Freezing Cold!!

I guess we're in the thick of it now! Right now it's .5 degrees out there. Luckily there isn't much wind, but we're still under a wind chill advisory that's been under effect since 10pm last night. With the wind chill they were talking -35! Our weather center logged a windchill of -14.5 at 9am! Of course it only collects data every hour, so we could have had lower windchills... We went out to Wal-Mart yesterday after Mike got home from work to get our outside dog some cedar bedding. Last year we were more prepared, it was more of a gradual thing. This year it just snuck up really quick and caught us a little underprepared. We bought a shovel today over lunch. There's a winter storm warning for this weekend - Sat through Sun morning. We could get up to 8" of snow! With high winds, drifting and blizzard conditions! Yuck!!! Yuck Yuck!

It's that time of year already!

Christmas is just around the corner! Who came up with 3 major holidays all within a couple months of each other?? Crazy. Just thought I would post some pictures of us getting our Christmas tree put up.

It's already been damn cold here! We have snow on the ground from the day after Thanksgiving - just a half an inch or so. We were supposed to get 3 inches between last night and this morning, but it looks like it's running a little late... It got down to 5 degrees Thanksgiving night - and wouldn't you know it, the power went out at 2:30am! We got up and woke Maria up to come sleep downstairs as the temperature was dropping fast in her room. Luckily the power came back on at about 4:30am so we didn't all freeze :) Yesterday was probably the coldest day so far. It got down to 3 degrees and -5 with wind chill around 10am. Our weather center keeps track of the temp and wind chill and such and logs it every hour, it's pretty handy :) I put a link to our weather page on the sidebar.

Beatrice rolled over for the first time the other day! :) It's amazing how fast they grow! Every little thing they accomplish is so exciting :)

More Thanksgiving Pictures :)

I didn't get the chance yesterday to get all the pictures I wanted to post uploaded - it's so time consuming ;) There's a few pictures of family, one of Duncan

and his pumpkin pie ;) last year he said pie for weeks after thanksgiving, this year of course he did not eat the pie - but said "pumpkin pie" ;)

Sally's new lounging spot is right in front of the electric stove. Of course on thursday you couldn't keep her away from the oven. She gravitates to the warmest spot in the house and if it happens to smell like food = all the better!!
And I had to include a picture of the clean kitchen - taken just the night before last. And amazingly it is still clean!

Turkey Day Complete :)

Ah - big sigh of relief for one holiday down. It turned out really good! Everything was done on time, and everyone arrived on time! :) Renee brought Cheesecake, Pumpkin Bread, Deer Meat, Stuffing and Olives! Pat brought a duck wrapped in bacon in a bed of wild rice! Everything tasted sooo good!! :)

And the house even got cleaned! We rearranged the kitchen and it's amazing how it looks so much better and roomier! And here it is 4 days after and it is still clean! That's the most amazing part of it all. I can still see my counter!

We are all pretty much turkeyed out after eating turkey for 4 days!

We got right to work on Saturday rearranging the living rooms, bringing out the Christmas decorations and putting up the Christmas tree! We all had such a wonderful Holiday weekend! We even broke out the Christmas movies and cuddled up watching them all weekend.

T Day

;) Who's not ready for the big T-Day yet? Did my grocery shopping Monday - what a nightmare! I figured Monday wouldn't be so bad. Figured that everyone would be out over the weekend or on Wed. I figured wrong :) Anyway, we survived the trip and that's all that matters ;)
This blog will sadly be sans pictures as I really need to get to work on cleaning for company! I didn't really take a whole lot this week anyway - more of Beatrice sucking her thumb (it's so darn cute!). But of course there will be pictures of Thanksgiving as soon as I can get to the computer afterwards.
I finally caught some videos of Beatrice laughing! Now I just need to figure out how to edit them so you don't hear me being retarded for 10 minutes beforehand! ;)
Anyway, short blog :)
Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!!

Yes, it has been an entire week since I blogged!!

Maria had her veteran's day concert on Monday. That was nice because Mike had the day off, so he got to come. Good thing because he ended up having to take Duncan out due to a nice little sobbing fit. Amazingly Beatrice was good for the whole thing... go figure. All the choir kids were supposed to wear red, white and blue. Not many of them did. Maria is the one second to the left. If you click on the picture you should be able to see her better. Maria wore a red shirt, black skirt and white leggings. Well, the white leggings somehow disappeared before the recital.
Me: Looks like she took off her white leggings.

Mike: No, she's still got them on.

Me: uh, no, those are her legs.

Luckily the pictures are dark so they are not as apparent :) She had a great time anyway. She loves chorus - wants to be a singer. She wants to sing a song for the talent show in Feb. She wants to sing "Cool Rider" from Grease 2! I just don't know about that.

Maria has been teaching Duncan some new things. How fun it is to roll around on the floor :) and how to run around like Superman! :) It's really cute. And they've been having a great time at it. He also loves piggyback rides.

So, you probably thought I wasn't going to mention that I had a birthday last weekend... the older you get, the less you want to celebrate turning another year closer to 40! ;) (or whatever the next big number is for you). Well, it was a good birthday anyway. I just spent it hanging out with my family :) I got a beautiful bouquet of lillies that are just making the kitchen smell terriffic!! A really cool Betty Crocker recipe card box (with some really awesome recipes inside!). A Stephen King book, and some really great cards! My favorite is from the kids. It says "Somebody be a dear and get me one of those pills that makes the Mommy happy" :)

Anyway, it snowed again on Friday and Saturday and then again yesterday and last night... it actually stuck last night. grumble grumble. And just thought I would throw in some more pictures as if I don't already have too many in this blog ;)

First Flurries of the Season!

Yes, it flurried like mad out there Monday afternoon! In the morning it was sleeting! Mike ran into flurries on his way to work, it was just raining here until about 11am... and after that it was sleet and flurries. BRRRR. Around 2pm it was a blizzard out there! Fortunately none of it stuck.


Just thought I would post some interesting weather facts... while we were trick or treating at the first house (sweet old couple) they said that not too long ago there was a blizzard on Halloween... I found it on this website: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/wiwx.php
"Halloween Snow Storm - October 31- November 2, 1991. Northwest and west central Wisconsin. 15 to 30 inches of snow. 6 to 10 foot drifts" As well as some interesting weather info on Couderay: "State's record coldest temperature -55 F set in Couderay on February 2nd and 4th 1996"
Mike finally got his weather center up and running - and it automatically updates hourly at http://www.redwing.net/~kdemarr/mikespage.htm it is the accurate weather from our house ;) Of course the temp gauge only goes to -21, so if it gets colder than that it will read an error... we did have a few days last year that were -32! I will eventually get a website up and running on our free space from our internet provider... but for now you will all just have to settle for the weather page ;)



****Several people have told me that they've had problems trying to post comments on the blog... I am going to have to guess that the problem is that I usually leave a blog I'm working on active and up on the computer for days at a time... so maybe if I start logging out of blogger (it saves drafts anyway, so I don't have to worry about losing them) people will be able to leave comments... so go ahead and try commenting again.****




What else has been going on this week?? Beatrice has not had any screaming fits - so now I'm convinced that it was my eating the spicy chipotle sauce from McDonald's like 3 days in a row that caused her such discomfort. So, no more spicy chipotle :(





Beatrice has slept through the night for the past week and a half!! Of course last night she woke up around 3am, but I think it was only because the dog was whining... that stupid dog! Jo-Jo is afraid of the dark... she jumps at the door to get in once it starts getting dark out... now with the time change it's pitch black by 5 or so - and it's nearly impossible to make her go out after dark. The other night she started whining at midnight, so last night I made sure she went out around 9... well she must have eaten some food when she went out because last night she was whining at midnight so I got up and let her out... then she was whining at 3am, 5am, 6am... ugh! I refused to let her out again, thinking I didn't want her to make a habit of having to go out in the middle of the night... and I won't even finish this story because it ends in tragedy with me dragging the kennel out the back door and scrubbing the floor at 6am...





Both little ones are congested and have runny noses :( I think it's because Duncan pretended to eat (and put his mouth on) some fake food at playgroup...


We got a really awesome electric stove heater :) it's so pretty :) and nice and warm :) Of course after a couple of days we realized that the kitchen was freezing because the house heater wasn't kicking on... so we have to move the electric heater from beneath the thermostat... it was the perfect place to put it if it weren't for the thermostat... so now we have to do a little rearranging...




Duncan has taken it upon himself to start yelling at himself when he's doing something naughty... He'll stand up on the couch and jump and yell at himself "sit downs!" he'll climb on top of his toy box and yell at himself "no kimbins dit downs!" He's become such a parrot! He repeats just about everything he hears, including random phrases from the television. He still loves playing inside his toy box... and I'm teaching him the colors green, yellow and brown in an interesting way ;) (just threw that in to see if anyone actually reads this).









Maria is doing good. Madly in love with the high school musical hat and gloves I picked up for her yesterday at Wal-Mart - she wore the hat all night. Oddly she was way too exited about the Wisconsin tests this week. Couldn't wait all weekend... the night before the tests started the truth came out - they were giving away FREE BREAKFAST at school on the testing days! If it's got to do with food, Maria is excited about it. "Mom, can I join the D.A.R.E. program at school? It's got something to do with drugs, I can't remember what it stands for, but at the end of it there's an ice cream party!"


Beatrice found her thumb! and keeps finding it ;) it's damn cute! And she is holding on to toys :)