Sunday, December 28, 2008

Holiday Crafts

We haven't done much preschool lately but we have been doing some fun, family, holiday crafts! I ordered some paint your own Christmas stocking holders. I painted the Christmas tree, Liam painted a gift and an elf, Aislinn painted Santa and a gingerbread man and Chris painted an orange reindeer with polka dots and a purple head. He was feeling creative, lol. As our stocking holders dried Liam and I worked on these snowflakes. We used cotton swabs and a hot glue gun, and lots of imagination. We hung them all along the beam that stretches down the middle of our house. It was fun and easy, I'm sure we'll do it again next year.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Christmas Concerts

Little sister, ready and waiting for the show!

There's my boy, smack dab in the middle of the front row! I thought for sure that we finally had good seats and we would be able to see him, but it wasn't meant to be. The 4th grade did two songs. For the first song they played recorder and the teacher stood.... you guessed it, right in front of Liam. The second song we were relieved to see the teacher grab her guitar and stand to the side, until the soloists came out and stood..... right in front of Liam! maybe next year....
Here's my little drummer boy! He had such a good time it was so fun to watch. I can't wait for the end of the year concert, when they'll be able to play more than one 10 note song! Beginning band students haven't had much time to put their new skills all together. It may have been short but it was quite good, Momma and Daddy were very proud.

Aislinn wasn't too fond of it though...

Aislinn talks to the big guy!

She's always been a bit scared, no, not scared, more like horrified of Santa. Last year she wouldn't even go in the same room with the guy. Both of my kids were happy to just write him a letter and hope for the best. But this year she walked right up to him and told him that she wanted some Pokemon cards for Christmas! The sad part is I missed it. It was during our town's holiday celebration and I was the person in charge of the children's craft social, so hubby took them to see Santa. A good friend snapped this picture for me. My little girl is growing up!

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Merry Christmas!


Sending you all special holiday hugs!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Week 9

It's been a while since we finished up week 9, let's see what I can remember about our week. Here's our focus of the week...

We did our usual workbook pages and made this house for the word of the week, "home."
I let her pick out which colors to use and she was pretty darn close to our house, blue with a black roof. Not sure where the red door came from, ours is white, but I've always wanted to paint it. Hmmmmm maybe red would look nice!

Our animal of the week is her current favorite animal, a horse. I'd love to take her to see a real one, but the weather is getting too chilly for such a field trip. So, we read some stories about horses instead.

NH Ice Storm of 2008

As promised, here are a few pictures of our big storm! Everything outside was coated in a thick layer of ice, it was a sight to see.


These are the birch trees in the back yard, bending over the kid's sandbox. To give a little scale, the sandbox measures 6 feet square. We lost one, it snapped in half, but the rest have sprung back up when the warm temps on Monday melted the ice.



This is a big evergreen tree we have in the side yard. It's normally a huge, bushy thing. The ice weighed it down and made it look so sad.

This was the biggest shocker, the big birch next to our driveway. It splits into three big trunks about 4 or 5 feet up, each of the three were bent in a different direction and touching the ground. I never thought it would be the same, but after that warm day it popped back up!


We were lucky, we only lost one tree, and there was no damage to the house, but many were not so lucky. There are still people without power and there is another storm on the way tomorrow (6 to 12 inches) there were even several fatalities. Thank goodness we had a safe place to go.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Thawed Out

It's been wild and crazy around here! We had a HUGE ice storm up here in NH (ME and MA too) that shut down the state for several days.

Thursday it started and they sent the kids home a little early from school. Thursday night you could hear the ice hitting the windows, I never did look outside but it sounded like some pretty nasty weather out there. After we get to bed the power goes out.

Friday we sleep in a little after we get the calls that they canceled school that day. I got up around 8 and went to take the dogs out and what I saw outside made my jaw drop. EVERYTHING was covered in ice, all the trees were bent over and the tops of some were touching the ground. I went right outside and took a bunch of pictures. When I got back inside I started a fire in the fireplace since the temp was already down to 55 inside (we usually keep it at 67). I got out the battery operated radio and searched for some news. When I finally heard the news it wasn't good, they were saying it could take days, up to a week to get power back. I didn't have much wood on hand so as I put the last log into the fire I called my sister to see if she had power. She did, thank goodness!

So, by Friday afternoon we had packed up the car and were on our way with the two kiddos and the two dogs. Once we got there we were able to shower and do a few loads of laundry (I had packed dirty clothes, Friday is usually laundry day).

Saturday morning my sister, her hubby, the kids and I drove back here to check on the house (my hubby was working). We still had no power and it was down to 47 inside. We had no running cold water (frozen pipes) and the "hot" water was down to a trickle. BIL and I got to work draining the hot water heater while my sister stayed in the warm truck with the kids. Then I cleaned out the fridge, ick! Before we headed back to my sister's house we checked in on my neighbors. They said it got so cold in their house Friday night they ended up sleeping in the car with the windows cracked and the heat running. :( The high school was opened as a shelter but for some reason they didn't want to go. We headed back to my sister's nice warm house and spent the rest of the day getting ready for a Christmas party we were going to that night.

Sunday we got word that we had power back, but before we could go home we had a date with hubby's father to take Aislinn to the mall to get a Build a Bear for Christmas. We finally made it back home in the late afternoon and spent the rest of the day trying to put the house back together, it was quite a mess from the rushed packing etc.

Monday the high school was still acting as a shelter so hubby didn't have to work and we decided to keep Liam home too since he was pretty tired out from our long weekend. We ended up spending the day shopping for the food we lost, going to the dump and getting our Christmas tree. By the time we got it home though, we didn't have time to decorate it, Liam had his very first school band concert that night so we had to get ready!

It's Tuesday now and things are almost, ALMOST, back to normal.... Phew!

So now I'm trying to get caught up on all the online stuff I missed and I'm going to try to catch up on my blog and post some pictures of this mess.