It's been over two weeks....

since I last put something up here. To those of you who follow what we're doing...sorry! It's been crazy!

Well, we finally got some snow that amounted to something. And Nicholas FINALLY got to go out and play. We had about 6 inches of snow. Nicholas wanted snowballs, so I did my best. (It wasn't a good packing snow.) He had fun throwing them; some of them went pretty far for a 3-yr-old. He also wanted to build a snowman. Maybe next time. We will use the snowman kit our friends in Indiana sent us at Christmas! Before we came in, I had him make a snow angel. Nicholas really enjoyed his first 15 minute play time in the snow!

The first weekend in February we worked in the house. I had been spending a lot of time stripping wallpaper in the jack'n'jill bathroom, as well as one of the attached bedrooms. Friday we made the trek to Southridge to buy paint and other stuff we needed from Home Depot. So that Saturday we spackled, primed and painted. The toilet/shower area is a real pretty, calm shade of green. The sink part of the bathroom on one side is now a gold-yellow color. Then the bedroom we painted cream with one wall divided in "half" - top blue, bottom gold. We also put a blue and gold stripe around the rest of the room. This is our "rec room"/loft/guest room - a room more commonly known here as the West Virginia room. :) I put my Cape Hatteras shower curtain in the bathroom and hung pictures from our trip to the Outer Banks in 2007 in there as well. We have yet to hang things on the walls in the WV room...but we are going to put our diplomas up and some other things. (Maybe that will happen this weekend....I hope.)

Then last week that big rain/wind storm hit. That was Wednesday night. Although having lived in Indiana, I have seen more wind. We had a little tree (that was already dead) fall over on the bank above the house, and the rockers on the back porch were blown over. But the big problem here was the trees that fell down and caused problems all over the place. Thursday the cable was out. Luckily, I needed to go to the store, so that trip helped occupy the kids some.... and me too! Cable being out at our house means no tv (obviously), no internet and no phone! (Don't forget that our cell phones don't work up here.)

Early Friday morning, I woke up to find my alarm clock black. (The battery operated clock in the bathroom said it was 1:50AM.) Our power was off! By the time Mike got up around 6 AM, the house was getting pretty cold. At 8 AM, I got the kids ready and took them to Hardees for breakfast. That place was busy!! On the way down, I called Mike and he told me the power company said that it could be as late as Sunday night at midnight before the power came on. So I hung up with him and called my dad in Fairmont and asked if he wanted company. There was no way I was staying in a cold, powerless house with two kids for up to three days! So we got our breakfast to go and came home. The kids ate and I got stuff gathered up to leave. By 10 AM we were on the road. One of the guys at Mike's work let us borrow a generator to run the refrigerators. (Remember I had just gone to the store the day before.) When he came home from work, much later than normal, Mike brought a space heater with him. After finding a sleeping bag and getting set up in the family room for his "camping" experience, the power came on at 10:30 then went off again and came back on at midnight. At that point, he decided to crawl into our bed. Now mind you that this was Friday the 13th....I'm not superstitious about that date, but it did make me chuckle...well sort of.

Mike had to work on Valentine's Day...another reason that I didn't really feel too bad about leaving him. He drove up to Fairmont when he was done on Saturday and we all went to dinner to celebrate Valentine's Day. He left on Sunday evening and we met his mom at Eat 'N Park for dinner. Arnold couldn't join us because he had the shingles.....and the kids couldn't be around him. Mike came on back here and the kids and I left Monday morning.

Funny thing about all of this is Connie and Arnold were supposed to come down here for the weekend to spend time with the kids and so that I could have a break. Mike and I were going to go to dinner and maybe even a movie. But since Arnold couldn't be around the kids, we had to cancel those plans. Even if he hadn't gotten sick, we would have had to cancel because of our power issue.

Anyway, that's what's been happening here the last two weeks. This week I've just been catching up on laundry and cleaning/straightening up the house. Nothing too spectacular. I'm hoping to finish the WV room this weekend and get a few other odds and ends crossed off my long home improvement list.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Until next time....