Spring is here...

Anyone who knows my husband knows that one passion of his has always been animals. We have gone back and forth on this issue- in his mind we will have an entire array of farm animals (goats, sheep, pigs, a cow, chickens, etc). In my mind, we won't.

Slowly but surely he has been wearing on my resolve, much as he has with many of my earlier aversions, such as: some most vegetables, red meat, um...living in Iowa...

Yesterday he "surprised" me with an entire chicken setup in the garage- complete with hay for bedding and little feeders. The neat part? It was nearly all free, having been salvaged from an old shed on our property (I'm all about thrift!)

The long winter has been wearing on us both, and while he was shopping at the local farm supply store yesterday these little furballs caught his eye. What a way to usher in spring! So, after much of my normal hesitation, I agreed to go with, pick out a few, and try this whole farm animal thing.
The plan (in my mind) was 5 chicks. Phil's was a bit higher, and we settled on 25...but then there was the decision of which kind - colored birds or cute yellow ones. Because they are much prettier when they are grown, Phil naturally gravitated toward the colored ones. I, on the other hand, a product of much successful marketing by Easter retailers, preferred the yellow ones (who's ever eaten a brown peep?). After 22 little colored ones, I was the one asking for 5 of my little guys. (A side note: I also thought they would use the little green grass you get at Target for the Easter baskets.)

So, now we have 28. Look how sweet they are!

Ryan has had a blast feeding and petting them. He will go off and do his own thing for a few minutes (we all know what the attention span of a two-year old is...) and then he will run back yelling "Shicken! Shicken!"

At one point he spent quite a bit of time on the other side of the garage packing wood shavings into his little tractor- something he was quite used to doing while Phil was working out there. Then, we watched him drive his tractor over to the side of the tub and, handful by handful, added the shavings to the chick's bedding.

Looks like Spring is here!

Exciting news!

The only Starbucks we have been able to find have been inside two grocery stores about an hour's drive from here.

Until now!

They just put in a whole NEW Starbucks bistro*...SO, if you are wondering what to get Ryan for his birthday, I can assure you that he would appreciate a Starbucks gift card as much as the next guy.

*Ok, the new store is still an hour away, but it has seating and the whole atmosphere, both of which are quite paramount to the entire experience.

Way, way back when

Phil was out at lunch with Neighbor Mike the other day. Out at lunch at a local restaurant that neither he nor I would have eaten at on our own. When we go out to eat, we drive the half hour or hour into the "city" and eat at a well established restaurant. I guess the locals don't always do that. There are "places to eat" pretty close by that neither of us have ever said "hey, let's try that place out" for reasons obvious to the casual windshield inspector. Nevertheless, they were eating at one of these places (which, Phil assured me later, had very good food that we should try sometime).

Anyhow, they got into a discussion with an older man (older than Neighbor Mike, not Phil) who started talking about how he remembered being driven to school by Mike's dad, who used to be the local school bus driver. Not too interesting until he said "Yup, I can remember that we had so many kids I had to ride on your dad's lap in the old wagon." Meaning the horse-drawn wagon....

We have moved quite a ways from horse-drawn wagons nowadays. We have station wagons and sedans with yellow "SCHOOL BUS" magnets stuck to the side. Which seems odd to me, because a School Bus is long (or short) and yellow and quite large. Quite unlike a normal vehicle at all, really. Why not make a yellow magnet that says "School Transport" or "Student Mover". It seems a bit more fitting, at least.

Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean

We have been back at home for almost a week now. The house is warm again (really, really warm thanks to some fancy maneuvering by husband) and there is some semblance of normalcy to life once again. It took some time to dig out from beneath three days of built up dishes, a bit of laundry, and all of the candles/lanterns we had out for the power outage. Picture camping in your living room, with all the gear, leaving for a week, and then coming back to clean it all up- a bit of a chore.

BUT, Spring is on its way. Sure, the skies have been grey the past few days. Sure, there is still snow covering the ground. But it simply can't stay forever! The temps have been in the 30s and 40s the past few days- a wonderful break from the norm. I have heard a rumor that we might even get into the 60s next week, of course only to be followed by a winter blast that will "bring us us back into reality" (ha!).

Ryan has reached a new stage of something- I don't quite know what to call it yet (other than wonderful). I first noticed it two days ago when I walked in to the kitchen to see him whining. Of course I asked him to use "Big Boy words" (which only half way works at this age since I am sure he doesn't really understand what I am meaning by this). I then realized he had spilled a bit of his juice onto the floor. I asked him if he needed a paper towel to clean it up, and he said quite decidedly "Dah" (our term for yes).

Then yesterday, I was in doing dishes while he was eating a bowl of raspberries at his little table a few feet away. All of the sudden, he mumbled something and then ran out of the room. I looked over to see his bowl empty and a small puddle of raspberry juice on the table. I didn't think much of it, but grabbed the bowl to wash. Before I could come back to wipe up the spill, in runs Ryan, a tissue in one hand and the entire box in the other. He dutifully wiped up the spill, without a word to me, and held it up saying "garbage." Then, he walked over and threw the tissue away!

Now, to the un-parents in my audience, this might not seem like a big deal- and maybe it wasn't, but I tell you, if he can clean up his own spills now...think of the possibilities! He'll be doing laundry next year! If this is a trend, I'm going to like Two...

By the way, I am the Pre-Aunt to an 85% girl! My sister (who is due 20 days ahead of me) had her ultrasound on Wednesday. I guess they never give 100% assurances with girls, but they did some good looking and their best guess was that Krissy's huge stash of barbies from her youth will not go to waste after all. Also, I will have someone to buy an easy-bake oven for someday. This is a little unexpected, since we have seen no girls in either of our husband's extended families for awhile (for example, I have 4 current nephews...). The amazing part? This will be the first girl baby born into her husband's family line in 55 years! Needless to say, we are all a bit excited.

Where did the week go?

After my ranting post this morning about not having power for another week, we went out to the house to pick up a few more things. Upon walking into the breezeway, I noticed a single light on. "Odd," I thought "this is not March 11th..."

Apparently our power company had 8 trucks head our way this morning and tackled our outage, restoring our electricity a full week before they expected to. Amazing how feelings for a company can change so quickly, from frustration to pure thankfulness!

March 11th????

I called the power company this morning.


"No worries," they stated with their placidly automated voice "we know about your outage."


Great!


"We are working on finding a crew to address your outage."


Perfect!


"Expected time of reconnection is ....March 11th at ten oh clock PM"


????


No problem, right? Sure, most people are just fine without electricity for two weeks in the middle of winter, right?





Anyhow, update on yesterday's blizzard conditions.


http://www.kcci.com/weather/11158184/detail.html





And here's a nice story on our power outage from last week. Apparently 11,000 of us still lingering without power, which is a far cry from the some 350,000 initial customers.


http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703030356



I will say, though, it is really neat to see how people band together in this weather. Yesterday, with the drifting snow, Chuck borrowed his neighbor's plow. After clearing our driveway, he headed over to four or five neighbors to help clear their driveways.

Next door, a van got stuck trying to leave for work. This picture is of one of her kids, the neighbor across the street, Chuck and Phil working to clear her path.

Stay warm and send sun soon...

Roomies

So, I think we could do without any more winter. Sure, the pumpkin pie was nice. The hot chocolate was warm and good. The reality of it is, winter is simply a visitor who has overstayed it's welcome.

Last week we had three days of 40 degree weather. The snow melted off the front lawn, the sun shone down on our small patch of earth, and I could feel Spring. My restlessness lifted and I could not get enough of the outdoors. I know what most of your are thinking- 40 degrees and you are outside? Well, compared to three weeks of teens and single digits. 40 degrees is Summer, comparatively speaking. I thought, surely this signifies the end of bitter cold, the end of sloppy driving conditions, the end of being cooped up indoors.

But our pal weather had another plan. The newscasters (who never blow anything out of proportion) called it "the biggest Winter event of the past five years". I don't know about that, but what happened last Saturday has certainly changed our lifestyle this week, along with many other Iowans.

It started with some freezing rain. I have never seen such stuff, but it falls, and immediately turns to ice, adhering to whatever it happens to touch (trees, road, power lines, vehicles). This lasted a few hours, and then turned into snow, which plopped on top of this already heavy ice. The other factor involved in this was how widespread this storm was, covering nearly all of Iowa.

The result of downed tree limbs and snapped power lines inhibited travel, of course, but also put nearly 200,000 Iowans out of power. At 3:00pm Saturday, we became one of the many. Unfortunately, our power company was the hardest hit, at 150,000 customers out of commission. Today, six days post-"winter event", there are still entire towns without power. We live on a dead-end road, two miles away from our nearest neighbor. Phil walked our line to see if he could tell where the power was out, and found that our lines travel down an unmaintained road, with snow drifts 4 and 5 feet high blocking passage. The line to our house is down in at least four spots on this road.

So many people were affected that we were unable to even get through to tell the company we were out of power for a day and a half. Needless to say, I think that the entire towns will get attention before we will.

We are on a well, which means our pump uses electricity to give us water. We have a fireplace, which is more than I can say for many others affected out here, but even so our house was at 55 degrees during the warm afternoons using the fireplace, two lanterns, and all of our candles (you can imagine the nights were a bit colder).

However, we were doing alright. We could cook on our wood stove insert, and we just slept in the living room. Other people around us have heat and we were able to stop in and visit. But the biggest blessing was when our friends Chuck and Amanda called, and invited/insisted we were to stay with them until our house had power again. WHAT a BLESSING! They have heat, running water, and hot showers. They have two boys around Ryan's age, which means there are playmates. I don't know what to do with myself waking up in the morning to a 70 degree house!

Last night we went under another blizzard watch, and today we are under a blizzard warning until 6pm. More snow has dumped on top of all the previous snow, leaving us with the main interstates closed throughout the region.

Yes, this will be a "winter event" to remember.

Sonja, you can have the snow now, but you need to send me some sun in trade...