Make Hay While The Sun Shines...

You've heard the phrase, "Make hay while the sun shines." Well, what do you do when the sun doesn't shine? Today we're having a small blizzard and so Lauren decided it was time to go cross-country skiing! You can see from the pictures how hard it was snowing. Looks like we'll have about 7" by the time it's over. With more coming on Sunday it's safe to say we'll be having a White Christmas!

Yes, That blur is Lauren...

I should also say that after more than an hour of skiing, the skis came off and she took the snowboard out! Now if only we had some hills in our yard.

We were Secret Santa-ed

Monday night about 6:00 p.m. the door bell rang. We went to see who was there and found this:
There was a note attached that let us know that we were the 3rd Day of Christmas and that this was "Three English Toffees" from someone doing the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was fun.

So if you're out there reading this and it was from you - you should know that you couldn't have picked a candy we love more! Thanks - and Merry Christmas!

We Survived the Ice Storm of 2008

As many of you already know the Northeast was hit with an ice storm which brought down tons of tree limbs onto power lines. Many were without power until Monday, and I hear some places still don't have power back. We were one of the few "lucky" ones. We were like an island of power surrounded by the great sea of black. We did have three or four really large branches fall down off our pine tree. One of them just missed our neighbor's truck. We also had a large oak branch fall onto the driveway which prevented us from getting out of the garage until it got cut up. But after a small mishap with a chain saw (no worries - no one got hurt, it just got pinned in a branch and we couldn't free it for awhile) and a Saturday morning of back breaking work (thanks Glen and Dave) we were OK. More than half of our ward was without power. And it was hard checking on people because many people now have internet phones that don't work without power. Cell phones did help a lot. On Saturday we had a Stake Choir rehearsal and driving there was like being in Narnia with the Ice Queen. It was incredibly beautiful. Fortunately most people had their power back on by Sunday night, but it was a cold time to be without power. It made me realize that we need to do more to be prepared for this type of thing, should it happen again.

You can see how the ice caused the trees to bend, if not break.

Glen took this shot Saturday night. The ice really was as beautiful as it was destructive.

Halloween!

For whatever reason this Fall seems to be flying past. As it was we got to Halloween day and we hadn't carved pumpkins yet. So Glen and I went and purchased pumpkins and Jared and Lauren carved them before heading off to Halloween parties leaving Glen and I home to watch Ghost Busters and answer the door. We consoled ourselves by eating the sugar cookies and raiding the candy.

As you can see from the picture Jared decided to be creative and had his pumpkin spewing its guts all over the place. Oh, don't you all wish you had a teenage boy?

Lauren's pumpkin was somewhat more traditional.

Lauren's playing Field Hockey

Lauren has been playing field hockey this year. She is on the Modified team. There is also a JV and a Varsity team. So far they have yet to win a game, but their last game was a tie 0-0, so they're improving. The most important thing is that she's having a blast running around every day after school. They practice M-F until around 5:00 p.m. Their season will end on October 24th. Hopefully by then they'll have at least one win under their belt!

The First Day of School

The first day of school was on September 4th. There was no seminary so the kids went to school together on the bus (much to Jared's disappointment!).

Here is a picture of Jared and Lauren together.

Jared heading off to the first day as a Junior in High School at BH-BL.

Lauren heading off to her first day of 7th grade at O'Rourke Middle Schoo.

Praying Mantis anyone?

I thought these pictures were great. We were at the Miller Raceway waiting to ride go karts when the kids found a praying mantis. Just look at Jared's and Hannah's expressions!