Winter is here!

The first snow we had, mostly just a dusting.:) Annika & Kellen were making an ice tower or something (I can't remember...). Annika is wearing a dress with no tights...her choice.

After the big snow (8 inches!) -- our street is so pretty!

Kellen & Daddy making a snowman.:)

The finished guy:

You probably can't tell from the picture, but this branch came crashing out of the tree & it is HUGE! It goes from the front of the playground all the way to the back - it hit the slide on the way down!

Out getting icicles: note the shoes - haha (& Annika's pjs...)

Notice in this picture how LOW the cherry tree branches are! They were touching the ground!!

S'mores time!

It's much more cozy looking without the flash.:) And, I have to say, I was quite impressed with my fire!!! Yay!

We finally got some snow! The kids had been asking when it was going to snow, & it REALLY came through! Not only did we get snow, we got ice, then freezing rain, & a whole lot of mess to go with it. Then came the power outage...ours lasted 51.5 hrs. The kids actually handled it pretty well, they thought most of it was fun! :) We got to do some things we have never done before: a fire in our fireplace (I know! 10 yrs. in our house & we'd never used it!!), s'mores over said fire, spending the night at our cousins' house ( we have a book from the library called "Henry & Mudge & the Sleepover" so they were so excited to get to have a sleepover!!)...in addition we got to have meals out, lunch by candlelight, our buddy Aaron came to play in the dark, & the kids made up a flashlight game! Aside from being a little cold, we did pretty well. But we were blessed with being able to spend one night with our cousins (did I mention that when we told the kids that our power was back on, they were thoroughly disappointed???). Kellen slept (in the same bed) with his cousin Kendall (who turned 5 today!), Annika slept with cousin Kenzie (7), & Kaarin slept on the floor with them all in her sleeping bag.:) (The first time she has ever slept out of the crib!). They were all really cute.:)

A couple of funnies from the storm:

* At the cousins' house, as we were getting the kids ready for bed, I hear Kellen & Kendall have this conversation:

Kellen: "...see, smell my doggy!"

Kendall: "Well, smell MY doggy!"

*As we were huddled around the fire (at our house) keeping warm, Annika sticks her index finger in front of Kellen & says: "Here. You like boogies. Eat it."

HAHAHAHA!