Greetings from the Icy Midwest!

Hey everybody! We made it through the bad ice storm that went through a lot of the midwest. We don't have any trees, so we didn't have problems with our power being out (for long, anyway!) or damage to the house. So we are VERY lucky. We went driving around today because we were curious what the rest of town looked like from the storm, and here are some pictures. It looks bad. And a lot of Salina and other towns around here still don't have power or water or anything.

Our grass....it is like walking on icicles. Well, that is pretty much what you are doing! I don't know if you can see how think the grass is coated from this picture, but it is really bad. Some blades/ice are about half and inch across.

Our side of town wasn't bad, because there aren't any trees. Just to give you an idea of how much ice we got, here are some of the icicles on our deck:


If it wasn't so destructive, it would be beautiful.

All the trees look like they've been dipped in glass. It is really neat...but so much damage.

This is the KWU campus. Our finals got canceled yesterday because there wa sso much damage around school. Someone told me there was a power line down across part of the campus that the electric company spent most of the day yesterday fixing.

Everyone from the dorms said that they spent the day yesterday listening to all the branches breaking and watching them fall. I guess they were hitting the tops of the dorms, too, and the roof of one of the dorms is pretty damaged from it.

This big branch landed right on top of that house.

This car was pretty much annihilated. The rear view mirrors got knocked off and someone picked them up and put them on top of the car for the owner. How nice. This is on the north side of campus.


Our babysitter wasn't able to take Noah the last couple days because she doesn't have power or anything. Here house is directly to the left of this big branch. I was seriously blocking off the entire street. Her neighborhood still didn't have power last time I talked to her today.

Happy Birthday, Brian!

Last Tuesday was Brian's birthday!

Noah playing with some of the balloons we sent to the office for Brian...

The boys sitting down to dinner. I told Brian I would make him whatever he wanted for dinner....and he wanted grilled hot dogs.

I got steaks, in case it was just saying hot dogs to keep costs down. So that we would have them for back up, ya know? What does Brian say?

"Just want hot dogs."

So hot dogs he got.

Me asleep on Brian's birthday. Noah and I both got sick, so he ended up taking care of us!

Alllll the Christmas ornaments we painted!

I'm not sure what I was doing here. But I guess I"m really excited about the ornaments. I'll have to put a picture of the finished ones on here. They turned out REALLY cool!

Brian working on his ornaments...
Decorating the Christmas tree! Noah loved all the boxes he got to play with :)

Helping mommy fluff branches

Helping daddy with lights...


Noah got mad at us because we wouldn't let him play with the ornaments. So he sat in the kitchen and pouted.
Yay! The (semi) finished tree! All the ornaments are up really high because we didn't know if Noah would play with them, and we have some more bows we need to put up....

Apparently Kleenexes are fascinating.

I love that face!

Noah started liking his hat and mittens finally!

Making pancakes. I think Brian was so excited about the fact that I was actually cooking that he felt compelled to take a picture :)

Don't worry, the Dorothy Lynch didn't go in the pancakes.Brian thought the syrup on his pancake was cool. So he took a picture.
Noah and his hat :)
He kind of looks like he's begging for food in this picture....