February 2014

February fun! What a crazy month here in the Northeast. It was one crazy storm after another! The first week of the February a MASSIVE ice-storm hit. 600,000 people were without power at one point or another. Ours came back on after 2.5 days, but some people were without power for almost 2 weeks! We are SOOOO glad that we have our wood-burning stove...it saved us! School was obviously canceled, for a few days too. The storm hit Tuesday night, the 4th, so everyone woke up to no power Wednesday morning and VERY cold houses. We woke up to pounding on our door. Apparently our neighbor was very distraught and needed some help with a downed tree, and her phone not working....so Sam helped her out. And then we proceeded to get the fire roaring. We barricaded off our living room, since there are no doors - just open door-frames, with a box-spring from a bed and some blankets on it in one door-frame, and then some thick curtains on a shower-rod on the other door. It worked wonderfully! We just hung out playing games and cooking quesadillas and other delectables on top of our wood stove. It was pretty fun actually. It wouldn't have stayed fun for very long...so I'm glad the power came back on....but the kids thought it was super fun to camp-out in the living room all together. Somehow I failed to get a picture of the happy occasion....We even had some friends come stay with us since they had no way of staying warm at their house. They hung out with us in the living room by the fire. Then that evening our power came back on, but theirs hadn't, so they stayed the night and the next day. We had a fun little tea party for the kids....

and then their power eventually came back on too! Such a crazy week! But good memories for sure:)

And then there was another crazy snowstorm the day before Valentine's Day, which led to us postponing our awesome Relief Society activity we had planned. Cupcake decorating wars...just in time for Valentine's Day....but it was not to be. We did it the next week anyways.

And here I was so proud of these kids who built this snowman ENTIRELY by themselves...first time:)

And apparently the storm dropped off a gorilla at our house....

Decorating some Valentine's cookies at our friends' house:) Man those kids can eat a lot of sugar...and so can I!

Look at that concentration...and he has pretty nice eye-lashes.

This kid is getting SO big! And still spitting up SOOOOOO much! It will pass right?

Valentine's day dinner:) It's the right way to end the day:)

And just some sillies...

We hosted the babysitting swap that we do with some friends just a couple days after the RS cupcake wars activity....so I came home with all the leftovers from the activity and we let the kids go to town on them that night. They had a blast! And it ended up being the perfect way to have a birthday party for the Benny-boy! My little Benjamin is 3 already! Oh how I am glad that this little man decided to join our family, even if it was a year earlier than I would have liked at the time. But I am learning to LOVE the age-spacing of my children.

We also went skiing at a little ski resort about 1 hour away. It was super fun, a lot of work with a sick baby, but worth it. And I guess all the pictures from that are on Sam's phone....to come later....

LucyMae's school does  a winter concert. She was so cute up there with all the kindergartners. Still a little reticent to smile for me....but having fun and participating! Progress is sure but gradual...

We are so glad we live where we do, aside from the busy street part of it. But we are especially grateful for the wonderful school that LucyMae has gotten to attend. She has a wonderful teacher and a great staff at her school. It is just a really good environment! So far we are nothing but pleased with our public school experiences. We are truly blessed.