Thank you Auntie Wendy and Uncle Ken for the cool Roots sweaters

And thanks Uncle Jon and Auntie Michelle for the toys and for Anna's doll, which she tried to eat.

Christmas Nativity

We had a fun Christmas Eve with friends of ours and they have a tradition of acting out the Nativity. The kids really got in the spirit of things. Isaac and Thomas were wise men, Joey was Joseph and Anna was the star. The other wise man, McKay, made all the boys staffs out of tree limbs that had fallen to the ground in the ice storm. He whittled and sanded them himself. And yes, one of the children was a tiger. He was supposed to be a donkey, but he found a tiger costume and wouldn't take it off.

Merry Merry

We are happily back into our home after our ordeal with the "massive" ice storm that knocked out our power not once but twice. The second time was because of the tree limb that fell on our power line during the original storm. It didn't pull the line all the way out, but it pulled it out just enough to create a "backfeed" and eventually the transformer blew and sent a huge surge of electricity into our home. I woke up last Tuesday to the sound of my clock radio popping. Several of our lightbulbs popped and eventually the only thing that turned on in the house was one light in the basement. We weren't sure at first what was wrong but we knew our furnace was out and that things didn't look good. Isaac's piano teacher who is also a member of our church congregation offered to let us stay at her house while she and her husband went to Utah for three weeks. They live just a short distance from our house and Isaac's school, plus they have many comfortable beds and other amenities that made our stay very pleasant. On Sunday our power was restored but unfortunately our furnace was a casualty of the surge. But... a very talented man from our ward came over and rebuilt something in the furnace and it worked! It was 34 degrees in the house on Sunday, so we stayed one more night at our friends' and moved back home on Monday when the house had reached 67 degrees. Also lost to the surge were two tvs, my clock radio and our oven. Thankfully my computer did not fry. I was afraid because there was a burning smell in that corner. The surge did burn right through the cable outside so we lost Internet. It has since been restored.
Now we are safe and warm and back home. The boys happily opened their toys this morning and we spent last night with friends and watched a very cute nativity put on by all the children.
I hope you are all enjoying your day with family and friends close by.

New Radio Story

Here's a storm story I did for NHPR:

http://www.nhpr.org/node/19692

Crazy Winter Storm

In case you haven't heard, New Hampshire was hit by a huge ice storm. It started on Thursday night and ended around noon on Friday. Our power was out when we woke up Friday morning. All we heard all night was "crack crack, crash" as tree limbs grew too heavy with the weight of the ice. When we woke up in the morning we had tree branches all over the back lawn and a tree in front of our house looked like it cracked in half and was hanging over a power line.
We finally got power back this afternoon (it's Saturday). Some very sweet friends took us in last night. We had such a great time with them. We played Rock Band until midnight then woke up and ate yummy scones! The boys did pretty well too, they thought it was a grand vacation. I was very grateful when our power came back on though. Many others around us aren't so lucky. Around 30,000 families are still without power tonight just in Nashua. Around the state, that number is closer to 250,000. So, keep the people up here in your prayers!

The four kids

The Christmas card is another variation on this... Coming soon (as long as we have your address!)

Anna's photo shoot

Okay, I need some opinions... I'm going to take the kids for pictures this week (Oh Minna, how I wish you were here!) and I can't decide what to dress Anna in. I'm going to put the boys in khakis and white shirts. They'll be inside against a black background.
Here are the options. You can't really see the last one -- it's gray with a pink bow. That's me and Anna hugging Neesa at her wedding. (Tinkerbell isn't actually an option, but wasn't she cute on Halloween???):

Uncle Andrew's Visit

We had so much fun with Andrew! The boys loved having him here and Anna got used to him. By the end of the week she'd smile at him when he passed by :) Andrew got to spend Joey's birthday with us. He was here for the Halloween-themed party then the birthday-night out at Friendly's. We also went to Boston for the day and took a ride on the duck boat. Another day we went and had pancakes at a yummy maple sugaring place in the woods. Joey's favorite moment was going to Toys R Us and picking out his birthday present. Thanks for visiting us Andrew! Hope you come back soon!
First pictures from the birthday party where we bobbed for donuts and painted pumpkins:



Next we have the duck boat in Boston:





Finally, pancake breakfast pic:

Fun Visit

We recently had visitors from New York. Ami and Monica and their beautiful children braved the five hour drive to come see us and the beauty of the New England fall colours. We did our best to show them some of our favorite things around New Hampshire -- Pickity Place, the Milford Pumpkin Festival and Portsmouth. And our backyard, where our kids and their kids spent most of the weekend!
Here are some of our favorite pictures:

Meghan McCain linked to my story on her blog!

I think it's cool! Her blog is McCainBlogette.com. Check it out!

The Music In Our Lives

I read on my friend Monica's blog about her little girl singing along to a Blink 182 song while they were driving around, and it made me think about the music I've been filling my children's ears with. Joey is definitely my biggest fan of modern music. He loves Jack Johnson, U2 and REM (especially Superman). For a while his favorite album was Mamma Mia -- long before it became a movie it was a musical and I had the original London cast recording and played it all the time in the car. (Don't judge me.) Joey looooved it. Sometimes I'd turn it down to talk to him and he'd tell me to turn it back up. Or he'd ask me to keep the car running in our driveway until the end of the song. Recently, though, it's fallen out of favor. Matthew is delighted. Of course, one of his new favorites is "We're all in this together" from the High School Musical soundtrack.
Our favorite bedtime song is "Annie's Song" by John Denver (aka You fill up my senses...). Joey (again) loves it, except for the part where I sing "let me die in your arms, he asked that I change it to "let me lie in your arms." Ah, a romantic.
(The picture is from a short trip we took to Maine this summer.)

New pics of Anna

This is not an endorsement...

But I got this button for Wendy at an Obama rally yesterday in Manchester. I wanted Matthew to go see him because he's undecided. I had a moment yesterday when I freaked out at him... he's an undecided voter in a battle ground state!
"Do you know what resources will be used to sway voters like you!!!" I yelled, excited not angry.
The Obama rally was fun. There were thousands of people. It was a madhouse.
Joey kept saying, "I don't like Obama, I like John McCain." We told him not to say that too loudly at an Obama rally.
Oh, I love elections!

That depends what your definition of is is

It was bedtime, and I was trying to get the kids ready for bed. Isaac was giving me a hard time. I asked him to go in the bathroom and brush his teeth. Instead he went in the kitchen and told his brothers, who were eating a bowl of cereal, that they should get ready for bed.
So I said, "Isaac stop telling your brothers what to do, and listen to me."
And he said, "I didn't tell them what to do."
And I said, "I just heard you telling them what to do. Just worry about yourself."
And he said, "I just told them they SHOULD get ready for bed, not that the HAVE to get ready for bed. So, I wasn't telling them what to do."
He then went and asked Joey, "Did you think I was telling you what to do?"
And Joey, with all of the adoration a 4-yr-old has for his brother, said, "No, Isaac."
Isaac then looked at me and said, "See. I wasn't telling them what to do."

There is a reason I'm slowly losing my mind.

Portsmouth

We went to Portsmouth with some friends last week. I love Portsmouth. It's a beautiful old New England town on the New Hampshire seacoast. We planned to visit an outdoor museum - think Pioneer Village - but instead we mostly ran around the lovely green parks that sit along the waterfront and enjoyed the ocean breeze. My friend Kaddiz and I also managed to do a little shopping - I got a great hat to wear on sunny days - and we bought lunch at a cute cafe, then had a picnic in the park. It's hard to get out with four kids, but it was well worth the effort!

A story in pictures

Blast from the past

Births are such momentous occasions and having Anna has me reminiscing about past experiences...
The most memorable has to be Thomas and the bathroom, but Isaac's birth was also an event. I found this picture the other day of me in the hospital about to deliver Isaac and it made me smile. Matthew was away in Florida for Air Force training and barely made it home in time for the birth. That he could be there at all was a blessing. In his absence, I had some amazing friends who rallied around me. Here they are cheering me up. You can tell I'm not having contractions yet...

Baptism and Blessing

We had a weekend of new beginnings. Our oldest child was baptized and our youngest child was blessed. Isaac turned eight on June 13. It was so humbling to watch him prepare himself to make his baptismal covenants. He took it very seriously and thought hard about whether he was ready to make those promises to his Heavenly Father. As we got closer to the actual baptism he wanted to know how it would all work, so Matthew practiced with him (including in the pool at the Radisson Hotel where Grandma and Grandpa stayed) until he was confident about the mechanics. The baptism was beautiful. He and his friend Kyle were both touched by the spirit, as was everyone else who was there to witness it.
Anna's baby blessing was on Sunday. She's still so tiny, but we wanted Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Ted to be there for it, so it worked out to have it the day after Isaac's baptism. Matthew gave her a beautiful blessing and she didn't make a peep. She wore the dress I wore when I was blessed in 1975. I found it among the baby clothes I was unpacking before she was born. For years it either outfitted my dolls or hung in my closet (I even once stuck sparkly heart stickers on the bow), but fortunately a gifted dry cleaner was able to get it clean again. She looked like a little angel.

Anna's Blessing