Peace

Well, I heard a big boom and the lights went out this morning but then came back on. I think instead of power line 0, trees 698. We now have power line 1, trees 698. I saw something sparkling across the street and through the trees. Pedro said that I should call but please, what am I going to say? If someone lost power, they'll call quickly enough. I do!

So yesterday, I decided to make things a little more special. I was going to make pancakes and then I remembered that we still had strawberries. So I cut them up, sprinkled them with sugar and let them make their own juice. Then I made pancakes (from scratch, thanks). We had them with the strawberries, maple syrup and powdered sugar. Tah dah!
Lily loved it. But then I remembered that she loved pancakes when she was on the "inside" too. :) Pedro was a little jealous as he was at a class while we were getting our pancakes on. :) I put in more effort because of the winter blahs. We magically kept our power last night. Although, I had a bout of gastritis again and I didn't care if the roof fell in (but that's another story). We might lose our power today because of more snow, very wet ground and high winds. Sigh.

So, SO, tired of winter.

Color me Ready

Well, I got more water and baby food today. If things look ugly tomorrow I'm making Pedro go to Lowe's to buy a generator. If they have any left. I was worried about being bored, but really without power, there's too much work to do.

And therefore, there was time to think. This is what I have learned from the most recent storm:

- Our water heater rocks. I had a hot shower Saturday morning, 8 hours after the power had shut off. Pedro had a luke warm shower Sunday morning.

- Our kitchen floor sucks. There was a leak from the ice cubes melting in the freezer and now our boards are sticking up. boo

- Gas powered grills are amazing. You can cook and heat up your water!

- Washing dishes with cold water is torture. And yes I had to wash because I only have so many baby bottles.

- Hot water is the best thing on earth.

- It's possible to survive power outages during sub-freezing weather you just have to get used to living in the same pants for 3 days.

- Battery powered dvd players are awesome.

- Cell phones are absolute life savers. And sorry about the bill, Pedro. (I found Netflix on my cell phone! But Pedro yelled at me)

- I need curtains or weather proofing stuff around all of my windows. In related news, I'm very glad that I did a lot of caulking last year.

- So, SO glad that I bought my pink rubber boots. I thought the purchase was frivolous at the time but really wanted them. I've worn them every single day for over a week.

That's all I can think of for now but you get the idea. There are some things that Pedro and I know we have to do that we weren't sure of before. It's nice to have clarity. Too bad it came at the expense of a power outage!

Hope everyone keeps safe and is ready for round 2.

Enough already

So yes, we made it through what? Winter storm #3? 4? This one was really bad though. We had a thick layer of sleet over and under a fair amount of snow and that has brought a lot of trees down. I feel lucky that we have our power back already. It went out 12:15am Friday night(Saturday morning?) and came back 11:15 Sunday night. So almost 48 hours. The first day I was kind of excited to have my mettle tested. By Sunday, I was definitely over that. Okay, so I made scrambled eggs Saturday morning in a cast iron pan on the grill Paula Deen style (1/4 stick of butter) and I heated up water to clean with and made soup. Then it got old. Tromping out to the wood pile. Watching the fire all night. Even when it wasn't my turn, it was hard to sleep as the pops would wake me up.

All in all, not a good time. But we made it. The house at its lowest got to 52F, which was warm, apparently. Someone from Pedro's company walked by and said his place was 38F. OUCH I'm glad we all stayed warm and well fed. I guess I feel like, since I know that I can do it, I don't need to do it anymore. I spent hours (HOURS!) shovelling the heavy snow/sleet from one side of the driveway, only to have the pine trees there break and block the way out. I can't even print what I said when I found that out. I took this pic around 7am Sunday morning. Oh and after all the snow fell it went down to 11F overnight. yay

I know, we could've gone to a shelter but the thought of mingling with others and not having stuff handy would've driven me batty. I am grateful that we had a fireplace and a good supply of wood AND that I made sure we had enough food and drink for a few days. Madi, thankfully, took everything in stride but now she's so used to sleeping with a bed full of people she's not so interested in her crib anymore. SIGH I think, out of all of us, she had the best time. She was always around people and entertained by us. Even when we were ready to all kill each other.

I guess it's like I just told Pedro "I know that we can do it and now I never want to do it again". This was the first night. You can see the potty in the lower right hand corner. Lily wasn't so sure about using it in a dark bathroom. Until we got the candle going in there. :)

This was night #2. Everyone's sleeping just a little bit closer. I think that it probably stayed in the 60s in the living room but it was never balmy. It's funny how used to sleeping in your clothes you get. Or something.

AND there's more wintry mix due here Tuesday....

Here goes

Big thank you to Stacy, who got the horse to come up the hill and who heaved Lily up high enough to pet him! I'm sure she's sore today. :)

Il faisait beau...

It was a beautiful day today. The girls and I picked up Stacy and then headed to Barboursville Vineyard. On the way to Stacy's, I couldn't help but admire the blue sky and rolling snow covered hills. I really do live in a beautiful area. :) See what I mean? Blue sky, distant hills, red barns, sleeping grape vines. :) Oh and Stacy and Lily. ha! They went the long way around. I was willing to risk the snowy steps. Which were not that bad.

We were on our way to see horses! I promised Lily that she would get to see some. And that's all she talked about alllllllll the way there. Stacy used her wily charms on the left one (does he count as a pinto?) and got him up to the fence to see Lily. It took the both of us to foist a 3 year old up and over. I don't have the pics of Lily petting the house because I'm not sure how to import pics from Facebook. :)

So how many days exactly does it take couped up with your loved ones before you snap? Pedro is staying home from work tomorrow. I don't think that I can take it. That was one of the main reasons we went to the vineyard, aside from getting Stacy out of the house, I mean, to get me some wine! I think a slight buzz might help me get through snowmageddon without committing some kind of homicidal something. The girls would be fine. It's the other one. That sits there for hours at a time, playing online games.....

In other news, isn't there a definite red tinge to Madilyn's hair now? Side note: I typed "Madkilyn" the first time. I swear, I'm not going to go the Shining on anyone. What was that noise...?

Jeesh

Well, it's been a fun filled last few days. :P Yes, we received a pretty decent amount of snow fall on Saturday. It was also quite cold which has made me realize we need some serious winter gear. I have a feeling it will sit in a box for years at a time, but I really needed some good quality gloves and coats yesterday. Usually when it snows here, the temperature stays around freezing. I think it was 19F on Saturday and Lily and I both froze up pretty quickly.

Then yesterday, as I was thinking about making my second cup of coffee, the power went out. And it was out all D*MN day. I couldn't take it anymore and got us all out the door for some hot dinner. The curry was yummy and by the time we got home, the power was back on. Of course today, I have piles of laundry and dishes to do. booo Oh and Pedro would like it if I could pretty please clear out the other side of the driveway. Let me think back to whom it was that dug us out the last time.... Oh wait! It was me! *grumble*

To make my life even more fun, the internet was off this morning. Oh, obviously it's back on now but some sort of implosion was imminent in my head. I know that my ancestors had to actually either grow their own food, or hunt it down and kill it so I'm slightly ashamed that one day stuck at home, one day without power and a half a day without the internet, almost brought me to my knees. I'm ever so grateful for my cell phone! And yes, Lily is standing up in the picture and the snow is to the bottom of her coat. We got a good amount of snow. I swear that just a mile or two away from us, they only got a few inches. Lucky, lucky me.


Why am I so grouchy today? Let me see. M woke me up at 1:30 this morning after refusing a bottle at 11:30pm. I got her another bottle but she kept me up until 3:30am. So I finally just brought her to bed with me and she proceeded to wake me up intermittently until 5:30am. Then Pedro decided to pound on the door at 7:30 for help outside. I think me slamming the door shut and going back to bed let him know how much help he was going to get out of me. I did manage to sleep from 7:30 til 8:30 when Lily woke me up with a discreet knock. And it really was discreet. I wasn't being sarcastic. :) Perhaps she was afraid to awaken the beast within. :)

Oh yeah

The doctor called this morning and Madi's x-rays looked good. No sign of hip dysplasia. It was just a precautionary thing. :)

And seriously? The spell check suggested "splashlily" instead of dysplasia. Get over yourself.

The Most Important News Evah!

Lily has been using the toilet! With her pretty princess seat, of course. :)

Ohm!

I did my yoga dvd this morning. Not ALL that easy with a 3 year old's butt in my face. For real. Pedro took Madi to get some x-rays. The doc wants to rule out hip dysplasia. She did really well, no crying. :) I take her in to get her flu booster on the 8th so we'll probably hear about the results then.

mmmmm just finished my banana tiger shake. I only had 4 chocolates before doing yoga so I felt kind of awful and sick afterwards. That's what I love about yoga, it makes me want to be healthier, hence the healthy smoothy. :)

Anyhoodle here's some recent quotes from Lily:

- "Mama, don't dance, just cook.".
- "Daddy, you a cheeky monkey!" *runs away quickly*
- "Mama, you doing it wrong!" (yoga)

C'est Assez!!

Or, that's enough! Mon dieu. I am getting more weird comments. So I guess I'll have to turn on (figure out, how to) the comment doohickey. Oh yeah, approval. Madilyn slept through the night-ish, but I had some insomnia (not at all coffee related) so I didn't get much sleep.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming:



Also:

Check out this blog. They have 4 girls (you don't have it that bad Pedro) and the twins. I have never seen two people (okay, they're 18 months old) look SO much alike!

Blame it on Pedro

I would be posting more around here but I'm waiting for Pedro to put all my stuff back on my new hard drive. I can't save any pics to my computer in case Pedro copies over them or something so.... This is it, Chicken Legs! I'm in a weird mood. Such a busy day. They all seem to be. I bought some baking books on Sunday and after some thoughtful analysis I made a list and purchased the things that I needed to make bread. Unfortunately, things are little full up at Casa Thompson so I had much rearranging to do this morning. It was not so easy, the taking everything out of the cupboards, cleaning the cupboards and then putting things back in, in a more ergonomic and space saving way. Or something.

But I did it. Then onto the bread making. Pretty easy actually. Of course, I'm in the beginning chapter. :) I should've taken a pic of my pretty boules because Pedro arrived home hungry and there is only a small quarter left. :( Oh well, I still have half the dough and I can make something else tomorrow. :) Now, about Miss Madilyn. I have tried giving her manufactured baby food (you know, in a jar) made with meat and she's been quite against the whole idea. But lately I've noticed her giving me dirty looks while I eat my dinner (I swear she's my grandmother reincarnated). So today, tired of suffering these looks, I let her suck on a piece of my steak. I guess you can tell what her reaction was. :)

I think the other stuff is just too plain for her. My steak had salt, cracked pepper and garlic on it and she sucked on it for 10 minutes. It looks like I'm going to have two little meat eaters. :) I am excited at all of the things that I'm doing. Learning how to bake my own bread, going to Las Vegas to learn more about skincare, etc. But I am busy! It's one thing to sit on one's butt complaining about life. It's another to get up and fix it. Whee doggies! I need a vacation. :)

Don't you wish you knew what she was thinking about? Probably "more steak".

I love my coffee machine

I had trouble falling asleep last night. Part of it was because of Pedro stomping around the house, cars drag racing somewhere, the heater (sounding like more drag racing because of my irritation) and the 5 cups of coffee I had yesterday. Okay, I didn't have 5. I had 3. The coffee by Keurig is pretty good. I think that the first one I had (French Vanilla, Van Houte?) was the bomb. I'm like a junkie trying to recapture that first moment. :)

Things are coming along with my trip to Las Vegas. Securing someone to watch the girls is the biggest concern for me. G-ma stepped up to that plate. :) I guess I can't get too jealous if everyone decides to go to the Outer banks for the weekend. Sigh. We took Lily to the Pro Bass Shop in Hampton and she loved looking at the fish. It's hard to believe, whilst looking at the princess, but I bought her (ok, me) a pop gun and now she runs around the house looking for fish to kill. She tells me, in all seriousness, that there's a big shark behind me, shhhhh.

Anyway, I have another busy day ahead of me so I'd best get going. Before Lily uses up all the hot water AGAIN.

Sad *squish, squish*

It looks like male peen enhancement spam has finally found its way to my little blog. I've been holding out using any comment approval thingie, but seriously.

We just got back from a nice visit with g-ma, g-pa and Aunt Nicole. I'm a little worn out though. M woke up half way through the drive home and started wailing. I stopped close to home and gave her a few ounces of formula, which pacified her somewhat. But it wasn't until we got home that I found out she'd had a super soaker and her blanket was wet.

Well, let me feed Ms M because she is kicking the heck out of her highchair.



* You'll only get this reference if you love AbFab*

Bzzz Bzzz

Sigh. I'm not entirely sure what it is about life. I mean, every week I think, oh this week can't be as busy as last week. And I'm right because it's usually busier. Now I know, I have two young children and in 10 years (or less) I'll be wondering why I have so much time on my hands. (maybe) And I do try to help out others (although, my road to hell is an 8 lane super highway paved with good intentions), so today I'm making a new mom dinner and whipping up another batch of banana bread to take to her and another friend who's going through a tough time. And I don't have to do those things but I want to do those things.

I didn't go to bed until almost 1am last night/this morning. It just seems like there's always so much to do. And yes, that's my new dinnerware pattern. I'm tempted to get the matching flatware. *dork alert* Just to be shallow for a moment, I am glad that I purchased the new dishes. I get a little perk when I see the whimsical colors and patterns. Pedro likes that the bowls are extra large. I bought some smaller dessert bowls but I already chipped one. *sad face*

Okay, okay, yes the girls are alive and being cute, etc. Someone at work asked me how the girls were and I sort of waved my hand about in the air and said "meh". lol I guess I just don't always have to talk about them. They're doing well, Lily is improving her vocab and reasoning skills daily. Madi is growing as fast as she can and cutting those teeth on anything that gets in range! Oh we did make it back to gymnastics class. I was chatting with a couple of moms over how hard it is to go from one child to two. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one.

I guess in the cuteness category I can say that Lily told me yesterday that Madilyn is her best friend. :) I'd like to know what Madi thinks about that but I'll have to wait. :) Oh and I'm slowly putting things together so that I can go to a skincare expo in Las Vegas, in April. A friend on mine wants to go with me and she's all, LAS VEGAS! And I'm all, MY FIRST BUSINESS TRIP! It's kind of funny. :)

I love her

This morning, Lily found a flashlight in pieces on the floor (Pedro quickly took it apart last night when it wasn't working).

Lily: I broke the flashlight.
Me: No you didn't. Daddy did.
Lily: NO! I did it.
Me: You did it? Then you'd better go to time out!
Lily: Daddy needs to go to time out. He did it.

Don't stand next to a bus with Lily. She will throw you under it in a heartbeat.