What have we been up to???

Well... that's a loaded question! Since the last post that had any relevant information in it, we've had three holidays and a birthday. No one has gotten married or had any babies, (not in this family at least), and we all survived being without all of our power for a week.

That being said, perhaps I should start at the beginning.

After Thanksgiving, the computer (not so fondly named "The Beast) decided that it was done working, and didn't want to work any more. And it promptly turned itself off, and clicked at us when we decided that we wanted to make it work. Fearing the worst and that we had a hard-drive issue, nothing was done. After all, it does take some amount of the budget to make things like that work - and the budget wasn't allowing. So... we went of line. Strangely, I didn't miss it as much as I thought it would. It was terribly inconvenient, but I didn't miss the hours spent checking e-mail and surfing the news on the internet. I did miss not being able to update news of our family and/or checking to see what the rest of my family and friends were doing, but... I found I had a lot more time to do other things. Odd how that works, isn't it?

Then came December. While I hate to admit it, Christmas kind of snuck up on us. We did, however, have the Christmas tree BEFORE the night before Christmas. It sat on the porch for a week. Part of that week, it was literally frozen to the porch. We brought it in to thaw it out, and it was decorated on Christmas Eve. (Ian and Christen, where were you???) Now... lest the rest of you think odd thoughts such as "I know the inside of the house is cold (it really isn't), now they're cooling the outside too?" Turner had a major ice-storm. In fact, the trees that normally stand tall and proud, were hanging limp and not so proud. One of them did us the honor of bringing down our power line too. But, only partially so that we still had enough power to run the refrigerator and the freezer. Don't try turning on the toaster or any other appliance or turn on three lights though, try that and you'll lose power to the TV or whatever else you're needing power to. We are grateful that although we couldn't flush the toilet or shower or wash our hands or wash our dishes or do our laundry, we didn't lose the meat in our freezer. And we are greatful that Andrew's siblings all came for Christmas, therefore giving us a really great excuse (not that we look for excuses, mind you) to spend multiple days and nights at his parent's house. (Thanks for the room...) We are also extremely grateful and thankful for the wood stove that kept our house warm... when we were here.

Andrew's birthday was a formal affair - all of his siblings and their respective spouses and his parents came for a formal dinner - all dressed up too! A huge thank you to Dad and Doug and Matt for coming early and helping with the mess that used to be our trees...

January 1st, the children went to new primary classes - Savannah to CTR 8 (she's looking forward to having Grandpa or Grandpa or Dad baptize her (it changes every time you ask her - and we're thinking that we'll just let Dad do the honors; we do, however, have 11 months to figure that all out.), Margaret is still in Nursery, but she's the oldest in her class - she'll be three in two weeks. Margaret has decided, for those who HAVEN'T heard, that her name is no longer going to be Margaret. She is "Wheatie Pie" to anyone to will listen. (Rough translation: Sweetie Pie) We're not sure where she picked that up, but since she is indeed adorable (all of the kids are...), we're going with the flow. We still call her Margaret, but reverting to Sweetie Pie works well when she's studiously ignoring us. I think it's a defense mechanism. Pick a new name and only respond to it and no other name. A great thought if you don't tell other people what your new name is...

LeGrand is just moving way too fast for my own desires. He started doing the "Army Crawl" sometime in mid December, getting very frustrated because he couldn't really go anywhere... and then, discovered exactly why. Mom kept leaving those nasty socks and long pajamas on! Cover the toes and the knees on a wood floor, and it's nigh impossible to get traction. Leave it to Dad to help figure that part out while Mom is at work. And now, he's decided that he doesn't need to have naked knees to move forward. He's bound and determined to go places. AND - to make things a little more interesting around here, He's in the process of cutting his SECOND tooth. I wasn't ready for either event. That being said, at least he's a huge fan of solid food. His favorites being fruits and smashed potatoes. Not always separate.

Oh yeah... and did I mention SLEDDING?? Margaret is a huge fan. Savannah too - but since we were sledding in the near dark, those pictures didn't turn out. Thanks to the "ARCTIC BLAST 2008", we had a marvelous WHITE Christmas and snow enough for sledding at least twice. What a marvelous time.

And now... I think that just about catches us up.