Lindsey’s friend party

Lindsey had about 12 friends come over for a fun party.  First we decorated mini-cakes.

All the girls had fun decorating.  I think some had more fun putting on as many sprinkles as they could.

The birthday girl and her cake—I think she was smiling and laughing so much her eyes weren’t open.

The whole gang just before the party ended.  We made some cute flower headbands, clips, and hairbands.  From left to right: Adrianna, Elizabeth, Virginia, Kennison, Halle, Lindsey, Nicole,Amanda, Lily Rose, Samantha, and in front Fiona.

She has a really cute group of friends.  I hope they all stay as sweet and cute as they are right now.  It was fun making the flowers, and we also made some marble necklaces, but I don’t have any pictures of those.  In fact we had to drop them off later, since they weren’t quite finished at the end of the party.

Technorati Tags: Lindsey,12,party,flower clips,mini-cakes

Lindsey turns 12

 

Lindsey turned 12 on November 15th.  She saw a picture once of someone’s room filled with balloons for their birthday.  She told me she would love that, but thought she’d never get it because she shares a room.  Well, of course I had to do it for her then. So I ordered a bunch of balloons and had Ben pick them up on his way home from work.  Then that night after she had gone to bed, I wrote little notes to attach to each balloon. Then once we were sure she was asleep, we carried the balloons upstairs to our room, and then carefully carried a few balloons at a time to surround her bed.  She was so happy and surprised when she woke up to all the balloons in her room.  It was definitely worth it!

This was the beautiful scene outside when we came downstairs.  A lovely sunrise for Lindsey’s birthday!

She got cinnamon rolls and juice for breakfast.  She also got to open one of her presents-some Panda earrings from Jared.  She loves Panda’s!  I think she’s happy!  Too bad she had to go to school.

For her birthday dinner she really wanted to go to the Cheesecake Factory—fortunately they opened one recently at the mall near us.  So we all met up at the mall for dinner. 

She ordered this huge piece of cheesecake for her dessert, which they brought out with a “Happy Birthday Lindsey” in chocolate.  They sang happy birthday to someone else earlier and it was pretty cool, but they totally lamed out when they came to sing to Lindsey-only two servers- and it was just sort of a let down after the other birthday singing.  Oh well, she didn’t care too much, since she LOVES cheesecake and got to have this all to herself, with leftovers for later.

I got her this poster of the YW’s theme for the year, signed by the artist-he was at Women’s Conference, and I happened upon him at the BYU Bookstore.  I thought it would make a nice gift for her, and I think she liked it. 

She also got a “cell phone”, the one she wanted was only available online, and didn’t come in time for her birthday.  So I made one out of cardstock, with a picture of the phone inside.  I think she is looking forward to chatting and texting!

I can’t believe she is 12 years old!  She is a beautiful, smart, talented young woman!  I am so proud to be her mom!

Technorati Tags: Lindsey,12,cell phone,Cheesecake Factory

The Halloween that wasn’t…

Halloween got postponed this year because of the awful snowstorm that occurred Halloween weekend.  Our town actually postponed it to the following Sunday, but we decided not to go to the only street they opened, and just go on our street.  The kids had fun dressing up, and then we let them ring our doorbell for all the candy we didn’t end up giving away.  As you can see Jared was an army guy!  He loved that costume!

Lindsey was a bat!  We made that costume out of an umbrella and a black hoodie.  It took some work, but it sure was cute!  She did the funky makeup on her face.

Hailey was a gumball machine.  This was super easy and cheap-but since we made it I found some better looking ideas online.  Oh well.  It was fun and she liked it.

Technorati Tags: Halloween,2011,army man,bat girl,gumball machine

Chain Saw Massacre

 The title of this post surely got your attention, didn't it?  It was a chain saw massacre, a massacre of trees and large limbs that is.  Ben bought a chain saw to help with the major clean up we had to do in our yard after the snow storm of the century, although I've been hearing that it was actually called "Alfred".  Huh, well, maybe now we'll just refer to it as Snow Storm Alfred.  Anyway, there was a lot to do, and so I caught a few shots of Ben hard at work clearing up the mess.  The picture above, he isn't hard at work, I just made him pose like that for the picture.

 Here he is getting ready to attack the branches along the side of our driveway.  It makes a really loud noise, I did a little video, which I might post at the end of this, just in case you've never heard a chain saw before.  Haha.

 He's hard at work...and right now as I type this he is out there working some more.  Since it is Veteran's Day, he doesn't have to be at work, and can actually get some clean up done while the sun is shining-since it isn't shining by the time he gets home from work.

Hopefully all the clean up will be finished today, and the chain saw can take a break for a long time, hopefully!

Cold House, Snow Storm cont.

 Last Monday morning we awoke to a very cold house, a 52 degree house.  Now, that is cold!  I decided to venture out around 8 am to go to the local Rec Center, which had power restored to it Sunday night, and take a hot shower.  So I packed up a bag of stuff and headed out.  I signed in on the shower list, and headed to the women's locker room to take a shower.  It turned out to be a very cold and very high pressure shower.  I quickly stuck my head in and got to work shampooing and conditioning as fast as I could so I could get out as quickly as a could.  If I wasn't awake before that shower I certainly was now.  Fortunately, it was very warm in the Rec Center, and once I was dressed and drying my hair (of course there was no way I was going to venture out in 30 degree weather with wet hair!), I was quite warm...in fact maybe over-warm, if that's even possible?!

Then I decided to venture over to Stop and Shop to see if they had anything in the way of hot breakfast items.  The Dunkin Donuts inside had hot chocolate and I noted hot egg breakfast sandwiches.  So I ordered the hot chocolate and tried to order the hot sandwiches, but they were out of egg!  What?!  So then I bought some scones from S&S and thought I might try the actual DD store, but when I saw the line of cars in the parking lot, I changed my mind, and that's when destiny set in.  A local deli/bakery called Parma bakery was open, and there was almost no one in the lot!  I stopped in and they had hot egg and bacon sandwiches for $1.99, way cheaper than the DD ones!  Score!  So that is what we had for breakfast.  It was so good to eat and drink something hot!

I failed to take any pictures on this momentous day.  Once we ate breakfast we all headed back to bed, except for Ben who headed to work, since they had power and he could take a hot shower there.  While snuggled up in bed, the idea came to me that we should try to see a movie.  I tried to call but the line was busy.  So we decided to just head out that way anyway.  Of course once I got on Rt 7, I realized that I had something I needed to return, so we turned right around and went home to get those items.  I stepped inside the back door, and heard a humming sound.  I thought, wait....is that the fridge?  I flipped a light switch, and sure enough it was!!  The power was back on baby!!  I think it was close to noon.  So I checked the temp in the fridge, it was 36 in the fridge and 30 in the freezer, so none of our food went to waste!  Yay!

We decided to head off again to see if we could see a movie.  But, alas the theatre was closed, but the Lowes next to it was open!  So we went in there for salt for the driveway, bird seed (random, but our feeder was out), and I tried unsuccessfully to find some duralogs to have a fire.  We also ran into some friends from church, and I offered to let them come over to shower if they wanted to.  Then we went to Target and spent all our money--just kidding.  We just bought some Halloween candy, and a snow hat for Jared.  Then we came home and basked in the heat of our newly powered house.  It was great.

Later, we decided to drive around a bit and see if any of our friends had power or wanted to come over to our house.  It was pretty sad to see all the tree damage.  Once again, since I was driving I didn't take any photos.  Just imagine, entire lanes blocked by trees hanging down over them, trees on wires, tree branches everywhere and you'll see what it was like.  We only found one friend home, the rest probably escaped to a hotel for heat and flushing toilets.  I don't blame them one bit.  We probably wouldn't have lasted much longer at our house either.

Tuesday we still didn't have our phone or cable or internet.  So we rented some movies from redbox.  At least the kids watched them, I didn't.  We also went to the library Tuesday afternoon, as the library finally had power.  We ran into some friends from church that didn't have power yet.  So we made plans for them to come over on Wednesday to do some laundry.  Sometime that evening our phone came back on, so we caught up on messages and then emails.  Of course it went off again Wednesday morning...and on again and off again several more times throughout the week.  Finally to stay on for good on Friday.

Thursday evening, a little after 7 pm, Ben called me from his cell and asked me if I had gone anywhere that day.  I said no, why?  He said, well there's a tree limb blocking the driveway.  So I offered to come out and help him move it.  When I came out, this is what I saw...

A branch so big, that we couldn't possibly have moved it by ourselves.  He had to call a friend to come over with a chain saw to get rid of it.  These pictures don't even adequately show just how big it was.  It was crazy!

 You can see Ben on the phone with Brother Booth, asking for chain saw help.  That kind of shows just how big it was.  Now I'm scared to go in the yard, for fear another branch will just spontaneously fall.  Scary!  They got it all cleared up in less than 10 minutes.  The only reminder is all the saw dust on the driveway.

It was certainly a week to remember.  Jared was sick again with a fever for most of the week.  I took him in on Wednesday morning, because I wanted to make sure he didn't have pneumonia since he had just had it a few weeks ago.  They said his lungs were clear and the strep test came back negative, but if he was still running a fever on Friday to bring him back in.  He ran a fever off and on until Friday morning when we was cool as can be.  I checked him several times during the day and it never came back.  So thankfully this all took place during our mandatory week off from school thanks to the power outage.

Speaking of school.  That makes the second week of school that was cancelled due to a storm.  The first being from Tropical Storm Irene. Since we've had all these days without school, our new last day of school is June 22nd!!  There are no more snow days left to make up at the end of the year.  They even added a 1/2 day for this Friday since it was a day off for Veterans Day.  I don't know what they'll do next, since we certainly will have snow days in the future.  Take it away from Spring Break?  Saturday school?  I don't know.  But it is just crazy!

Snow Storm in October

 We woke up to a calm Sunday morning, no power, no heat, no water, no flushing toilets.  The snow storm was over, leaving behind at least 15 inches of snow and trees and large branches down everywhere.  Church had been cancelled the day before, so we weren't in any hurry to get outside.  I took some pictures through the windows, but Ben took many more when he went out to check on the damage.  You can see some big branches down in the picture below, this is our front yard.

 A huge drift of snow fell down from the roof, right as I snapped the below photo.  You can see some of the trees are bending over from the weight of the snow.

 This is the same area, after the big gust of snow.  Poor sad trees!

 This is the back deck.  Look at all that snow!!

 Trees down in the front yard.

 An entire tree destroyed, all its branches on the ground, just the trunk is left.

 Another view of that tree down, and you can see our neighbors house through the trees.

 These are the forsythia bushes that are usually 6 feet tall.  So tall that you can't even see that house across the street normally!  I don't think they will survive, but then again they just might come back.

 This is the weeping cherry tree in our backyard.  You can see one branch on the ground, and the other one leaning on the deck.

 Another view of the tree down looking from the driveway.

 This tree was broken and hanging across our street.  Someone cleared it up pretty quickly though, as the snow plow was able to come and take care of our driveway--either that or he just drove under it?

This was a pretty crazy storm.  It was probably about 60 degrees inside our house that day and slowly getting colder.  We spent most of the time huddled in our beds keeping warm.  We even put on our snow hats.  The First Selectman (otherise known as a mayor in our town) postponed Halloween until the next Sunday because of all the power lines that were down, it was just too dangerous!  100% of our town was without power Sunday morning.  By Sunday evening it was down to 96 % without power--we were in that bracket.  It was COLD!  After sleeping one night without power, we were about to start another night without power.  All the kids were in the girls room snuggled up in bed.  Ben went to go see if he could find something hot for us to eat for dinner, when he finally came home with some pizza, Hailey and Jared were fast asleep!

 This was their room with my flash off...you can't see anything but the glow from all the battery operated tea lights on Lindsey's dresser and the light from Hailey's book light.  Below is Hailey and Jared snuggled in her bed..note the warm hat on Jared's head.  It was cold!