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!)