she says "that will minimize the time I'm away from Primary. I'll only miss one Sunday!"). She was hoping to make it through the week end and not have her baby on Valentine's Day, so she got her wish. I got to go visit her on Tuesday afternoon and held new baby Eliza for about 15 minutes; it was great! Somebody sign me up to do that every day--there is just something special about holding a new baby!

Monday was President's Day so the boys were still out of school; Frank went back to work, though. He's been very busy all week since most people were back at work--things tend to "pile up" when he's not working!

We were expecting to be out of school on Monday, but what we didn't expect was to be out Tuesday and Wednesday also, with 2 hour delays on Thursday and Friday. Good grief, will life ever get back to normal?!! The reason school was out was "road conditions". There were still a lot of sidewalks that weren't shoveled near the schools, making it hazardous for kids who walk, and a lot of the roads were still pretty messy also. Many roads around here are still one lane instead of two (including our road) which makes it even more dangerous for kids to be walking on the roads. I have to laugh about how cautious they are around here, but I can kind of see why they are. As I said on facebook, Brigham Young was really inspired to plan Utah cities with wide, straight streets! When you have all the narrow, winding streets that we have around here, 50+ inches of snow just paralyzes everything and it takes weeks to get things cleared up. There just isn't anywhere for all that snow to go. It is very frustrating! I do wish that they were a little more organized--it seems like it shouldn't take as long as it does to get the sidewalks and roads cleared. I mean, we just had a 12 day break (counting week ends)! Winter break was 15 days (counting week ends); it was 3 days longer than it was supposed to be due to snow, you may remember. Crazy!! We are hoping there won't be any more snow until next winter.

So, now they have cancelled an early release day next Tuesday as well as cancelling parent teacher conferences in March to try to make up for some of the lost instruction time. The BOE is going to discuss applying for a waiver so that the school year doesn't have to be 180 days long this year. I hope they do it, and that the waiver is granted. Right now I am anxiously waiting to see when the last day of school is going to be, since we can't buy plane tickets to Utah until we find out. As things stand right now, the last day of school will be June 14th, which is only 7 days before we need to be there. If a waiver isn't granted, we will be going until at least the 16th. It would just be nice to know! I keep telling the boys (and I mean it!) that we will be in Utah on June 22nd and 23rd no matter what--whether school is out or not!

Another frustrating thing about all the snow: we haven't had trash or recycling pick up since before the first storm. (Recyclables were last picked up January 26th, the dumpsters haven't been emptied since February 4th.) You can imagine how the trash has been piling up. Some people are just throwing their trash in the dumpster corral anyway, so it is a huge mess in there! I've been waiting to take the trash out until the dumpster gets emptied, so we have a lot of trash on the back deck. Yuck!! I'm pretty sure the trucks could get through now, so I'm not sure what the hold up is all about. Looking on the bright side--the trash truck usually comes around 2:00 am, so at least I haven't been awakened by the noise in weeks!

A lot of snow has melted over the last couple of days because we've had temperatures in the 40's. (That means we're down to "only" a foot or two!) But then it gets cold again at night and all the wet spots become ice. The snow isn't pretty anymore--there are huge piles of brown / gray snow everywhere--yuck! I know from experience that it's going to take a long time for all those big piles to melt--I expect the remnants of them will be here until April sometime, maybe even May.


The boys have mostly enjoyed being out of school, but they really started getting on each other's nerves this week (or maybe they were just getting on my nerves....) They had a few more sleep overs with various friends, and some of their friends came here (but not over night).


On Monday I went to the doctor to get my ears cleaned out and I was very disappointed when it didn't work--even after all the drops I've been putting in my ears to soften things up! They did give me a referral to see an ENT, though. I went there on Wednesday and (with the help of a "vacuum") he was successful in getting my right ear cleared up, so I can hear perfectly out of that ear now which is nice! However, he couldn't get the left ear cleared (ironically, I had better hearing in that ear all this time, so I didn't think it was so bad) so he sent me home with instructions to put drops in it twice a day every day, and I go back on Monday to try again. This ENT was pretty old--he looked like he should be retired already to me--and he said that he has seen thousands of patients and has never had to send one home without successfully clearing their ears! So there you go--that's how bad my ears are. He said there is not anything I can do to prevent wax build up except come see him periodically to have them cleaned out. I don't like that answer. I plan to put drops in my ears about once a week from now on; I hope that will help a little.


The boys and I all had dentist appointments on Monday as well. (The boys were pretty annoyed with me for scheduling those appointments on a day off, but considering how much school they've missed, I'm glad I did!) Tanner has one small cavity; everyone else is fine. I'm so glad--dental work gets so expensive! Scott had an orthodontist appointment on Thursday; we all ended up going to that also because Frank was late getting home that evening. It was a short appointment and he doesn't have to go back now for 6 months.


Believe it or not, Frank's car started having the same problems again on Monday! He took it back to the dealer, and they said one of the new batteries had failed again. They replaced all the batteries again--free of charge this time. We'll see how it does now--Frank thinks there's really something else wrong that is causing the batteries to go bad, but they insist they can't find anything else wrong. He got the car back on Thursday and so far it's been ok. Thankfully, they gave him a "loaner" car to use while his car was being fixed, or our schedule would have been very complicated!


I got our federal tax return filed on Tuesday. I haven't filed the state return yet because I am cheap--I didn't want to file the state through Turbo Tax, which costs $20, when I know I can file through Maryland's "i-file", which is free! It's all printed up, I just need to find the time to go online to file it.


We had a bit of a flood on Wednesday--one of the hoses under the kitchen sink sprung a leak. I noticed it that morning and Frank thought he'd solved the problem, but later that day when I got back from the doctor, there was an inch or so all over in the cabinet, and spilling over onto the floor. (The boys hadn't noticed, of course!) I cleaned it up and put a bucket under there to catch the water. When Frank came home he determined that the problem was in the cold water line, so he turned the cold water off until he had a chance to fix it. Just today he had the time to get to the store for some new hoses, and he is working on it right now, so hopefully we will have cold water again soon! In the meantime, I've been sending the boys to the bathroom to get cold water when we need it. One evening Scott said "I'm going to go make orange juice in the bathroom!" He didn't really make it in there--but he had to go there to get the cold water he needed.


Tanner hasn't been feeling so great this week. He even skipped some of the sleep overs, so I know he wasn't making it up! His chief complaint has been that his head and stomach hurt; he also has continued to complain about his chest hurting (from the fall) and later this week he started complaining of lower back pain also. Besides that, he's just been a bit lethargic. I realized that he hasn't been taking his fiber pills while school's been out; once he started to take those again his stomach has improved. I don't know what is causing the other problems so we'll have to keep an eye on that.

Well, Seth did it again! He left the lid to an old plastic ice cream container (I use those to store toys) in the oven. In my defense, I didn't even see him put it in there this time--I think it happened while I was at the doctor and the other boys were supposed to be watching him. When I tried to make garlic bread for dinner that night, I got a big mess instead--and the smoke alarm went off. I guess I need to buy him one of those toy kitchen sets! Today I warmed the oven up and managed to scrape most of the lid remnants off the bottom of the oven, and then I cleaned the oven but there is still a thin layer of melted plastic on the bottom of the oven--even after all that. I'm not sure how I'm going to get the rest off, and there is still melted plastic on the oven rack that I haven't been able to get off at all. My other oven rack still has melted toy pot on it! Maybe I can buy some new oven racks--that sounds easier than figuring out how to clean them. From now on, I am going to try to remember to check the oven for stray toys before I turn it on, but I'm sure I'll forget most of the time.


I've tried to be a little more productive this week and mostly I've done well. Thursday was an especially good day; I got so much done that day but by evening I was exhausted!! I took Seth to the library, among a lot of other things--he enjoyed getting new books and movies.


Last night Scott went on a teachers / priests overnighter at a cabin owned by one of his leaders. Tanner went to a deacon overnighter at his advisor's house. Jared was invited to sleep over with his friend Bryson. Having the older boys gone messed up our plans to go to the temple, but it was nice to be home with just Seth last evening. This morning we went to IHOP for breakfast. Tanner went to the deacon's basketball game and then they had a quorum service project doing cleaning at the church. Frank picked him up and brought him home around noon. Jared got home around 2:00, bringing Bryson with him to play. Scott didn't get home until about 6:00--he went straight from the cabin to the older boys' basketball game and Frank picked him up there. They stopped to pick up Chinese food on the way home--I couldn't cook what I'd planned with the oven being such a mess! By the way, Scott's team won their basketball game--I think that's the first time they've ever won!

Now all the boys are playing golf and bowling on the Wii. It's time for me to give Seth a bath and get him to bed!

Everyone have a great snow-free week!

A Look Back

This photo was taken February 8, 2009. Notice that there is NO SNOW!! Apparently we were experiencing an unusual warm spell at this time last year, since we were all out for a walk, wearing shorts!

This is the type of February weather that I prefer!!

(And look how little Seth and Snickers look!)

The "Blizzard of 2010--Part 2" Photos

A brave male cardinal, toughing it out during the storm:

And here's the female, although she's a lot harder to see:

I took this photo through the kitchen window (sorry the screen is in the way). The snow is really accumulating on our patio table!

Remember that the boys shoveled a lot of the snow from the first part of the storm off the deck? Well, it's covered again!

Our front yard (and a few buried cars), looking from the front porch.
(The day after the storm ended.)

Another front yard shot (lots of snow per square foot!)

Large icicles on our neighbor's roof:

Our house:

Buried tree near the neighbors' front porch:

The telephone boxes are covered:

Snow drifts from the plows (actually smaller than they were previously because some of them melted and the road hasn't been plowed again yet):

The Monocacy River. behind our house:

That's a recycle bin, barely visible! All that snow is just from this storm. The recycle truck and the trash trucks didn't come this week, by the way. The mail only made it a couple of days, also.

The river again, and buried trees:

Another river shot:

Trees half buried in the back yard:

The river again:

Notice our next door neighbor's fence in the bottom left corner of the phots. It's about as tall as I am!

Weekly Review February 13 '10

Greetings from the North Pole!!

Ok, maybe not…it just looks like the North Pole around here. As most of you have probably heard, we had another huge snowstorm this week. I haven’t heard the official total from this storm, but we got around 24” of snow. That means that from December 19^th until now, we’ve had approximately 84” of snow, 54 of those inches in the last week. Holy cow!! Even Frank (who LOVES snow) has had his fill!

We had blizzard conditions here on Wednesday afternoon / evening. I made the mistake of taking Seth outside with me Wednesday evening one time when Snickers needed to go out. (Seth had been cooped up inside all day, so I thought he’d enjoy getting out.) The snow was falling hard, but when we first went out the wind wasn’t blowing. Snickers was moving faster than Seth, so I got several feet ahead of Seth. Then all of the sudden the wind started blowing hard. It whipped all the snow right into my face; I could barely see Seth! We retreated back inside as fast as we could. Seth was crying, and I had to scoop him up and carry him back inside. We were soaking by the time we got back. I think I understand a little better now what it must have been like in those blizzards described in the Little House on the Prairie books! I’m just thankful I wasn’t one of the poor people who got stranded in their cars overnight—that would have been really miserable.

The sun came back out on Thursday; when I went outside the snow was very uneven on the ground—some places very deep, some almost no snow at all—because of the way the wind blew the snow.

Because of the snow, the boys were out of school all week. On Monday and Tuesday we were still trying to recover from the last storm. Then Tuesday afternoon the next storm blew in, lasting all through Wednesday, until around midnight. Since then, everyone has been busy trying to dig out again.

The kids were in a party mood the first couple of days this week. Tanner spent the night with his friend Ryan on Monday, and Scott had his friend Brian spend the night over here. We figured we might as well let the kids have fun now while they can—because of all the “snow days”, they are going to have a shortened spring break and a couple of extra days have been added on to the end of the year in June. We’ve used up all our snow days now, plus all of our snow “make up” days. If there are any more days that school has to be cancelled because of snow, the school district will apply for a waiver of the required 180 school days for the year so that we don’t have to add more days onto the end of the year. Hopefully we have seen the last of the significant snow, though!

Other things that got cancelled this week: my annual GYN appointment and stake conference. My doctor appointment was supposed to be Wednesday morning. The doctor’s office called Tuesday afternoon to let me know they were closing their office Wednesday so they had to reschedule my appointment. When I told Frank about that, he asked “did you tell them they need to pay you since they didn’t give you 24 hours notice?” I got a laugh out of that…it doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid!!

Stake conference was scheduled for this Sunday, and it was a broadcast from Salt Lake City. The conference was actually cancelled by the brethren in Salt Lake City, since the broadcast was supposed to go to this entire region, and the entire region got socked with huge amounts of snow. I heard they had concerns about the satellite system working, but there’s another good reason that conference was cancelled. We were already worried (even before Wednesday’s storm) about the lack of parking at our stake center. Even under the best of conditions, there is not enough parking in the parking lot for everybody who comes to conference, so a lot of people have to park on the surrounding streets. With all the piles of plowed snow everywhere, there are even fewer parking spaces in the lots and absolutely no place to park on the streets. I hope they will reschedule the conference soon, but it’s a good thing that decision was made. We are having regular church meetings tomorrow instead, except that we are meeting at 1:00 instead of 11:00 to avoid overlap with the other ward—again, because of limited parking spaces. That means I had to make several phone calls to let teachers know about the change of plans, so that we’d have prepared teachers for all the classes this Sunday!

All the snow has not been good for business, since everything shut down around here. Frank did get in a full days’ work on Tuesday and on Friday, and he did a partial day on Monday, as well as getting in a few hours from home on Wednesday and Thursday. We enjoyed having him around more, but it hasn’t been too good for the finances. This has been a rough month for that! I’m sure we’ll be ok, though. One good bit of news we got this week: Toyota is going to reimburse $500 of our repair costs for the Prius. Originally when we contacted them, they said our claim was rejected but then they called back this week to say they’d cover that much. We’re not complaining—every little bit helps.

So what do you do when you are snowed in all week? Well, I’ve found that I don’t operate very efficiently when I am stuck inside with four kids, and being cooped up makes me want to lie around eating junk food—not a good thing! (I even made cookies for family night treat on Monday—not something I do very often.) I probably could have got a lot done, but I just wasn’t feeling very motivated. We got the usual housework done and we made it to the store in between storms. (Sometimes it was hard to find what we needed, though—the stores were not very well stocked because a lot of the trucks weren’t getting through.) I finished reading The Two Towers, which I’ve been trying to get through for months—not because I wasn’t enjoying it, just because I’ve been busy and the book club book always takes priority! We had movie nights most evenings—watched Prince Caspian one night, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs another night, and Star Wars on a third night. Thursday I was a little more ambitious—I did some cleaning in our bedroom and finished working on Sharing Time for Sunday. (Incidentally, I am glad that we are having regular meetings this week because now I have one extra week to cover this month’s Sharing Time topic, which is “Jesus Christ is My Savior and Redeemer”. What an awesome topic to teach about!! Since church got cancelled last week, I was down to 2 weeks to talk about that topic, and that isn’t enough!! I feel really lucky that I get to teach this month.)

Other things we did: I had all the boys catch up on homework / reading, and I sat down with the older two boys to help them decide what classes they are taking next year since they have to turn in their registrations whenever they finally go back to school. There was supposed to be an orientation at the high school for Tanner—Wednesday, with a Thursday snow date. Guess what? It didn’t happen either night!!

I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining…I get “cabin fever” very easily so that is hard for me…but really, I have mostly been feeling very thankful that we are not one of the people who have been without power! I can’t imagine how miserable we’d be without power…incredibly cold, no way to cook hot food, and no electronic entertainment. That would be awful! We feel very fortunate that we’ve been warm and snug, with plenty to eat and plenty to do. We are also grateful for the phone calls we’ve received from many of you checking to make sure we are ok! Oh, and the Wii is a lifesaver…I got to go on “bike rides” nearly every day without leaving my living room…which is the only way I’d be able to take a bike ride right now. Of course, it’s not as good as the real thing, but it does burn some calories.

On Friday one of my counselors and I went to visit one family with Primary children. It was great to get out of the house and to see some new faces! I felt a little more ambitious that day also—I got some work done on Seth’s quiet book. (Yes, I’m still working on it! That project got derailed when I realized I didn’t have the proper weight of Pellon, and the weight I need is not sold in Maryland, apparently. Thanks to Amy for sending me the proper weight! My new goal is to get it done for Seth’s birthday.) Scott and Tanner went to spend the night with their friend Ryan that evening. Frank took Jared to see the Percy Jackson movie but it was sold out (we called first and there were tickets left, but by the time they got there, there weren’t) so they bought tickets for this morning instead. They came home and we all watched the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. (Except for Seth; I took him up to bed at 8:30 and he fell asleep before I even finished singing songs. He didn’t have a nap that day.) We thought the special effects during the cultural part of the opening ceremony were awesome! But we were sad about the Georgian luge athlete who was killed. I admit I’m a big enough baby that I cried over that! Since Vancouver is 3 hours behind us, we were up late—the torch didn’t get lit until midnight, our time. The big joke around here is that if we’d only known, they could have had the Olympics here this year—we have a lot more snow than Vancouver does!!

Frank and Jared went to see Percy Jackson this morning. Jared read all the books months ago and so he was very anxious to see the movie! (Jared paid for his own ticket, by the way. He is my most “financially minded” child. He hardly ever buys anything—he saves up instead. I think before buying the ticket he had over $40 saved up, which is really saying something since his allowance is only $1.50 per week and 30% of that goes to tithing and savings! My other two blow all their money on candy and other things like that most of the time.) Anyway, Jared loved the movie. Scott and Tanner got home in the afternoon. Tanner is sore because while he was at Ryan’s he slipped on the stairs and pulled a muscle in his chest. I’ve been busy today working on some more cleaning / organizing in my bedroom. It looks better, but I still have some work to do. Actually, it would look great except that I have three piles along the wall—things to throw away, things to give away, and things that need to go somewhere else in the house. The throw away and give away piles will be easy enough to dispose of, but the third pile is probably going to be there most of the year—since it’s going to take me that long to go through all the other rooms and find places for everything. I just try to remind myself that it’s a “work in progress” and that it will be worth it when I get to the end of the year and everything looks better.

Now it’s starting to get late. Frank is fixing a computer and I need to think about starting dinner.

We hope everyone has a very happy Valentine’s Day! We love you all!!

The "Blizzard of 2010" Photos

I think in the end we got about 30" of snow. Shortly before sundown, the sun came out, so I went out and took some pictures. I also took a few more this morning. Here they are:

The sidewalks are so clear because our neighbor has a snowblower.

Our house. The big lumps on the right of the photo are our neighbor's bushes.

We let Snickers out without the leash because we figured he couldn't get very far! Only up and down the "trenches" made by the snowblower.

Frank's car, buried in snow.

Seth loved going outside to see the snow! (He was also stuck in the "trenches"!)

The top of our neighbor's tree, poking out of the snow.

A neighbor's car that has not been cleaned off at all.

The sun on the glittering trees was beautiful! The photo doesn't do it justice.

This house isn't occupied right now, so it hasn't been shoveled at all. Amazing!!

Drifts made by the first wave of snowplows.

Our mailbox is in the first box. The street is right behind the mailboxes (opposite side from the side where Seth is standing)--you couldn't tell, could you? And no, the mail did not get through yesterday!

Looking out back at sunset.

The view out the kitchen window at sunset.

The sunset colors against the snow were beautiful!

Beautiful sunshine this morning.

More blinding sunlight, and a gorgeous blue sky. The boys shoveled a lot of the snow off the deck.

And here's the ambulance and paramedics that arrived this morning because our neighbor was having her baby. They barely made it in time. Grandma says the baby was crowning by the time they got mom out to the ambulance, so I doubt they made it to the hospital before the baby was born. The baby is a girl, named Haley Rose, and she was born on Grandma's birthday! She is going to have a great birth story!

More snow plow drifts--after the second round of plowing.

Jared is "king of the hill"!! These are the drifts left at the end of our street by the second wave of snowplows. (I'm actually pretty impressed that they've managed to plow twice already. I don't think we got even one wave of snowplows for a couple of days after the President's Day storm in 2003--and we got about the same amount of snow that time.)

In front of our house, looking up Beverly Court.

The big field at the end or our court (on the other side of the huge drifts of snow).

It's been one for the record books! They say we're going to get another 5-6 inches of snow Tuesday evening....

The kids are hoping for no school this week!