Ice and Snow...Christmas too

It's been a while so here is our goings on starting with most recent.

We had an ice storm, then a snow storm. We thought the power would go out, but lights only flickered. We considered ourselves very fortunate. More than 45,000 people in the Dayton area were without power. The result of the ice and snow is that there has been no school all week. 4 days of no school. When the weather finally cleared the kids begged me to play outside. I was a little nervous because of the ice and I had already fallen on my rear and bruised or broken my tailbone(not sure).

But the kids have had fun the past 2 days playing outside. Today they used the recycle bins as sleds to go down the frozen grass. I couldn't stop laughing.

Amanda is holding about 2 in. thick ice that she had pounded away at.

Here is our back patio steps. Slippery and covered in ice. The kids played on this like a slide.
Jared's mom came for a visit. She is pushing Lauryn in a plastic bin....and wearing Jared's old scrubs(she helped me paint the kitchen)
went to the museum......played in the treehouse
squished in a truck.......smiled for the camera
crawled down a yellow tube over and over again.........
Happy to have a visitor and especially happy that there is another adult in the house. Thanks for visiting Grammie.
Ethan decided he wanted to help me with the pie making before Christmas. He did a good job rolling out the dough.
Amanda absolutely adores her little sister. She plays with her, holds her, helps her when I ask her to. She is a good big sister.
Jared got me a new Christmas ornament. So thoughtful. I collect oranments for our tree when we go on a trip somewhere. This is a crystal snowflake. I love it!
Santa's loot!

Christmas Pajamas!

Christmas morning. I got my KitchenAid that I have been waiting for. And almost every attachment you can imagine for it.
Amanda got a cake decorating kit. It makes tiny cakes and not very many of them. But she had fun using all of them up right away.
Both the boys got pirate ships.
For Jared's office! It is our favorite painting.
Lauryn's favorite is the toy mailbox.....and the candy cane I couldn't get away from her with the wrapper still on.
Matthew's pirate ship came with an octopus with suction cup tentacles. I just thought this was a funny picture.
Just before Christmas we went to a bookstore in Dayton and waited in line to have Glenn Beck sign a book for us. Mom and Dad didn't know that Amanda had a piece of paper that she had made that said .... Please sign_______________ I am a big fan of U! He personalized it too. So I snapped a picture really quick of Glenn signing Amanda's little note. He was super nice and said Hi to all of us and shook our hands and commented on how cute our family was. Real genuine guy.
Notice Glenn's body guard right behind him. Ya, there was probably more security than if the president would have been there.