Atlas day 2

The day following our night without power brought a stop to the snow. It started melting right away. It was, after all, only October 5th.Terry got started digging out right away - as well as all of our neighbors. It was nice to see everyone outside talking to each other. Terry started digging out back. I thought the path he made was most  impressive.

My view from the back door. The drift was huge. 

This is our neighbor across the street. Unfortunately, trees all over the hills look like this, including one is our back yard that Terry had to cut down.

Cars buried under two feet of snow. Our overgrown bush in front of deck is bent all the way down to the ground. It cracked and Terry cut it down. I didn't like it anyway.

No mail silly Noah.

Check out the drift in front of the garage. That's gotta be like 4 feet high. And the door propped open with a board.

The snow drift in the back went over our fence to the neighbors. 

This snow was so sticky the kids boots were continually being sucked off. I had to go rescue Evie later because neither she nor Noah could get one of hers pulled out. 

Just before lunch our power came back on. Hallelujah! Terry's sister's power was still out. They didn't even have a shovel! Since they only lives a little more than a half mile away, Terry made some hot coffee, put it in a thermos on his back and hiked over there with a spare shovel. He also got their gas stove turned on. There he goes, brother to the rescue!

While Terry was gone the kids played outside for a while. It's more fun when you can come back in to a warm house (warming up house).

They played on the huge pile off the back deck where there was a drift and also the snow that Terry had shoveled. It was probably five feet tall. 

Samuel, Ezra and I just hung out, thankful that the heat was turned back on! 

Atlas day 1

Friday October 4th was the beginning of the worst fall storm our area has seen in decades. I'm not sure on the actual numbers, but it was bad. A couple inches of cold rain soaked everything and all the livestock. Then the snow started falling with 50 mph winds with gusts up to 70 mph. Tens of thousands of cows died. I still feel heartbroken about it, especially when I think of the Bible Camp Terry attended when he was young. They called the storm "Atlas." 

Rapid City got about two feet of snow. We were thankful it was already daddy's day off and he didn't have to even try to go to work. The day started out not that bad, but it just kept snowing and snowing and snowing! It was very heavy, wet snow. 

This was first thing in that morning

It was such a cold, icky day that I decided to make a hot lunch - soup - which I don't usually do. However, as soon as I finished, the power went off and stayed off. It was nice to have something hot for the time being. The house started to cool off right away and Terry started a fire. I bundled Ezra in another footed pajama, a hat and slippers.

Since we had no tv or internet, Terry thought he might as well start work on the new bedroom - where the school room had been. It was his plan for that day anyway. However, it was not as bright as it appeared down there though. Notice Terry's headlamp?

Had to bust out my candles.

Standing up the framing.

Once the framing was done Terry started demolishing the stupid wet bar. That's where the closet will go.

He's an animal.

Noah and Evie got a chance to demo also :)

My mom and sister in law gave me the idea of cooking in foil packets over the grill. I had some thawed chicken in the no-longer-powered fridge which I used up. Terry had quite a bit of digging to do to even get to the grill.

It was A LOT darker. It was wonderful to have hot food. The house was nearly 50 degrees everywhere except the fireplace room the next level down. The highest level, the bedrooms, were so cold. Our fireplace is extremely inefficient, but we were thankful for it even though we had a limited wood supply. Terry had to hike through the drifts to use his chainsaw to cut apart a large fallen tree limb that had been sitting for a year.

I was really worried about Ezra for the night. We moved a pack and play to the basement since it was warmer down there since the ground wasn't frozen yet. It was pretty decent down there. And ironically, Ezra slept the very best of anyone on that cold, cold night. 

I wanted to put the kids to bed early but Terry had the good idea of camping with them in front of the fireplace for the night. Since they didn't get to go during the summer. It was a good idea, but no one slept very well. Noah went to the basement. Evie went to her bedroom around 5am. I could not sleep on the couch in the basement so I went upstairs and froze. By the next morning, I was feeling pretty done with the whole power outage thing. I was cranky. I did not handle it so well. I was so very thankful when it came back on late the next morning...

awana hats

The first day of October was Crazy Hat night at Awana. I forgot until 30 minutes before we had to leave. I whipped these up based off a pin I found last year. Oh man. Last year I made these same hats and then the kids forgot them. We finally we made it to Awana with them this year, though I was pretty stressed out by the rushing. I don't think they won any awards or accolades, but my kids were really excited about them.

4 month thumb

Stephanie took some photos of me playing with Ezra one night right before bedtime. He kept popping that thumb into his mouth. It used to only be in bed but now he does it when he's playing too!

He loves to fly. Makes him giggle. Who can resist that?

He's four months old now. Definitely hard to believe. I took him in to the clinic for his check up and shots and he came out with a cold. Poor guy. He's growing well. He was up to 15 pounds and 7 ounces (the 75%ile, nearly 3 pounds in 2 months) and 26 inches long (90%ile, up 2 inches in 2 months).

The thumb. He's getting more hair now too. Gotta replace what's rubbed off and spread out!

aunty love

It's been about three weeks since my sister was here. She's probably glad to be back with her husband and pets, but we miss her. The kids really enjoyed having her here. She probably felt the need of personal space, just like I do every single day (hence the blog!). 

This was one of her last days here, I think. The kids were all over her even though she was just trying to put some stuff away (haha Steph, I caught you cleaning). And Samuel was taking Snap for a walk inside...

Noah insisted on showing Stephanie all of his art from last year. She's an artist so perhaps he wanted her professional opinion. Er...right. And Evie is a spaz now a days.

I got a cute shot of little Samuel really enjoying pulling poor Snap around.

dungeon: part 11, moving in

The same day we got carpet in the dungeon, Terry put the finished trim up along the floor. We couldn't wait to get this thing done. That night my brother Nathan and Ana came over to help us move the couch and TV stuff down so we could have our very first movie night. We watched Iron Man 3, which was awesome, ate a lot of popcorn and had a great time. It was so fun! Even better since Stephanie was there. 

Terry kept saying that he didn't think the couch was going to fit. I kept insisting that it would. Guess who was right? ;)

The day that Stephanie had to leave I put her to work by having her help me move all the kids toys down there. It's hard to believe that most of it was in a closet! I can tell you that it's such a relieve to have moved all the stuff downstairs. It was so incredibly cramped with the huge couch, toys and school room all in one area. There's still some things to be added, but for now, we're done.

The day after carpet was installed, Terry put up the remaining trim for the window and doors. It looks so great.

And the hand rail matches the rest in the house. Except it's prettier.

That night we had our very first family pizza movie night. Ahhhhh. It's done. I am happy. We all are!

dungeon: part 10, carpet!!!

At long last. At very long last. We had reached the point of finishing our dungeon. We started this project back in January and hoped to have it finished by Ezra's birth. Well, that didn't happen. But four months late isn't too bad for doing it ourselves (with four kids, having had a baby during that time!). My husband is awesome. He's learned a ton.

So a week after Stephanie arrived, a week after my birthday, the carpet arrived.

I tried so hard to be a discreet paparazzi. But I was SO excited!

Here's what the dungeon looked like before hand. Everything was done except for carpet!

And after!

Before:

After! Boom baby!

Before:

After. YAY!

Sister visit, Ezra flight

My sister lives far away in Washington state with her husband and three pets. I miss her. I had no idea when I'd see her again (the last time was last Thanksgiving) since she's so far away, visits are expensive and they have no one to watch their pets. But I came home from a busy, stressful Thursday at homeschool co-op just a couple days after my birthday (it was September 19th) to find a couple of plane tickets taped to the inside of our garage door. I was so confused. Why would mom or dad tape old plane tickets to my door? I tried to read the tickets. They were issued to Stephanie but I had a hard time finding the date. It seemed like it took forever to find the date! When I found that it was earlier that day, Noah called out, "STEPHANIE!" I hurried inside and found her sitting in my living room, smirking her Stephanie smirk. Y A Y ! 

I literally had NO idea whatsoever that she was coming. Dad was in on it. He picked her up from the airport. My brother Nathan and Ana knew about it too. But mom didn't. Steph hung out with us the rest of that day and the following morning, mom's birthday, got up early to drive over there and surprise her. It worked. Mom had no idea either and freaked out, nearly throwing the laptop she was holding. She was so happy. I wish I could have seen it. 

Steph stayed for ten whole days. It was great. We didn't do a whole lot, but it was so fun just hanging out. It's nice to have someone who completely understands the Kveene dark humor. She even got to see us get carpet in the dungeon and watch our first movie night down there. We got to go shopping like in the old days. And she got to meet little Ezra!

little monkey butt

Suffice it to say, Ezra liked her.

Of course, he smiles at everyone. But I'm sure this was a special smile just for Stephanie.

"Hmmmm, you remind me of someone. You kinda look like my mommy."

Bubble face. 

He's gonna be huge the next time she sees him :(