Whew!

We're fine!!! You've all been waiting so patiently for news of our safety, sending all those care-packages and cards, the email alerts for "hill" in the columbus obituaries, the prayers for our safety, well it all worked and we're ok!

No but seriously, that was, um, fun. This first picture is actually from a few weeks ago in a bit rainstorm. It's taken from inside my garage a little before noon. the water flooded everyone's yard up the street from us but it stayed in our ditch where it goes so that was lucky. There's a pipe under the driveway and the water was just as high on the other side.

Then, on Sunday, (Chris' Birthday), we met Ike. The wind was getting pretty bad, but when our cable went out we went outside to see what was going on. The first thing we saw was the shingles flying off the roof as fast as they could. Still not realizing this was Ike Chris borrowed a ladder from a neighbor to climb up and check the damage to the roof before the rain came and soaked through. While he was up there (with me holding the ladder), this happened:


I was standing with the ladder right in front of Zoe's window there, and when I heard it I thought it was the close tree and I couldn't figure out whether to run and have both the tree and the ladder fall on me, or stay where I was and hope it didn't hit me. Unfortunately, my neighbor (who was helping me hold the ladder) decided to run and flung the contents of her coffee cup all over me in the process. I didn't notice at the time because I was so relieved to still be alive. So Chris wisely got off the roof and we all went inside to huddle around the windows.

Here's a better picture of my poor tree. We lost part of another on on the north side of the house, tons of shingles, our cable/internet/phone for a week (which explains why I haven't posted in a while), and our water was rationed. However we never lost our power for which I am extremely grateful considering there are still people in the city without it. We had more that 350,000 people lose their power and it was pretty scary for a while. Ice was in major demand, people were buying it right off the truck, bottled water was flying off the shelves (lots of people here are on wells so they didn't have any water at all). We had potable water but it was such low pressure it took forever to shower and I was really happy I'd already done all our laundry that morning. It was cool though, to see people come together. People were driving around with chain saws to help remove downed trees, businesses were making room in their freezers for other businesses product so it didn't go bad, people had extension cords hanging out their windows so their neighbors could have a microwave and a lamp. Apparently it was a category 1 hurricane still when it reached us, 75mph winds, and though we didn't get the rain the rest of the mid-west got we got harder hit with wind than they did. I think I'm going to get a kit together to keep in the garage--water at least, but a full 72 hour kit wouldn't go amiss I think. I've heard too many horror stories about the freezing winters here.

Ta Da!!

Okay. Here's my house. Half of it anyway. We'll start with the kitchen, since that was put together first. This is looking from the corner where the garage door is over toward my lovely stove and dishwasher. The little cabinet on the right has my microwave on top and it holds my cake pans and pasta dishes. I haven't decided exactly how to set up the little dust catcher on top of the cabinets--I'm using it to store my less used pretty things, but I WILL NOT be putting dumb decorative crap up there that gathers dust and breaks when you clean it. Maybe a plant, but that's as far as I'll go. I like my cute little curtains over the sink, and it's just nice to have a window there at all! When you turn to the left in this picture you come to the next picture,

my Dining Room! No but really it's a nice space for my table and that's the sliding door to the back yard. When we're not using it I push the table more into the corner, but when the Missionaries came over we brought out the 6 foot folding table so we could seat everyone and that fit in the space too, so it's bigger than it looks. The door to the left is the door to the office/laundry room which I don't have a picture of yet because we're using it constantly. I really need to post a picture though because my washer and dryer are the most awesome things e-v-a-r EVAR!!!


Except possibly for my couch. Okay, so when we were here in July we found a great couch at a store by our house and it was on sale for $277, so we put $50 down on it to keep that price until we got here. So we'd been looking around at other stuff to go with it and finally decided we needed to get the couch in the house first. We went to pay the rest and pick it up, and thought, we need to sit on it one more time. We walked over to the corner where it lived, and sat on it, and promptly bought the one next to it instead. This couch, we decided, is the one we would always regret not having bought. It's leather and suede, and the best part is it only cost $20 more than the first one!!! The ottoman was a great find too--we got that from their clearance area for cheap cheap cause it was the last one. It has a little drawer in it and it's leather too. The paintings are from Chris' mom, and I like them the best of anything I've seen from her.


Here's a slightly different view with my piano in it (yes it made it all the way here!) so you can see how cute that is. We still need a few chairs and maybe a rug, but that's going to have to come slowly. I also want a tree in that corner. I don't know what kind of tree, but a tree. and maybe a lamp.

And I just accidentally deleted the other picture for the living room, so I'll have to put that in another post. It was of my front window with the cedar chest and drapes. oh well.





here's the other wall in the livingroom, the front door is on the right, and the door you see on the left is to the water heater and furnace. That's Grandma Matheson's stereo (that was in her kitchen) and it works great AND has a plug in the back that we can plug in our mp3 players!








This is the family room, I'd like to point out how clean it is. We need something on the walls, but other than that this room is very nice and cosy. Well, there's that other thing too. The intake for the a/c is in that room. sooo, everytime the blower kicks on you have to turn the TV up really really loud. We played around with it though, and it looks like if we put a piece of furniture in front of it it will quiet down without blocking the air. Now we just need to find something big enough to block it and thin enough it doesn't block the hallway.


So that's my house, stay tuned for the other half of the house, including Jimmy's race car room and Zoe's new and improved Tinkerbell fabricated room.

Little Boys

Well, not to be outdone by his cousin Sam, Jimmy decided to have a golden speaking moment today as well. Chris is under the weather right now with a bad sinus thing. (either that or he blew out his vocal chords and entire respiratory system at the Utah-Michigan game). So he's coughing stuff up. We were in the car today, and Chris said, "sorry, this is going to be gross" and he leaned out of the door and spit on the street. Jimmy wanted to know what he had in his mouth that he spit out. Chris told him "gross stuff. Mostly boogars." Jimmy got a big smile and said, "Hey! I eat those!!"


Oh yeah. Like I'm gonna kiss him again!