Tooth Fairy!

Addie is sporting a new look and seems to have started a fashion trend in her Kindergarten class.  :0)-  I thought I might as well show how the rest of the munchkins are growing too.  We miss all of you and love ya lots!  James and Katie

Happy Valentines Day (a little late)

Our Valentines Day was lots of fun.  We had a great family day in St. Louis.  The kids have been earning points so we can have fun family activity days each month.  They wanted to ride the metro train in St. Louis.   What better place than to ride it to the Gateway Arch?  It was way toooo cold for this adventure, but it had been in the planning for a couple weeks and we couldn't disappoint the kids, so we went anyway.  Under the Arch is a nice warm museum about western expansion.  The tickets to ride the tram to the top were sold out.  Dallas liked the animals the most.  They had robotic manikins for cowboys and Indians that talked and moved.  That was so fascinating and kinda scary for Carsten.

Icey

We sure have had a lot of fun adventures living in Kentucky for less then 3 years. This was our 3rd power outage and defiantly the hardest one yet. Our power went out on Tuesday night 1-27 around 10 pm, when I had the girls in the tub. What a way to start a disaster. We all slept in my room and the house was still bearable at 63 when we woke up in the morning, but it didn't stay that warm for long. The girls and I mostly sat on my bed bundled up in sweaters and blankets through the day while Peter tried to get out and find a heater or friends with power and so on. Finally at 5pm, when the girls would not cuddle any more, and the rodes were packed enough that we wouldn't get stuck, we headed to some members for some warmth and dinner. The girls were so glad not to sit on my lap anymore. We came home to a colder house, now about 55 and all jumped in bed together with lots of blankets. We stayed warm but Peter and I both had sore arms from holding the girls all night so they wouldn't fall out of bed. It was 43 when Peter went out to hunt for warmth again at 7 am. He found a Home Depot that had just received a shipment of generators. So $1000 later he was home and working to get it together. He figured out how to rig up our furness to it and we had heat. Happy Birthday to me! He turned it on at 10 am and by noon it was 74 degrees. Lily stripped down to just a tshirt and diaper and would not put anything else on for a couple hours. We ran the generator 3 times Thursday and slept well in our own beds that night. We used it Friday and Saturday as well and it was great. Saturday I went to some members house for the day so the girls could play and we could relax while Peter went to play games. When we got home at about 7pm our power had just come back on. Yippee! We have kept it on since, unlike others that just lost theirs when the ice started to melt. We still went out to eat on my bday and Lily and I got free ice cream, yum.

Several large branches broke from our trees and one of the little trees in the front completely riped from the ground when it fell into the rode (3rd pic). There will be lots of trimming to do in the spring. Our generator is now at anther's house hopefully keeping them warm. Over 175,000 customers were without power at some point just in Louisville and there are still today 2-3, over 30,000 that are waiting to get theirs back on. I hope we don't have another week like this for a long time.