It's Christmastime....

As usual, it's been a full December.  I love all the fun things happening and the great family things we get to look forward to.  Here's a small snapshot of our month:

Live Nativity--our ward holds a live nativity with a beautiful creche display inside.  Matt was a wiseman (far left standing).  

The fire department decks out one of their trucks with lights and music and tours our town over several weekends of December.  The kids were SO excited and waited all night for the truck to come.  Santa follows the truck in his sleigh.  He stopped and gave the kids big handfuls of candy.  We managed a picture too. 

curbside Santa service...perfect!

 A family photo...surprisingly not too bad

 We were out at the outdoor mall and the kids loved the huge Christmas tree.  Pictures usually turn out better when they are happy...we've done well this month

A visit to Santa's workshop at Wickham Park.  They visited with the head elf who asked if they had been good or bad and wrote down what they wanted from Santa.  They got to sit on his lap then got cookies and hot chocolate from Mrs. Claus.  The best place to go see Santa!

Family shot at the end of Santa's workshop--again happy = good picture

testing out Santa's sleigh

 Decorating Christmas cookies, a family favorite!  I can tell the kids are all getting older b/c the cookies look better every year.

Christmas PJs from Aunt Megan.  We opened them on the 22nd so the kids could wear them to Pajama Day at school on the 23rd--yes, we had a full day of school on the 23rd.

A friend of ours visits a nursing home each year on Christmas Eve and does a small Christmas program for the residents.  We joined them this year and it was so great.  It will definitely become an annual thing for us--the residents and the workers were so grateful we were there.  Lots of smiles and even tears as we visited with them and caroled in the halls when we were done.  The kids had a really positive experience.  It was a perfect addition to Christmas Eve afternoon.

For part of the program, the kids acted out of the Nativity.  Andrew was a wiseman, the girls were angels.

A fun month!!!!

Christmas Letters to Santa

The kids wrote their letters to Santa this year. So cute! Click on the image to make it larger.

Here's Whitney's:

Andrew's: ('kosboo' would be 'crossbow')

Mary's:

Annie's (as told to her dad):

Proud Mary

Mary had a great week.  There was a special Activity Day Girls activity on Wednesday.  It was a mother-daughter dinner.  We ate yummy food and each of the girls shared a scripture that they have worked to memorize.  May was really excited about this night.  We had a lot of fun.

A high school student (and amazing artist) in our ward taught an 8 week art class that Mary has been a part of.  Thursday night was their last class followed by an art show.  Mary was thrilled to get to show us all the stuff she's been working on.  She has really enjoyed these past few months and looked forward to art class each week.

Self portrait, Hogwarts style of course.  Her dream come true would be to be a real Hogwarts student.

 

Oil pastels and color wheels

Whitney had to get in on this one.

There were at least two more walls full of projects.  It was fun seeing her work.

Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving was really great.  On Wednesday, Whit and Annie transformed themselves into chefs and were my baking and food prepping buddies.  We had a lot of fun!  Pies, rolls, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, etc.  

Wednesday afternoon I went to New Haven and picked up Megan and her boyfriend, Nate.  We ordered pizza and had fun.  Thanksgiving day we were lazy and it was wonderful.  My favorite trick is cooking my turkey the day before and then warming it in the over before we eat.  It makes Thanksgiving morning so easy!

Below is the only shot I took all weekend--pie eating.  Yummy!

Friday we went to see The Muppet Movie--we loved it!  The Megan and Nate went home Friday night but I think the kids would have been content with them staying forever (except that Aunt Megan slept on the sofa and they had to be quiet in the mornings) :).  We are all still wishing they'd come back soon!

Day at the Museum

During the Power Outage of BLAH, we took a day and headed to the Connecticut Science Center (thanks to a great friend who had passes).  The kids had a blast.  It was wonderful to have an entire day that we were out of the house and it felt normal.  We even ordered pizza that night so I had a full day of no grilling.  We did have the flash lights and the kerosene heater but there was something wonderful about a long chunk of a day being normal.

The kids LOVED the museum--we had a great day!

These girls loved the water area right at the beginning

Boat Racing

Annie kept trying to catch/reach the ball as it floated in the air.  So funny!

Car races

Space movies.  I think the chairs were cooler for the kids than the actual movies!

Experiencing a hurricane.  No thank you!

For a good 1/2 hour, all Annie did was touch animals in the water.  She was brave.

Halloween...Better Late than Never

The Halloween that wasn't finally was.

The idea of trick or treating on Halloween was so far from everyone's minds with the power outage.  Our street was pitch black and there were branches in everyone's yards and power lines down which made it all so unsafe.  We did some reverse trick or treating to our neighbors that afternoon and ate most of our stash of candy intended for trick or treaters as we sat around for 8 days waiting for power. :)

We had our church Fall Festival 2 weeks late and oh man did we have happy kids.  I was also happy to finally put the Halloween totes away in mid-November.

Our adorable bumblebee

Our beautiful butterfly 

Hermione Granger herself

and we wouldn't be complete without Luke Skywalker

The Fall Festival included a chili cook-off, a carnival and then trunk or treating in the parking lot.  Matt had made a HUGE pot of chili the afternoon the power went out.  We ate chili that night and froze the rest in our generator neighbor's freezer.  Matt was so mad that night at how his chili turned out--he's all about winning and knew that pot would not have won a thing.  

2 weeks later, this guy is still on a mission to win.  Lucky for him he's a quick learner and a really good chili cook.  Here he is sporting his 1st place trophy!!  He had the grin from ear to ear!!!

And that's a wrap.  Thanksgiving is in 2 days.  I'm grateful to finally have Halloween off my blogging plate!

That's the Night that the Lights Went Out in Tolland

Saturday, October 29, 11:27pm.  The time 11:27 remained stuck on our old stove for 8 days and 1 hour.

It should have been the Fall Festival/Trunk or Treat at church.

Halloween should have been 2 days later.

Not so, my friends, no so.

Once the church party was cancelled, we went out to play in the snow that was already coming down.

20 minutes later, we heard cracking sounds and lost 2 big limbs in our front yard.  Immediately, we made the kids come inside.

They dressed up in their costumes and went trick or treating to different rooms in the house. 

Our power stayed on and we were feeling hopeful.  At 11:27, we lost power and then spent the night listening to cracking limbs and falling branches.  A long scary night.

We woke up to another big limb down in front and at least 20 limbs down in back from different trees.

This was our road right in front of our neighbors house on Sunday morning.

This limb was dangling in front of the house.

We pulled out the corded phone and still had phone service through most of Sunday.  Whitney didn't believe it was a real phone.

Monday we went into Matt's office since he had to work but also had heat.  I ordered a kerosene heater online from Lowes and we drove to a Lowes 45 minutes south to pick it up.  Driving back Monday afternoon, we really began witnessing the crazy gas lines and gas stations with no gas.  It was insane.

Warming up by our blessed heater.  Check out the sheets we had up blocking the upstairs.

Kids remained happy.  Actually, no one complained the entire week.  Yea for good kids!  

 Here's the living room with our heater.  A dark scene but it got us up to 66 or 67 degrees each night in the hallway so probably at least 70 degrees for the kids before we headed to bed.

Below is the room with a flash.  The kids camped in the living room all week.  Yea for good sleeping bags and multiple-layered jammies.

Glow sticks were a fun hit since it was dark every night by 6pm.

Day 5--still SO many trees like this in the roads

Yard clean-up.  Mary and Andrew were big helpers

We have a well which means when there is no power, we have no water b/c the electricity pumps the well. Toilet flushing with buckets, toothbrushing with cups, etc, etc.   This storm was a great chance to assess how far our water storage would take us.  We filled both bathtubs with water to use for flushing and then had a store of laundry detergent containers of water on top of a 55 gallon drum, 2 5-gallon drums, and a couple dozen soda and juice bottles of water.  I'd estimate we had 90 gallons of water plus the 2 bathtubs full.  After 8 days, we still had water left.

Once we used all the tub water, the tub became our container storage place.

3 crazy guys (one being Matt) got the limb off our wire with a roof rake and extention ladder.  I was grateful I saw a neighbor touching it a few days before but even still, I would have been so mad at Matt if he would have killed himself!

Day 8--our first sighting of a power truck in our town.  What an exciting moment.

 

This truck took down a huge tree that we had to drive around every single day.

And below, just a bunch more shots of the insanity--they are all from Day 8.  I don't think you can truly grasp the magnitude unless you really see it.  It is rare to see any property that doesn't have one, some, or many trees damaged.  Our street alone probably had 5 or 6 people who lost the power lines from the street to their house and most streets seemed to have at least one section of the main power line down.  The top of the power line closest to our house broke off.

Right next to the intersection before our street.

Everywhere you go, debris now lines the street

Did I really drive through this?  How?!  Crazy!

Sunday night we got home from a friends and saw a crew on the street next to ours.  Matt heard/saw them working on our broken pole at 11:30pm and we had power by 12:30.  Oh happy day.