Happy New Year!

We decided to toast at midnight in Florida so the Emster could get to bed...

Another Visit from the Tooth Fairy...

Emi lost another tooth this month! We're not sure this one was absolutely ready to come out, but she made Daddy yank it out anyway. My brave little girl!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Please no, not yet! We're not ready! After getting Emi to bed rather late, ensuring that we left out a plateful of World Peace cookies and Silk Nog for Santa and exactly 9 baby carrots for the reindeer, Emi was up and at 'em at 4:29 am ready to open gifts. She burst into our room announcing that Santa had come (he must have JUST left), we inventoried the tree, read Santa's note about having to ship Emi's locker because it wouldn't fit on the sleigh, then went back to bed until a reasonable hour.

More Respectable Hour

I actually had to wake Emi up 3 hours later to open gifts. Needless to say we were draggin' around most of the morning...

Up on the Housetop?

PeePaw, MeeMaw and the Grandkids

...or not!

Made it to the "Nice' list...

It was unclear last week when Emi received a phone call from Santa if she officially made it to the "Nice" list. When I asked her about it she said she thought so because "Santa was talking nice to me".

Santa Babies...

Hallelujah!!

We have electricity!! When the Ice Storm came in on Sunday evening our neighborhood trees were devastated by the heavy ice forming so quickly. We lost power Monday at 3am and in the dark we listened to the crack, pop and crash of limbs falling to the ground. It was eerie and much like being in a Stephen King novel (specifically Lisey's Story). We had phone service until late Monday afternoon when our pine tree snapped and took the phone line down with it...

We were without power until Friday evening. Lucky for us we had my sister's house to go to the first night, then my parents' house for the next 3 nights. So we were warm and fed, but being displaced was no fun. Our dogs wondered what they had done wrong when they had to stay in the garage. I guess now they will be on their best behavior. ;.)

Coming home every day in the cold and the gloom of the weather that followed the storm was depressing when we were still without power. The routine became, come home in the morning to feed the cats and drop off the dogs, head to work, come back home after work to pick up the dogs and clothes for the next day, feed the cats and assess the situation. We were getting ready to head out to the lake on Friday evening when the power clicked on. Had we been running on time, we might have missed that.

Our neighborhood looks like a war zone. Sad to see so many of the old trees completely gone or missing much of their limbs. We were lucky that our neighbor's mostly dead Silver Leaf Maple tree didn't fall onto our house.

...

Gallery....

Ready for Photos

Scott mounted the Flipside Wall Frames (Crate & Barrel) onto the office wall and I must say, I just adore our new gallery!! Rich chocolate brown frames (on Baby Aqua walls) will soon be home to 18 photos for display. Four 4x6 photos and two 5x7 photos pivot on each wall mounted bracket. The easy part is done, now we have to decide which photos to display. We are thinking it would be cool to put only black and white photos in the frames... I'll post more pictures when that happens!