Hurricane Ike

I told a few people I would post a couple pics from the storm. These three trees are right along our driveway, I didn't have to go more than a few feet in the woods to get the pics. There's lots more damage in the woods - we were so protected to have no damage to the house or cars. Even our trampoline, though it hopped across the yard, was not damaged! God is good!

Crayons

This is a project the boys and I did a little while ago that turned out pretty neat, but I didn't post it before now!

We went through our big ziploc bag of crayons and sorted out all the broken ones. We took off any wrappers and sorted them by color into a muffin tin (with muffin wrappers in it). When we were ready we put it in the oven at about 200 and it didn't take long for them to melt down. We stirred the up and let them cool before unwrapping them and coloring with our "new" crayons! Bonus: our crayon bag doesn't have any more little crayon pieces!

3 Days of Darkness

Hmm, that sounds like it could be a book title or something, doesn't it? Actually it's the title of our adventure this week. Sunday night central Ohio (as well as many other places) got hit with the remnants of hurricane Ike. He wasn't nice to us. (Although he wasn't nearly as mean to us as he was to Texas and other places!) Our area had very high winds for several hours, it was amazing to see. Trees were bending so hard they were snapping and falling in yards, roads, driveways, and even on an occasional car or house. We were blessed that all of our damage was limited to trees in the woods. There was a tree in the road near us that Jeff worked hard to chop and move so cars could get through, but our cars and house were safe and the trees in our yard escaped major damage.

Our power was knocked out around 4PM on Sunday. A massive number of people in Columbus lost power, and our electric company had sent a lot of employees to Texas to help, so they were scrambling to recover here. When we finally realized it wasn't coming back up quickly, we tried to make an adventure out of it. We went out to dinner (as did what seemed like most of Columbus - some restaurants still had power), lit candles and played Candyland and Chutes and Ladders before heading to bed. The adventure continued for three days. We roasted marshmallows over candles, went to the zoo, played outside, practiced our letters, sang songs and Jeff and I answered (or tried to answer) 100s of questions about electricity and storms!

We were relieved last night when the power returned, but we were also a little sad. It was nice to have that time together without the distractions of tv, computer, laundry, etc., etc.

Absent

I know I haven't been on here much. I've gotten involved in an online business and most of my time on the computer is spent working on that. I'm excited about it and glad to be doing it. I just have to continue to figure out how to balance it with the rest of my life, including not fully giving up blogging and digi-scrapbooking.

Anyway, we had a great weekend camping with my family at my parents' cabin. My parents were there as well as my brothers and their families. If you didn't already know, my "little" brother and his wife are expecting a baby boy in December. I'm super excited to have a new nephew on the way. I got to feel him kicking this weekend... I can't wait to meet you little Jakey! So, counting little Jacob, there were 8 adults, 6.5 kids, 2 dogs (1 dog wasn't there).

Here's a great little video of that "little" brother of mine, he's a pyro. For those of you who've known him over the years, it's true that some things never change. :) That's Trey at the end saying "do it again"!



Here are a few cute pictures from the weekend too...

A favorite camping activity - FOUR WHEELING!!! This is me with the boys and my youngest niece, Vanessa


Jeff and the boys enjoying it too


A beautiful sunset


A cute one of my boys


This is our camping weekend family picture