No Power

Day 3 of no power. We turn on the generator for an hour or two, then off for two hours so we can conserve gas for the long haul. The worst shift is the 2:30-3:30/4 am shift that we have to do to keep the fridge and freezer cold.

A few things we've been doing to stay entertained:

• board games (a lot)
• movies on our portable DVD player and with the generator on we use our tv.
• playstation (when the generator is on)
• play dough
• crafts
• trains
• Buzz and Woody toys
• reading
• walks with the dog
• roasted hot dogs and marshmallows
• ate a lot of junk
• maybe got a little stir crazy now and then

Kent's work got power back quickly so he went back to work on Tuesday. We were able to get out of the neighborhood on Monday so we headed north for more gas and some fast food.

Irene

Our power went out around 3 am this morning. We could hear the wind howling outside. I was glad my babies were all in my room. I lay awake for a while waiting for a giant crack of the nearby trees, but luckily nothing happened. In the morning we were hearing conflicting accounts on our NOAA radios of the location of Irene. One report said Irene hit NYC at 9 am, and another said it was just barely at New Jersey. So we hurriedly went out in the rain and wind and secured down the generator in anticipation of Irene still making it's way.

I got to wear my new pink rain boots!

We got soaked.

Soon the winds died down...and we figured that Irene must have already passed, since the worst of the winds were over.

No trees in our house! There were just branches and leaves scattered all over the yard.

Later that evening we went out in the truck to see if anyone else got any damage.

A couple houses down from us was this uprooted tree...

and some just snapped over from the wind...

three houses down from us this tree fell over against the power lines...more snapped over trees in the yard three houses down...and behind these kids you can see more of their downed trees (still three houses down)...

We headed the other way about 1/4 mile and spotted this tree. You can see the roots out by the fence and the top of the tree stops short of the house by only a few feet...

down the road we take to get to church was another tree fallen over a power line...There were a few trees around that split right in half...down Kellogg road was another tree over a power line...

down Ruscoe Road was another tree over a power line and some dangling wires...We were lucky...very lucky. Not one tree down on our over two acres. Thank heavens.

'Twas the night before Irene...

We've been preparing for Hurricane Irene to come right through us Sunday morning. We've got our water, food, batteries, radios, generator, clothes washed, dishes washed, DSi's charged, portable DVD players charged, cell phones charged, church canceled.

I insisted the kids sleep over in our room. I'm incredibly paranoid that one of the looming, giant trees will crash in on them on the second floor.

Good ole Chuck

This morning Sawyer started his flag football season...kind of. Today was evaluations to see what skill level each child is at so they can even out the teams. It got a bit rainy at one point and I thought (hoped) they would cancel the rest of it, but Kent reminded me "it's football, you don't cancel." So I had to tough it out.

After evaluations we picked up a couple of Sawyer's friends in the car for a little birthday celebration. Sawyer wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese, which is about 30 minutes away, so I told him he could choose only two friends so that we could drive them up ourselves. So he invited Andrew from last year's kindergarten class, and Colin from his bus. Kent drove Hayden and McKinley up after a stop at the hardware store for some rope for hurricane preparations.

We got pizza and drinks, I brought cupcakes, and time flew by spending all the tokens. We were a little late returning the boys home. Sawyer got a r/c truck and Sorry Sliders from his friends. He gave them a "goodie" bag present of hot wheels cars. I had the hardest time getting him to understand that they were thank you presents for his friends and he didn't get any...a very hard time indeed. He tried to talk one friend out of one of his cars on the way home. I put a stop to that.

Sawyer had a great time with his buddies. I hope he makes many more friends in 1st grade this year! Happy birthday Sawyer!

Tracking

As of right now Hurricane Irene is tracking right toward us. The last projection has the eye going right through us. That's our town in the center of the yellow circle. So we are stocked up on food, water, and gas. Kent went to the store today to get a little more drinking water and the shelves are pretty much empty of water, flashlights, and propane gas.

We'll see how this thing plays out. Wish us luck on our first hurricane!

'lil book club

(the sign McKinley made to welcome the book club girls)

McKinley has been asking to have a book club for a couple years now. Finally I said yes. She hosted her first book club at our house today. She had two other girls who could make it so it was nice and small. McKinley chose "Mr. Popper's Penguins" by Richard Atwater for her book. She made up her own little questions for the discussion, with her own answers in parentheses:

• What are your favorite penguins? (Victoria, Adelina, and Greta)
• What was your favorite part in the story? (When the penguins were performing)
• How long did it take you to read the book? (It took me two nights to read the book)
  
• Did you enjoy the book? (I personally loved the book!)
• Do you have any ideas for books? (no answer written)
• Do you have any comments or questions? (no answer written)
• What shocked you? (It shocked me when he went to jail)

It was so cute to hear them discussing the book.

Then they did a little penguin origami.

They tried to play a game, but one of the girls doesn't quite have the attention span for it apparently.

We had snacks for them to eat and then they just got to have some play time.

They chose next time's book "Summer according to Humphrey" and one of the other girls wanted to be the host for the next book club.

Adorable.

Beardsley Zoo

Our field trip this week was to the zoo here in Connecticut. Once again we used a pass from the library which got us all in for free instead of the otherwise $42....thank heavens. It is a tiny little zoo. The big animals were some bison, wolves, a bear and 2 tigers. The tigers put on a good show and romped around a bit. The other animals were things like deer, owls, prairie dogs, amphibians, and such. Sawyer kept asking me if the animals had ticks on them---did I mention we hate ticks?

On the up side, it wasn't crowded, so we could see all the exhibits easily. We ate some lunchables, I let the kids use the other camera and take whatever pictures they wanted, and at the end of the trip they rode the carousel. Pretty fun outing for a good price (free!).

6 Years Old!

Sawyer turned 6 years old! Although he may tell you he's 7. He keeps trying to be older than he is. We have a measuring board on our wall that we have the kids marked measurements at each year of life. Sawyer is as tall at 6 years old as McKinley was at 7 years old. He is growing like a weed.

He is madly in love with money, so this year we got him a wallet with his birthday money inside for him to spend at the toy store. That afternoon we got his favorite lunch--Arby's roast beef sandwiches (he eats 3 jr's by himself), then headed over to Toys R Us. Sawyer kept grabbing whatever toy was in front of him and saying he wanted to get it. So after a little guidance he decided to buy a PS3 game (Blur), a R/C Ferrari, hot wheels, Bumblebee transformer. McKinley bought him a Dinosaur book (which we later noticed was written in French--ha ha!). We went out to eat that night at Outback. Sawyer just likes to eat the bread and dip it into copious amounts of ranch dressing. Then they sang Happy Birthday and we shared a couple ice cream sundaes. I frosted his cake that night (Ferrari style) but we were stuffed so we saved it for the day after his birthday.

Now here is our birthday Q&A session with a 6 year-old!:

What is your favorite color? black

What is your favorite thing to eat? ice cream

What is your favorite thing to do? play "Blur" on the playstation

What is your favorite toy? Nascars, big Nascars, shaking cars, video games
What is your favorite book? Hot Wheels

What do you want to be when you grow up? I don't know

What will be the funnest thing about being 6 years old? playing video games

Dutch Amish Country

Before heading home we swung over to Dutch Amish Country. We stopped at Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse, PA. It is a touristy little area with a bunch of shops. We did the buggy ride there that takes you around a little of the Amish area. The kids got to sit in front with the Amish driver and help drive the horses. We got to ask him questions during the ride. Interestingly enough, they don't use electricity but use diesel powered and LP powered appliances. Don't ask me why one is acceptable and one is not. Also, "Dutch" Amish Country isn't very "Dutch". We tried to find some Dutch treats but didn't find any. When we asked our driver about it, he had never heard of the Dutch treats we named. In fact, their native language is German, and they eat special treats like schnitz! Ummm, German! Our Dutch little family was a little disillusioned.

They stop on the buggy ride at an Amish house where some girls make treats to sell. We got lemonade, popcorn and a whoopie pie. When the ride was over I bought some yummy peaches to take home. One of Kent's favorite things about Pennsylvania was that there was finally radio reception for country music!

This is "Sarge" one of the horses who pulled us on the buggy. Their horse hair flew all over us during the ride...yuck! I don't know the Amish driver's name. He was missing at least four front teeth and it was hard to understand him sometimes.
The Amish are mostly dairy farmers in this community. The community is about 30,000 strong!
Here are some of the crops. He said this flowery plant (tobacco as far as we could tell from his toothless pronunciation) was the last of the cash crops. The other crops (corn and alfalfa) are for feeding the dairy cows.

And here is a picture for my quilt-loving mother. No, I did not step inside even one quilt shop though...sorry mom.
Another little buggy on the road.

The adolescents in Kent and I made plenty of quiet-voiced jokes about the city's name. What were they thinking?

It was a fun little stop, but we were glad we didn't make a special trip out just for Amish Country. I think we saw about as much as we could have seen in our short couple of hours there.

The kids had fun but were excited to get back home and to their toys! Hayden wanted to play his Playstation games, and Sawyer went straight to his Nascar cars and started racing.

It was a nice, short trip.

Pennsylvania---check!

Hershey Park

Today we went to Hershey Park, PA. We had a nice leisurely morning and headed out when we felt like it. We arrived in the afternoon and headed to the water park area. I played in the water with Hayden while Kent, McKinley and Sawyer went on the waterslide. Sawyer decided 45 minutes into the wait that he didn't want to do it anymore. When they got to the top he walked right into the slide then turned around and said he didn't want to do it. Kent told him it was too late and gave him a "push" down the slide. I was waiting at the bottom when he came out. When he stopped he burst into tears. It scared him to death! He said he kept flipping around. Did I mention he doesn't know how to swim yet? Poor Sawyer!

After that I took the boys to a water playground part while Kent and McKinley did a tube slide.

Here is the tube slide that McKinley and Kent did. We were all in line for the green tube ride next to it that is more mild so that we could all go on it. McKinley was in tears because she wanted to do the scarier ride not the mild one. Then I saw the sign for no pregnant women and realized only two riders per tube were allowed so instead I took the boys to the little water playground and McKinley got to go on her WILD ride. It looks like fun!

Then we dried off, changed, ate dinner and headed to the rides.

Being a big pregnant woman I was a little limited on the rides, so we went on the Ferris Wheel first. I hate heights so Ferris Wheels scare me to death, but it's one of the only ones I could do! Sawyer was afraid to go on it at first, but once we were there he kept looking over the edge and making me nervous!

After the Ferris Wheel Kent took Sawyer and McKinley on the roller coaster. Sawyer and McKinley sat next to each other and Sawyer wasn't even scared! What?! McKinley said she's never heard Kent laugh so hard! I guess the kids were funny little screamers.

Then we headed to the kiddie ride area. The boys loved it, and even though she won't admit it McKinley had fun there too. She kept pulling faces that communicated how ridiculous she felt going on the "kiddie" rides! She thinks she's too old for them, but kept getting back in line with her brothers anyway.

They did get to go on some "older" rides too. Kent was dizzied out after the roller coaster, so we pretty much just watched the kids have fun.

By 10:00 at night we slipped in one last ride and headed to the hotel. The kids had a BLAST there and were sad to leave. It had a lot of rides that were similar to Lagoon: the scrambler, wild mouse, music express, etc. They categorize what ride you can go on according to your height and then name it after a candy bar. Hayden was a Peanut Butter Cup, and the other two were Hershey's Chocolate bars. It was cute. We didn't make it in time to go to over Chocolate World where you can create your own personal candy bar, oh well. The boys picked up a couple of light swords and McKinley chose two stuffed owls for their souvenirs. We got back to the hotel after 11:30!

Pocono Raceway

For as long as I can remember Sawyer has been obsessed with cars. When we finally tired of watching Disney's "Cars" movie over and over again we tried Nascar for some variety. It worked. Now we are all into it. So during Sawyer's birthday month we thought it would be fun for him to see a Nascar race.

We went to Pocono raceway to see the race at the "tricky triangle".

We walked around to see all the displays first and pick up a couple of souvenirs for the boys.

Sawyer REFUSED to have his picture taken by the Jeff Gordon car (Kent's favorite driver). Sawyer likes Jimmie Johnson, but we didn't find his car to take a picture by it.

Good thing we brought the ear plugs for everyone, because those cars are deafeningly loud! I was surprised at how fast the cars are moving in real life. It was hard to keep track of who was in front of who because every time they passed in front of us it was like trying to track lightning.

It was much easier to track them coming out from the pits.

Jeff Gordon's pit was almost directly in front of us!

The race started an hour earlier than planned to try and avoid inclement weather. But just after lap 100 it down poured! Everyone took "cover" under the bleachers which just dripped the run off on top of us. We were soaked. Eventually it lightened up and we were able to return to our seats. It took about 1 1/2-2 hours from the big rain for them to dry off the track and start the race again. Our clothes dried out pretty well too eventually.

Pennsylvania

We headed out for our trip to Pennsylvania! We arrived on Saturday evening pretty early, so we decided to catch a movie at a real movie theater! There aren't any around where we live, they're all pretty 1980's. We found one in Scranton, PA with stadium seating! We got to check off another thing off the list by visiting Scranton since it's the setting of one of our favorite shows (the Office). It was down pouring and the streets were running with overflowing water. McKinley even lost her shoe and I had to run downstream to catch it.

We got some popcorn and drinks and settled in to watch Harry Potter! The kids got Icees, and Hayden drank a whole 32 ounce red Icee by himself (this is important to note because it will come up later...literally). There were probably about 5 bathroom breaks during the movie, but we all enjoyed it.
Then we headed back to the hotel for bed. Sawyer took the air mattress on the floor, McKinley shared a bed with me, and Hayden shared a bed with Kent. Around 1:30 in the morning Kent flipped on the light because he felt something wet and figured Hayden had wet the bed. Unfortunately, Hayden's dinner of popcorn and red Icee had made a return visit all over the hotel bed and Kent. We stripped the bed, got new bedding from the front desk, showered Hayden and Kent and then got back to bed. We changed bed partners after that though and I stayed with Hayden. Luckily he didn't throw up anymore, but we didn't get much sleep that night. With every movement or noise I grabbed the ice bucket to put by Hayden in case he threw up again. It was a long night....and no pictures because that's gross.

When Daddy watches the boys...

...he lets them make mud holes in the backyard on a Sunday evening, while some are still wearing their church clothes. His explanation was "I was just letting boys be boys".

They did have a good time.

I hope those church clothes come clean though.