A family tradition and the longest 36 hours of my life.

This is going to be a long one so go grab a cup of coffee or hot cocoa and sit down and relax while you read up on us.

I want to rewind a couple weeks and go back to Thanksgiving. It was a wonderful day! I am so blessed to be spending yet another Thanksgiving with the Teters. I'm not sure when this started but for as long as I can remember, every year we went to Aunt Linda and Uncle Danny's. What a wonderful gift I'm giving my kids. This is a tradition I will NOT break, yes there may be a Thanksgiving here or there spent with Nate's family but a piece of me will be missing. My mom loved Thanksgiving and LOVED spending this day with family, especially Aunt Linda. They talked for hours and I can only imagine how tough this is for to go through without her. A new generation is here to help out and a younger one to drive us crazy and keep us from playing games :-) But one of these years it WILL happen!! And Meg's going to be on MY team for Pictionary. I baked the entire morning and LOVED it! I am thoroughly enjoying not being pregnant this year! For the past 2 years I've been way pregnant and my back wouldn't allow me to stand and cook for hours on end. I made some of my moms favorite dishes. The little ones spent the day playing. It turned out to be a beautiful day outside so they rode everything that had wheels up and down a hill. ALL of the kids had fun and I think all of us "adults" did too :-) Thank you mom for starting this wonderful tradition that I will hold dear forever.

Jake and cousin Roan playing with the firetruck!

Meg, me and Aunt Linda -- Nathan skateboarding down the hill -- Aly and Jake

We have to rewind only a couple days for the rest of this blog! This last Sunday we knew there was a storm coming in, we knew we'd get snow, what we didn't know was how much and how long we would be without power.

I noticed it for the first time around 2am that the power had gone out and at 7am when the kids woke up I looked outside and it was WHITE!! It was gorgeous, I mean picture perfect gorgeous. We had at least a foot and it was still snowing. The power was out and I'm not sure that it really bothered me that much until that afternoon. We also didn't have phones since our landline was down and our cell phones were really spotty. We took the kids out in the snow first thing on Monday morning but they really didn't much care for it :-) The dogs LOVED it!! Jon also loved it and had a lot of fun playing in it for hours.

Nate started a fire.... a fire that we had no idea would have to get us through the coldest night on record. We did have hot water and that was a saving grace! We did have a lot of broken branches and I figured the power might be out for a while so I had Nate grab the camping stove so we could have soup for lunch. It worked out really well, we just put it on the balcony upstairs. We took the kids out again after nap on Monday and they had a better time, but the snow was still up to ALy's knees and they couldn't even walk in it! But Jon had so much, that we stayed out and played with him.

It was finally kicking in that we might go a night without heat, without power. So we started preparing. I had to go through clothes and pick out bedtime clothes. It was supposed to get down in the 20's and that was going to make for a really really long night. I knew I was going to put the kids to bed in their room at first and go from there. They spent the hardest part of the afternoon finger painting and then eating dinner. I swear my house looks like a bomb went off! It's amazing what twin toddlers can do when they are stuck inside without tv! They had a lot of fun though! Dinner was easy and by flashlight :-) Then we put them to bed and I got started on dinner. We had fried potatoes and scrambled eggs, one of my favorite things to make while camping. It was good and Nate, Jon and I ate it while listening to music and playing games by the fireplace. We had candles going but the lanterns worked the best. We played a LOT of board games and at the end of the night we made smores!

We did end up going to bed early. I spent the night downstairs (FREEZING) so I could be near the kids incase they got too cold. They did really well considering, and I went in at least every 2 hours and made sure they were covered with blankets and their little hands and cheeks weren't cold. They woke up at about 6:30 and I took them upstairs. It was 54 degrees in the house. However Nathan (the awesome husband/father that he is) had kept the fire going all night so the upstairs was nice and warm.

I think it was at that point that we called PG&E again and they told us they wouldn't know anything or have it fixed till 6:30pm. I was about to LOSE it! I had no idea how we would go through another day or night without power... But we then called again a couple hours later and they said around 2pm. SO that made me feel better. We decided that we would put the kids down for a nap and then head out for the mall. Well a couple hours into the twins nap the power came on!!!! I almost cried I was so happy!!! Going 36 hours without central heat and a stove, not to mention the fridge and freezers, seemed like a very long time!

We still have a lot of snow but it's frozen over and HARD!! It's still pretty though.

The funniest thing! Tim's tennis ball was frozen to the chair!!!

Some other great news is that Ethan has now learned to get into the sitting position on his own and as of 3 days ago is now officially on the move! He's crawling EVERYWHERE!! He's so much like ALy in the way he learns and meets these different milestones. I'm so proud of him and he is so much fun to watch!