Snowbound Fun

During our blizzard we spent Saturday cuddling with a very sick little girl. On Sunday she was much better so we sat down and made some ornaments. A few we sent off and a couple we kept as family ornaments. I think we'll make this a yearly tradition. That ornament I'm holding is the snowman one (at the bottom) that we made with thumb prints. I painted Autumn's thumb and then guided her thumb to where we wanted it. So afterwards she wanted to paint my thumb and said "I have to help you mommy" so she'd paint and stamp and paint and stamp until we'd covered one of the ornaments, it's the white one below, turned out gorgeous! The gold one was an idea I saw somewhere and what we did was write our last name and the year around the top and then write fun activities or milestones from the past year on it.

The Aftermath

To see these in any kind of chronological order you'll need to start from the bottom up, I never remember how these things post.


This is from the first big snow we had on the morning of Autumn's birthday party. Kurt shoveled half the drive way and then came inside to look at our savings and see what could be moved around to be able to buy a snow blower.

We got 22 inches of snow last Saturday, this is our front porch after the final clearing (of course today there are 4 more inches on it). Next is the results of the second plow pass, not quite as bad as the first. One of our neighbors helped Kurt clear that one out.

This is a different neighbor who came to help us with the initial clearing of the driveway. What you can see is about half the driveway after I shoveled to a level that Kurt could blow out. The neighbor worked for about half an hour before he was able to make that blower sized path through the berm.

Here are some of the drifts after the snow and wind finally subsided.

This is as far as I could open the front door.

Where is the fence?!

Autumn's climber. On Tuesday she got to stay home with Kurt (long story involving sub-zero temps and flat tires) so they went outside to play. Autumn had fun walking the drifts around the perimeter of the yard. Then she and Kurt climbed to the top of this thing and then jumped off, dived off, fell backwards off, and cannon balled off into the snow.

Birthday

Yup, she turned 4! I told her she couldn't have her birthday and get older but she had it anyway. It was very snowy (which she wanted for her birthday) and a couple of her friends came. She had a great time and that is all that counts. Oh, did I mention that she had a super hero party and her friends came dressed up as super heroes?

Decorating the Tree

We managed to finally get enough lights for the tree. We put the tree up and discovered that we had no lights. We haven't been able to put this tree up for so long that we probably got rid of the lights. We went and bought a couple of strings.....the tree is a bit bigger than we thought. We managed to cover the bottom 1/3! Luckily the lights were on sale so we bought a couple more strings so now we have enough. Autumn had a grand time "decrating" the tree. We learned about what fragile means and now she uses that word a lot, any time I ask her to be careful when carrying something (fragile or not) she says "this is fragile, gotta be careful".

Autumn decorating the tree

Adoption Funding

As you can see to the right of the post we are starting to work on funding this adoption. We have a good chunk put aside already but since the cost of adoption isn't covered by medical insurance it's an expensive and lengthy process. The first of many steps is this box to your right. A number of other families I've talked with have used this system for collecting donations. We are looking into grants as well, many of which are.....matching funds where you have to ask for donations first.....you can see where I'm going. Every avenue we've turned down and peered down has involved asking for money from family and friends. This is WAY out of my comfort zone but is apparently where God is leading us. So I'm done fighting with Him and negotiating with Him and bargaining with Him and am ready to walk on this path he's leading us down. But I'm sure He'll have to drag me parts of the way. :) We are looking at other options, one is a fair trade coffee company that is all for raising funds for adoption and the orphanage in Ethiopia where the founder adopted his daughters from. More on that as I get it figured out. We don't want anyone to feel obligated to give money, we know its tight for pretty much everyone. The families I've talked to have said similar things: "we aren't comfortable asking for money..." but also that they were pleasantly surprised how many of their family and friends wanted to help but didn't know how. So here I am, getting out of the boat to walk across the waves and grasp His hand. At the very least we are asking for prayer support from everyone, it's amazing but you really can feel when many people are praying for you, it's all warm and "snuggly" as Autumn would say.

Buddy!

We have been waiting for 2 weeks to see Buddy the Dinosaur from Dinosaur Train at the Mall of America. It was a lot of build up of anticipation for a couple of minutes of thrilling hugs and dancing with Buddy.

Snowasarus Rex

We had our first snow over Veteran's Day weekend. It was heavy and wet (Autumn and Kurt came in soaking) and perfect to build snowmen. First Autumn and Kurt trekked all around the yard putting the last few yard pieces away for the winter (we got caught a bit unawares). Then they built a snowman. The next day we added a snowasarus rex and a little bitty snow kitty.