Why, oh why is it so hard to post??

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 by Joy
For some reason I have not been able to muster up the motivation to blog lately. I've thought about it multiple times, but doing something else has always won out. Not tonight! It's time, my dear blog-readers, for an update.

Did I tell you that we lost our other Bradford Pear tree in our front yard? I think I did - here it is after Seth chopped it down. Or sawed it down - however you say it. Oliver really enjoyed watching Daddy make the tree fall down. He and I stood far away, over on the porch. Then Oliver enjoyed sitting on the stump. It was at this moment that Daddy thought it would be fun to put the chainsaw on Oliver's lap for a picture. If you know me at all, you'll know I was freaking out a little the whole time, while trying not to be "that freaky mom who won't let her kid do anything", while Seth is telling me, "calm down, it's completely turned off", and I'm still thinking of all the "what ifs".... I'm such a head case. I've gotta admit, he does look pretty cute. At any rate, this one's for you, Auntie Sarah :)
What our house now looks like with a bare yard. What to do with all that space??
Sully Cole hangin' out with his friend, the lion.
Mommy and the boys, having some good reading time before getting ready for bed.
One night last week we had breakfast for dinner, and I made Oliver a Mickey Mouse pancake. He may not have eaten much of it, but he sure loved the look of it! What a picky eater I have. *Sigh* Who doesn't eat pancakes?? Or macaroni and cheese??? Someday.
One day last week, Oliver had a bath mid-morning. He crawled up into my bed afterwards, and I thought it might be a cute photo-op to lay Sullivan down with him. My precious babies.Holding hands... all on their own. They really do love each other!

Sweet face.

The other day I was in Sullivan's room changing his diaper, when I hear Seth call, "Joy, come in here quick!" I come out to see Oliver "feeding" Sullivan's piggy. He was holding him almost just like I hold Sullivan when I'm nursing, and he was talking sweetly to the piggy and patting him on the back. It was one of the sweetest and cutest things I've seen!
My pretty Valentine's flowers from all 3 of my boys.
Oliver was having a snack of pretzels the other day, and he holds this up to me and says "it's an A!" I was pretty impressed. They learned the letter "A" in Mother's Day Out last week, and I guess it stuck!

Sometimes Oliver likes to imitate Sullivan - I guess it's fun to be like a baby sometimes... and p.s. Thank you to Papa and M'laine for the awesome red rocking chair!! Oliver LOVES it and looks so proud rocking in it :)
Oliver is still obsessed with Cars, and I found some Cars underwear when I was at the grocery store the other day.... needless to say, he is a big fan.
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A Random Smattering of Photos

Friday, February 06, 2009 by Joy
This week I pulled out the bags of Oliver's baby clothes in the next size up for Sullivan, and it was really fun to see that stuff again. That's the nice thing about having 2 babies of the same gender! Among the "new" stuff was this hat. It's actually meant for a little little guy, so it almost didn't fit, but Sullivan didn't seem to mind as I shoved it on his head :) Such a sport.
Oliver's been very into stacking again these days. And his boots. Boots and stacking...it was a good day :)
Always lots of smiles from our little Sully Cole.
Please rest assured that those cheeks are not hurtin' for kisses :)
A fireman came into Oliver's class on Monday (one of his classmates' Dad is a fireman), and I guess Oliver wasn't too keen on him. I think he would've been fine if everyone was excited, but his best friend in his class was hysterically afraid, so Oliver followed suit. Of course when I picked him up that afternoon, he was all about telling me about the cool fireman! And they made these "hats" that day as well, and Oliver wore his until bedtime. Good stuff.
Getting creative trying to take our picture while we were on our porch swing yesterday - it's kind of tough to get all 3 of us in the shot and have the boys looking! Apparently Sullivan was heavily drugged right before this picture...
After I had taken what felt like 20 pictures, Oliver says sweetly, "Mommy, can we be all done taking pictures?" My heart melted, and I said "sure, buddy."

Our little organizer. He's so meticulous!



Cute outfit that my Uncle John and Aunt Ann sent from Portland - love the blue with his eyes. Thanks so much, John and Ann!!

Such a ham sometimes :)
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Our Journey through the Ice Storm of '09

Sunday, February 01, 2009 by Joy
Some artistic pictures Seth took of our ice this past week.





Tuesday late afternoon when our power went out, Oliver and Seth went outside to play for a bit. Oliver was dying to get outside to play golf on the ice :) What a goofy kid.

The icicles got pretty huge.

It was cool because all day I had been planning on making some homemade mini-pizzas for us for dinner, and right before I was about to do it, the power went out. 30 minutes later, the power came back on, so I raced in the kitchen to get them ready to cook in case the power was going to go out again. Right when I got the pizzas assembled, power out again. A few minutes later, it came back on, so I shoved them in the oven for 8 minutes. Not 5 minutes after they came out of the oven, the power went out again! I'd like to think God was being sweet to me to let me cook my pizzas that I had been looking forward to :) So, we ate our dinner by candlelight, which was fun.
And as we ate, Sullivan took a little nap by the fire. This picture was taken with the flash on, but it was actually pitch black in that room, except for the fire.This is what it really looked like in there. I just wanted you to see what Sullivan looked like napping, so I did one with the flash.We had an adventurous night with no power! Our gas fireplace sure puts out a lot of heat, so we all bundled in the living room for the night. Seth slept on the couch, Oliver and I slept on a bed-of-blankets on the floor, and Sullivan slept in his pack 'n' play, and we stayed nice and toasty. The boys slept just fine, and Oliver was diggin' this whole no-power adventure.

In the morning when we woke up, there was still no power, and it had snowed some on top of the ice. More pictures...



I called the electric company later that morning, and the automated message said "we are aware of your outage...we estimate that your power will be restored by 11:59pm on January 31st..." January 31st....that was Saturday........this was WEDNESDAY...

We ended up talking to some friends of ours, the Greenhaws, and they still had power! They graciously invited us come stay at their nice warm house, and we ended up having lots of fun. Some other friends came over that night for dinner, and as soon as they got there, Miss Brooke took off her boots, and Oliver immediately put them on. He's such a shoe guy :)
After a great night's sleep, everyone else went to work on Thursday morning. So the boys and I had a warm and comfy place to play that morning, and lots of fun was to be had. The Greenhaws have a shih-tzu too, so Bella and Keeley had fun playing together as well and kept us entertained.

Oliver chattin' Sullivan up - cracks me right up. I think they're gonna be buds when Sullivan gets older.
Oliver had a yummy lunch, with a cookie for dessert, and then it was naptime.
Then an exciting thing happened... our neighbor called to let us know that our power was back on!!! This was Thursday afternoon, so it happened much earlier than we feared might be the case. Needless to say, we were very excited and happy to go back to our warm little house.

Friday warmed up to the 50's, so much of the ice melted, and then Saturday was in the low 60's, so whatever hadn't melted pretty much did on Saturday. Except for those spots that were in the shade most of the day. Some friends with a chainsaw came up to help Seth cut up some of our branches to get ready to be hauled away.
This is a picture of our neighbor's trees...
...it's so absolutely crazy what BOTH of her big trees did...

The boys playing outside a little bit while Seth worked on some branches...
Oliver loves mowing... even in the winter on ice/snow :) And he got to wear his awesome snow boots from M'laine! They were perfect for this kind of day.
Seth was climbing trees, with saw in hand, (yeah, I had to be inside and stay busy and not think much about the "what ifs" on that one...it was making my mind go crazy) and here he and Lendell are being a bit goofy and hauling a big branch up the ditch. That ice was definitely still slippery. Lendell and Karen and Seth working hard in the yard - great job!!!
And here is our tree with lots of the limbs taken away. Looks so much better already! Still lots to do, but they got a great start. A HUGE thanks to Lauren for letting us invade her house for a night - what an incredible blessing to us!!

Well, we survived the Ice Storm of 2009. Lots of people here are still without power, and it could be awhile. Neither Seth nor I have ever experienced anything like this, so it was definitely an adventure for us. I think once in a lifetime's good on that one :) I think we're back to mostly normal at our house. Much of our fridge/freezer stuff was lost, so we are stocked up again and back into the swing of life. We're so thankful to be safe and warm, as we are very aware that many people on this earth do not have that luxury. I think we've come through this experience a little more aware and grateful.
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