Power Outage

Starting Monday, here in the O-H-I-O, we has some fun weather coming our way. Tuesday morning we woke up to a quarter inch of ice covering everything, including our cars. And the weather was only supposed to get worse from there! Our friends to the north were expecting to get a lot of snow, but we were supposed to get a "warm" front that would just bring us freezing rain and a lot of wind. We went to bed at about 10 pm on Tuesday night. At 10:45 I woke up because it sounded like some idiot was doing fireworks outside. I looked out the window, and I saw a bunch of smoke and flashes of light. Then I saw it. A power line had snapped and was going crazy, making sparks fly everywhere. Then the power went out. The snapped line was two houses down from ours and caused a small fire to start, but because it was raining outside, it went out quickly. Jordan and I figured there wasn't much we could do about it, so we put extra blankets on the kids and went back to bed. When we woke up the next morning, it was 58 degrees in the house, and dropping. Jordan had school, even after he diligently checked to see if it was cancelled about every 30 minutes until the power went out! Clara, Lucas and I tried to brave our cold house for a little while, but the temperature kept dropping. We finally went over to David and Megan's house when it hit 55 degrees. It was just too cold for us! We spent the day just hanging out and trying to figure out what to do. We decided to spend the night back at our house. Some friends from our ward loaned us their propane space heater that is safe for indoor use. I got our the camping stove so we could heat up water for hot cocoa and oatmeal for breakfast the next morning. We brought the kids into our room and had a little slumber party. Parties like that hold very little slumber for me. The next morning, we had a picnic breakfast on the floor of our room. Clara thought that was the coolest thing ever, but she kept asking why she couldn't go play with her toys are be in her room. We tried to teach her about electricity, but only so much can sink into a 2 1/2 year olds mind. I called up my friend Hillary and asked her if she was up for a play date that morning. Luckily she was! As I was leaving, I saw someone from the power company checking the lines. He was about to leave, then asked me if we had power. I told him no and that we had made several calls to the power company to report the outage. He knew nothing about the calls and at first couldn't find anything wrong with the lines, except for the broken one that went to a vacant house, so we was going to leave. I guess a transformer blew, and he couldn't tell that from the ground. I am so glad I stopped and talked to him! Because only 4 or 5 houses were affected by this line being out, we were on the bottom of the fix it list. There were places that had 20-30 or more houses affected by one problem that were a higher priority. But since the guy was there, he said he would fix it right up! YEAH! We went over to Hillary and Leila's for a play date, and when we got home, we had POWER and HEAT! YEAH! Our house got down into the 40's by then. Luckily our fridge was pretty bare, so we didn't lose a lot of food or anything. For the next month, Clara made sure to add electricity to the list of things she is thankful for in her prayers!

Rolly Polly Lucas

When Lucas had his 4 month check up, back in October, his doctor asked me all sorts of questions about his development. Does he coo, does he grasp toys with his hands, does he eat well, and so one. She also asked if he could roll over. Just as I said no, Lucas rolled over. I was shocked! He had never done that before, and there he was, performing for his doctor. Now, oh, 3 months later, I am FINALLY posting a video of him rolling over. He is so close to crawling. He pushes up with his hands and is now starting to get on his knees. I guess the video can show you better than me!

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Lucas just had his 6 month check up a couple weeks ago, and poor kid! I was starving him! Since I had my tonsils out, his feeding has been a bit off, and apparently I was only feeding him half as much as I should be, and that was after I doubled what I was feeding him a month and a half ago! Needless to say, he didn't really grow between his 4 month and 6 month check ups. He is also a MUCH happier kid than he was 2 weeks ago! This kid is happy and smiling as long as he is well fed(like any man, I guess!) and well rested. And now that he is getting enough to eat, he is both of those things. During his hungry phase, he would wake up every hour at night, but now I almost have him back to sleeping through the night. I feel so bad for starving the poor kid, but I am glad that he is so resilient, good natured, wont remember this part of his life, and that he is no worse for the wear!

Thanks Mom!

The week before Christmas we went to Illinois to visit my sister and her family. My mom sent a package of bearenwaka( yes I know it is a weird name, but it is also delicious!) to my sisters house for us to share. Well, as reliable as the mail is(yes that is a little bit of sarcasm) the package did not arrive before we left Illinois. But, being the fantastic mother my mom is, she just sent me my own package. And because the post office only had one size of mailer boxes available, she decided to stuff it full of all sorts of goodies. For me, there was a loaf of bearenwaka, a loaf of REAL California oranges and a loaf of sourdough bread(you just can't get good sourdough outside of California!) and some extra filling for the bearenwaka so I could make another loaf. These of course, are to be shared with Jordan and Clara(sorry Lucas, none for you yet!) However, I couldn't help but hoard the goods for a few minutes!My mom also included (if for no other reason than to weigh down the box) a bunch of her old jewelry for Clara. Oh my, was that little girl in heaven! In fact, it has been a couple of days since we have received the package and she still insists on wearing at least one, if not all, of the necklaces at any given moment.

Don't you just love her cheesey smile?(Sometimes I secretly wish I could just get her to smile nicely, but this is so Clara, and since I love her tons, I can't help but love her cheesey smile!)
And here she is examining each necklace. Boy does she love these!
So, thank you mom for making this week taste like Christmas with all the treats! And thank you for making Clara's week with the jewelry!

End of the Year Projects

It seems like most people get projects done at the beginning of the year, so either I am really early in getting this done, or really late! You decide! Anyways, my first project was to hang some mirrors that we bought,oh, 2 years ago. Its one of those projects that I had to a) think about doing and b) have Jordan around to help me with, and having both those things happen at the same time took, well, 2 years! I am really happy with how it turned out and it makes the room look bigger and brighter.
The second project I did was to transform the boring, plain wall in my kitchen into something useful and cute. Here is the plain wall. Attractive, I know.
The first thing I did was starch some fabric to the wall. Thank yous go out to my sister, Tanya for the idea and to my mom for talking to me on the phone while I was in the fabric store trying to pick a fabric. I lack the confidence and decisiveness to do things like that quickly.

UPDATE: After a few questions on how to starch fabric to a wall, I decided to answer them! You need liquid starch(not spray starch. Don't worry, I didn't know what it was either, but it was right in the laundry section of the grocery store! Usually in a blue bottle. It costs about $3 and I only used about 1/4 of it. Think of how many more walls I can fabric!) and a sponge. Pour some starch into a shallow pan(like a pie dish) and use the sponge to apply the starch to the fabric. You may want to tack the fabric to the wall first so it is hanging evenly. Make sure to evenly saturate the fabric. Using a large scraper (or old gift card) smooth out the fabric so there aren't any bubbles. Let it dry. Yup, thats it.
Next, I spray painted some moulding I purchased. Again, thanks go to my sister Tanya, for the awesome idea and to my dear husband for taking my 7, yes I think it was 7, phone calls I made to him while I was Home Depot due to the reasons I mentioned above. And a very special thanks to Clara who was very good for the 2 hours we spent in said store.

After allowing the paint to dry, I glued the frame together using wood glue.
Once the glue dried, we applied adhesive strips to the back of the frame and mounted it to the wall on top of the fabric. Love it! I used adhesive strips so it wouldn't be permanent. Command makes a bunch of varieties to choose from and they don't damage your walls, so that is what I went with. The frame is very light, so it doesn't need too many. After the frame was up, we nailed in a few nails under the top and bottom of the frame to add a little extra support.

After framing the fabric, we hung all the cute frames that my sister made me for Christmas, my calendar and a small 3 tier shelf. Thanks go to my sister, Heidi, for the super cute and useful Christmas present!
And here are some extra pictures just because I am loving it so much!
My kitchen looks so much prettier now!

Christmas Present Thank Yous

This post is mostly for Grandma and Papa Muhlestein. They gave Clara a slide for Christmas and we videoed her reaction to seeing it for the first time. Like any little kid, she was a little distracted by the wrappings so it took her a minute to notice the real gift. She was definitely in awe of it, though! Here is the video:

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We also want to say thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Sorensen. The new rug made Christmas morning so much more enjoyable, since we had a comfortable place to sit! And Clara loved the new clothes for her doll. The tutu princess skirt you made her matched well with her doll and she loved that! And I love the Snug Bugs you gave Lucas! Those are really fun! In fact, Clara has hijacked them a few times and I have to repeatedly remind her they are for Lucas!

And thank you to Heidi, Greg Brooklyn and Boston. All your presents were a huge hit! Clara loves the Cinderella Doll and her matching skirt and crown. I love the crayon holders for her and Lucas and I love Lucas' new trucks! Yea for more boy toys coming into our house! Jordan loves his game and the book. I love all the kitchen stuff you made me! I can now decorate my wall with the menu board, shopping list and FHE chart. I am sure there will be a blog post when that project gets done.

Thank you Thank you Thank you to everyone!