Well, little children, not much happening here at the moment. Sydney is hibernating, and I am mulling over the pros and cons of room make-overs.

No snow here in the last 24 hours. That is good. For a perspective on amounts, see the following pictures:

As you can see, over the last two weeks the pasture fence has been slowly disappearing. Drifting is a wonderful thing.

In other news, there was enough of a break in the weather last weekend that we could actually have Anna's baby shower. I was really happy that Jo Honeycutt, Jocelyn, Heather Bennet and Pat Bond were able to make it to Centerville from North Fairfield and Columbus.

Jocelyn & Heather

Anna, Jo, and Pat

We played games:

Amie, Trena and Julie team up for the

"Predict what Anna's baby will look like"

contest.

The "Cut a piece of ribbon you think will go around

Anna's belly" game

We watched Anna open presents and ate a lot of really yummy food brought by Jim's step-mom Jennifer. My contribution was the dessert:

Check out Anna's blog and Amie's for more on the shower.

Last but not least, my favorite adventure this week was getting snowed in at Andrew and Amie's on Monday and Tuesday. Two days of playing with cute little grandchildren was a pretty good vacation. The following video shows what can happen, however, when people have been cooped up inside too long by the weather:

I was glad to hear that Matthew and Melissa made it back safely through the storm from their Valentine trip to Atlanta. We're looking forward to a visit from Joshua sometime before the end of the month. Oh, by the way - I'm on Skype now. I have really been enjoying video calls to Uncle Lou. Grandma 'Carty likes them, too (I took my laptop in last Sunday so she could talk, too.) Anna and Jim and Andrew and Amie are on so far. If any of the rest of you get on Skype, let me know.

Love to all - XXOma

Baby face, you've got the cutest little baby face....

Now here is something I have been wanting to do for a long while. With all the babies here and on the way, I thought a little comparative photography was in order




Opa (3 mo.) Opa (6 mo.)




Oma (3 mo.) Oma (2)






Joseph (3 mo.) Andrew (10 mo.) Joseph (1 1/2)



Opa (28) Andrew (2) Joseph (4)








Matthew (3 mo.) Matthew (22 mo.)




Joshua (8 mo.) Joshua (1)




Anna (6 mo.) Anna (2nd. birthday)



Micah (1 mo.) Micah (2)

Well, what do you think? See any resemblances to the newest generation?

Days of Tundra....

Hello from the sunny but frozen north. After a night of 30+ mph wind gusts, we awoke to some pretty significant drifting, which has only gotten worse through the day. Opa got up and dug out the truck for me, and I mushed off through the snow. It took me about 40 minutes to go 7 miles to work. I think I had a grand total of 4 customers. One lady walked a couple of blocks to mail a package, and some guy drove in from up north on 721 to buy a book of stamps. I didn't know whether to congratulate them on their courage or smack 'em for being silly.

Our postal higher-ups insisted that things would be business-as-usual, and that we had to attempt rural delivery. Our Saturday sub couldn't get in, so I had to call the regular carrier. She came in and sorted mail until I could close up for the morning, and then I went out with her and we delivered what we could in town - she drove and I stuffed the boxes. We couldn't even get close to most of the boxes. We took a gander down one country road and quickly decided that there was no way we were going to do country delivery. We had a couple of calls telling us that the snow plows had eliminated quite a few boxes - they had scored almost a 100% kill rate out on Grubbs-Rex ( Where Elmer Longenecker lives, just south of Jim and Kathy's place) So on the bright side, it will help things on Monday. All those folks will have to come in and get their mail.

Any way, I left for home around 1:30. Things went pretty well until I got about half way here, and I came upon a lady whose car was stuck in a drift. I let her use my cell phone to call her family for help, and then I tried to help her get out. Soon another man came along with a truck a little bigger than a pick-up. He had a tow rope and was able to get her out so she could turn around. He told me I'd better turn around two, because he could see a 4 foot drift across the road a little farther on. So I went back to the road just south of there, and fortunately a township plow had just gone through. I was able to go around the blockages and eventually get back to 721 north of where I had been. When I got to Cirlce Hill it was evident that someone had used their tractor to plow out there, or it would have been completely shut up. After I made the turn at Brumbaugh's and headed north again, I could see the good Samaritan up ahead, clearing the roadway in front of Wick's at the corner of Yount Rd. He let me around him and as I got close to the house I could see that the final obstacle was going to be getting into our driveway. I stopped and called Opa to see how he wanted me to try it.

He said to gun it and see how the 4wheel drive handled it. It didn't. He had to come out and lower the snow level under the truck a little before we could get it in. But it was accomplished without too much effort and I was finally in my own cozy little abode by 2:30.

We were sorely disappointed to miss Bubby's birthday party, but with all the wind we're still having, we thought it best to stay home. Micah is out shoveling through the drift across the

driveway right now, so he can get his car out if necessary. That boy is seriously bored.

It is 11:30 pm and Micah is out stomping around in the snow to see if the snowplows have been through. It is blowing quite a bit now, and still snowing. Darke County has issued a level 3 snow emergency and closed all roads to anything but emergency vehicles. Going to work tomorrow is going to be sooooo much fun. I doubt we'll have many customers in tomorrow.
I have included some pictures from the same angle as my previous post so you can see how things are progressing. The previous ones were taken about 12:30 pm. These were at about 4:30 pm.



Now here are the snow amounts at 4:30 :

6 1/2"

And at 7:30 :

7"

And last but not least, Micah arriving home in the snow and the dark.

I talked to Lou this evening, and he said that Atlanta was getting heavy rains. I guess it's always something.

Time for bed - sleep tight everyone.

Here we snow again......

If you happen to be in Atlanta right now, and gloating about it, well.....I don't blame you. At this point it seems to indicate an abundance of good sense. The "wintery mix" (sounds like some sort of Del Monte salad, doesn't it?) kind of passed us by and went straight to snow by 10 am. But so far the snow has been coming out of the northeast, which I haven't figured out. Channel 7 doppler radar showed this system coming up from the south west. It must be rotating on us. Any way, they're calling for anywhere from 6-12 inches before it's all said and done. No matter what it's like, I'll be down sorting the mail at Laura tomorrow morning. We're hoping it will give up by noon, so we can make it to Bubby's birthday party without the sled dogs.

We'll keep you updated on breaking weather news as it happens. Film at 11.

Long time, no post.....

Sorry about the gap in posts. There was a lot going on when we got back from Atlanta, and I have something I have wanted to put in the post, but haven't had time to put together yet. So be watching.
The picture below is the result of a trial run for a new cake pan. I got a giant cupcake pan so that I could make one for Anna's baby shower. It turned out pretty well. The baby is a fondant covered brownie (the body.) Her other parts are all fondant. You can make interesting decorations with fondant, but the stuff is pretty "blah" in the taste department. It's hard to beat good old buttercream frosting.



The other pictures are of Jordan eating the cake. If you look closely at the side of her mouth you can see her boo-boo from daycare. I guess she fell and bumped her mouth on a can. It looked pretty ouchy, but didn't seem to trouble her much. Not enough to slow down the eating.




Baby J can fill that cake hole!

Talked to Joshua on the big 3-0 on Monday. He's still at work on the house. I forgot to ask if his Corolla is one of the recalls. He's planning on coming down sometime later this month.
Happy Birthday to our little blue Bubby dinosaur, who will be three tomorrow!

XXOOma