Another video

Snow Day Vidoes

Two things I love...

...in the order they happened today.

I wanted to take some pictures of our house all snowed on, instead of the pictures I'd shot out our front door of the neighbors' houses, so I bundled up and headed out with my camera. It was soooo still and quiet when I shut the front door. I headed down the driveway and into the street so I could get a good view of the house. "Crunch, crunch, crunch..." As I walked on the new snow I heard that familiar sound of the snow squishing beneath my tennis shoes. Instantly I was smiling and thinking of our beloved Idaho and my brain was saying "I LOVE THAT SOUND!!!" The silence of the new fallen snow and the crunch of it under my feet...Things I Love #1.



And of course, what better thing to do when the monkeys are out of school on a snow day, than to head outside and PLAY in it! After breakfast was done we all bundled up. I wasn't sure how that was going to go with Carter as he is usually very adamant about wearing his favorite coat and favorite hat, neither of which are "play in the snow" thickness. But amazingly, we got him in his heavy coat, a warm hat AND mittens without one fuss...and out the door we headed. All of us had a blast! We made sleds and taboggins out of cardboard boxes and plastic storage tubs (yup, you can call us pathetic rednecks...we got rid of all of that good snow stuff when we headed to TX) and the big monkeys took turns pulling each other and Carter up and down the streets. It was Carter's first snow and he had so much fun running around in it, but the little OCD goof did get upset when he got snow on his shoes or mittens...he doesn't like crumbs or messy stuff on him. Sadly, when we went back out to play after nap and lunch the snow was getting slushy already...and the neighbors say this was probably it for the year. Oh well though, I had a wonderful day playing with the kids...Things That I Love #2.

What is sleet, anyway?

Snow, sleet, freezing rain, wintry mix...ice storm, snow storm, winter storm...so many names! I still can't grasp the difference between sleet and freezing rain...but oh well. We are having most of the above today, all rolled into one package in my professional opinion. Makes for pretty dangerous roads (yup, Josh went to work anyway...waiting to hear that he got there in one piece)...school is closed...but the view outside my window is one of my favorites...WHITE!! Not six inches like I'd prefer, but white nonetheless. So we are all snuggled in homebound for the day. Em is of course still in bed at 8:30 this morning, Trev is happily playing his gameboy and Carter...well, he's Carter...up and around and terrorizing as usual (after being up half the night wide awake...can't wait for naptime!). Maybe I'll bake something today...or make more soup. Josh has been making wonderful soups lately and I've been LOVING that! Yup, definitely feels like a soup day :-).

PS. Josh just emailed...he got there fine phew!



(view out my front window)
(Carter of course undressed, no matter the weather...hanging out with Brother)
(the backyard)

Baby's first haircut

Yup, our kids make it to just about their 2nd birthday before they are even close to needing a haircut lol...not big hair growers here. Soooo, as the hair was getting pretty darn long over Carter's ears, it was about time.

Now I have done almost all of our monkey's haircuts...we keep the style simple and it saves us TON$. But..."and then there's Carter." He is definitely NOT Emilee and Trevor at 2...he's a pretty big handful...very headstrong and stubborn and opinionated...and there was no way I was going to be able to do this for him. Someone else was going to have to cut his hair.

Now Carter has quite the list of "NO NO NO's" and one of them is anyone outside of our family touching him or dealing with him (read...hairstylist cutting his hair). He also refuses to wear a bib (read...haircut cape) and he hates being strapped into anything (read...haircut chair). Yup...baby's first haircut is gonna be FUN!!

So I found a children's hair salon in town. I'd normally avoid these pricey places like the plague (really, kids don't need MORE nintendo and fancy decorations just for a haircut) but I knew I needed one thing that these places can provide...hairstylists experienced in dealing with upset toddlers. And Carter didn't disappoint...he started to cry and squirm as soon as we got him up in the chair despite our best attempted bribes of lollipops and tv. But God bless Cheryl-the-hairstylist...she did so well chasing Carter's little bobbing and crying head. She managed a bit with the clippers and then did her best trimming around his ears the top of his head with scissors. And just as Cheryl was finishing, Carter decided to settle down and enjoy his lollipop.

Now our special little boy looks suddenly much more grown up!

This morning BEFORE his haircut. Notice the long hair over his ears. Oh and notice it's winter and he's wearing nothing but a diaper. Another one of those issues Carter has...he doesn't prefer to wear clothes most of the time.

Squirmy...wiggly...

Not a happy camper...

"Maybe just maybe this wasn't so bad...the lollipop is decent consolation for letting that lady touch my head..."

The Hole

So what do ya do when you've moved to tornado land? Well you throw a bunch of money in a hole in the groud of course!!

Our new home did not come with a "storm shelter" but we've heard many people talk of them. It seems 50/50 around here, some swear by them and wouldn't be without them, some think they are silly as "I've lived here my whole life without one..." Josh and I spent alot of time deliberating over this and finally decided that after our "luck" in Texas with Ike, we'd probably feel better having one over not, especially with Josh gone so much and me home alone with the monkeys. And tornado season is coming sooner than we'd prefer...

So we shopped around and learned alot. There are many kinds of storm shelters, sizes, designs and a wide range of prices. You can have the older fashioned ones that are sort of a hill with an angled door (like you see in the classic movies), you can have them dug into the floor of your garage, you can have a steel box just set above ground in your garage, you can get the kind that is underground but about 3-4 foot tall or you can get the "patio top" style. We didn't want a hill in the backyard, we didn't want to dig into the garage and void our home's warranty for breaching the foundation or have issues with parking our car or putting our things in the garage, we didn't want to feel too clausterphobic in a 3ft ceiling and we were planning on putting a patio in right off the back door anyway...so we went with the patio top style and chose a very experienced company to build it.

So here's what happened this week in our backyard...

Starting to dig

The hole is done
The tractors and such were a great show for Carter and Reese
Starting to put the wall forms in
The form that the concrete will be poured around is done
Concrete is in for the floor and walls, getting ready to pour the roof
All the concrete is done, now it needs to dry
Standing up at ground level, looking down the stairs into our hole
A view from inside our hole...it's 7x10 ft inside with a 6-1/2 ft ceiling...Josh's wine collection will find a new home under the stairs
The finished product...our new patio on top of our hole

It was so interesting to watch this come together, especially the part where they popped the form apart and slid the pieces up the door hole. Where there was nothing 24 hours before, there were walls, a floor, and a ceiling of a finished "room."

After the concrete has cured/dried properly, we'll move the bbq out and hide a vent, and possibly put a swing over the door to camouflage that a bit too. Now we have the task of putting together some emergency supplies...water, food, diapers, blankets...for the occasion we might acutally use this thing. Josh says we can put a mattress down there and it's our new guest room *wink*...just need to paint a window on the wall, put up some curtains and it should look like home lol!

I'm tired!!

Just going to shut off the computer for the night and crawl exhausted into bed and I remembered...Trevor lost a tooth today. Since the tooth fairy has missed Trevor on round 1 TWICE...I--MUST--NOT--FORGET!!! Awww man...and for some brilliant reason, I've set myself up with a cute little ritual...the tooth fairy always folds the kids' dollar bills into some cool creation. Soooo back to the computer to hang out with Google for a bit and find some neat new way to turn a dollar bill into something. I settled on "the oragami ring" and will shut the computer down again. Now just to go slip this under Trev's pillow (I pray I won't have to haul my huge pregnant belly up his bunk bed ladder...PLEASE let his tooth be reachable from the side of his bed I can reach from the ground!!) and I can head to bed.

'Night everyone!!