041109-01 Getting Ready to Ride

041109-01 Getting Ready to Ride
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

April 11, 2009 First Rides on our new horses.

Ashlee bonds with Blazer.

Memorial

IMG_2153
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

Our family!

Try finding a more handsome pair of eyes!


This one captures the true escence of our family.

Spring School Pictures

040709 Robbie Spring School Pic
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

The kids came home with their school pictures this week. Actually Aimee's school pictures are by a different company and she only has a proof yet. So her picture is not as clear as the other two. But I think they turned out pretty nice.

Yeah, more boxes from the Bates!

031109-01 Boxes all kids
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

Its always a challenge to get the kids to wait for daddy to get home when the come home and find these on the porch!

Snow Storm Feb/March 2009

030109-05 Snow Front of House
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

By morning we actually accumulated about a foot of snow. This is the most snow we've had in the three winters we've lived here. It was lots of fun. WAY better than an ice storm!

How many times have I told you kids to put your bikes away? "What Bikes?"


Poor thing thought it was spring.


When the snow first fell it was too dry to make a snow man. But before the kids got off the bus mom and dad noticed it was just right... So the kids came home to this.






I'm done peeing, can I go back in now?

Snow Storm 2009 Accumulation 1630 time

022809-13 Snow Storm 2009 Accumulation 1630 time
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

Four Inches of snow by 4:30 p.m. It was an average of an inch an hour. We had steady snow for a couple more hours after that. Its let up some now. We figure by morning we'll be looking at 6-7 inches, by far the most we've had in the almost three years we've lived here.

Iced Power Lines

012709-05 Iced Power Lines
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

Here is my original caption to this photo...

"Ice Storm 2009
We are expecting freezing rain all day and part of the night. The local TV and Radio stations are telling us to be ready for extended power outages and here is WHY!!!"

Shortly after this was taken and posted our power did indeed go out. And it remained out for 18 days!

Here is a cut and paste of an email I sent to a relative describing the adventure then ensued...

We were here in our master bedroom with the four kids and two cats every night. The kids missed six days of school (in addition to two they had already missed for "snow"). After they went back to school, I'd spend the days visiting friends and doing laundry and such where I could find power. We bought a 5500 watt generator after the first few days. So we were able to have some light, the fridge and freezer and such. We have one small propane heater in our master bedroom. The rest of the house was in the thirties for the most part. We ate out and spent too much money. But we also did some cooking on our camp stove and on the bbq outside. After we got the generator we brought in the electric skillet and made pancakes one morning too. We had brought our stainless steel island in and put it at the other end of our bedroom.

I really can not complain about the length of time out. Our electric coop has about 28,000 members. At the peak of outage they had more than 25,000 without power. They had more than 4,000 poles down. They have had help from all over. They have about 900+ linemen working from sun up to sun down seven days a week. Our main complaint with the way it has been handled is their communication about estimates of when power would be restored. Its seems to me that there would be some kind of estimated schedule and map that they would be working from that they could share with the public. That way we could have made more educated decisions on how to handle things. Instead we would call each day and they would tell us the areas they WERE working in that day and say to call back tomorrow to see where they would be. There are still about 2,500 customers without power for our elec coop. (There are other rural coops just north of us that had it even worse. Some schools were out until today.)

Rob looked into having a whole house generator installed at some point. But for as often as it could be needed I just don't see us spending the money. But boy would that have been nice. I can sure see that lady being grateful on her husbands decision!

We were thankful that we had taken down a tree that sat at the front of our house. Every time significant winds would blow we could hear lots of creaking coming from the tree. Last summer we took it out. When we cut it down a large part of the center was hollowed out. Had that have been there, I'm sure we would have lost the front of our house.

On Tuesday night (Jan 26th I think), after the power had gone out, we lay in bed and not more than five minutes would go by before we would hear a branch, tree or power pole snap. It was really odd. I'm so thankful we didn't have to worry about anything falling on the house.

This past weekend we went to the Branson, MO area to visit my mom's sister and husband. Before we left I was talking to the neighbor across the road and asked if they would fill our generator for us while we were gone. She mentioned that she had talked to the elec company the day before and the indicated another 3-5 weeks were possible. I said to Rob, "I hope they were just trying to get her to leave them alone for a while and that is not true. I don't know how I'll deal with three more weeks like this past three." But when I went to buy the gas for the generator that morning there were trucks with poles working at the end of the street. I was ecstatic! I called Rob and then the neighbor. That night, while we were in MO, the neighbor called to tell us that she did indeed have power. So when we got home around 10:30 p.m. last night we too had power. We had switched off the 220 breakers in the box though. So the house was still very cold last night and we spent one more night with all the kids in our room. But today was a fully powered lovely day! Woo Hoo!

I spent the morning moving the cleaning the fridge and getting some of the kitchen items back into the kitchen. They I went grocery shopping and replaced all the condiments and etc that I had tossed. Its really nice to know that there is not one thing in my refrigerator that has an expired date on it :-) And what a lovely clean fridge it is.

Tomorrow I'll tackle the freezer side. I'll have more time. The kids had minimum day and parent teacher conferences today. My sons grades suffered some during the outage, so we'll have some catching up to do...

One thing that I thought was nice, the big kids school is on the same campus as the jr. and sr. high, so they would let the kids that still did not have power take a shower in the gym each morning.

It was one of those times that will be a memory for the family. But I'm sure glad its behind us.

My Men

012309-01 My Men
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

I was going to go to bed, but my bed seems to be overloaded with the male species!

Haircuts

122408-01 Aimee Before Haircut
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

While we were in Arizona the boys got some much needed haircuts at Grandpa's barber.

Aimee made a significant change to her hairsytle. It turned out adorable!

Curt and Gennies 10th Anniversary cake

122008-02 Curt and Gennies 10th Anniversary cake
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

The day we arrived in Arizona there was a little shin-dig at Curt and Gennies house for their 10th Anniversary. All that stuff was just as tasty as it looks!

Good time was had by all, including some American Idol shenanigans on the Wii.

On our way to Arizona

121908-03 Three year olds view out window in Texas
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

This was a picture taken by Ryan on our way to Arizona. I believe this was taken in ther west of Texas. And then he fell asleep!

December Boxes!

121708-01 Boxes have arrived
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

Today our boxes from Doug and Donna Bates arrived! It's always a great family fun time finding all the goodies that have been carefully picked and sent with love!

Snow???

121608-21 Girls on sled
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

This is actually accumulated sleet, not snow. But the kids managed to have snowlike fun with it anyway. AND it got them out of school for the day. So it had all the benefits of real snow.

Daddy made them a tobagon/sled thing out of an old ladder from some bunk beds and let them tow each other around with the lawn tractor! Included in these pictures are our neighbor's kids Dakota, Laura and Jackson.

Cupcake fun

113008-01 Cupcake fun
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

Aimee had been wanting me to make all different colors of icing for her to play with for a long time. I finally broke down and made a box of lemon cupcakes and we frosted them with all different colors.

New Scarves and Hats from Great Grandma

112808-17 Girls in Scarves and Hats Model
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

Not only are Grandma and Grandpa visiting this week, but we also received these beautiful handmade items from Great-Grandma Eva! You can't tell from the pictures, but the girls' are sparkly.

Parkin Archealogical State Park - Arkansas

112808-03 Grandma Robbie and Aimee play in school
Originally uploaded by momjeeps.

While Grandma and Grandpa were visiting we took a drive with Grandma and took her to Parkin, Arkansas. When we arrived there was a park ranger giving a presentation at the old restored school house. Then we got to play with some of the old time toys.

This state park was the site of an Indian community that was discovered only recently (1960's I believe). The Indian community was here in the time of the explorer DeSoto.

For many years this site was home to a saw mill operation. This old school educated the workers children. So most of the children that attended this school were extremely poor and most of them were African American.

When we were done visiting the old school house, we went over to the visitor center and watched the film about the history of this site. The kids then had an opportunity to play with some artifact replicas with another great ranger.