Christmas

We had an awesome Christmas this year! The kids got more gifts than they needed (of course, as always), but they loved every minute of it=)

The kids have been playing with their new toys and thankfully Mike is off work so he is home to help them. We had a nice fire for Christmas (with all the wood from our trees that came down due to the ice).

Ryan had fun playing with all the airplane toys (he got a lot of airplanes, but never enough for him - hee hee)

Ryan's favorite gift this year was his Webkinz "Snowball". He said it was the best Christmas ever because he got snowball, just what he always wanted.

Amber loves her new robe and PJ's to keep warm. We may not have snow, but it is cold here.

The kids (& I) got Mike some funny boxers that Ryan and Amber picked out)

The kids have been playing like crazy and the mess it just now starting to get cleaned up.

The dogs had a good Christmas too. They didn't get one ornament off the tree and didn't have a problem with all the paper and plastic on the floor either. They were pretty worn out though.

Buddy crashed out by the bag of leftover wrapping paper and cardboard.

It was a good Christmas! We all went shopping as a family on the Saturday before at the big mall. It was a lot of fun and some good memories for this year.

Our church had a candlelight service on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas day we stayed in our PJ's all day, cooked a Turkey (we ended up with 2 on Thanksgiving - we are getting the Turkey cooking thing down now - hee hee). Baked the rest of our Christmas cookies (to tide us over through the week), and played with all the new toys we got. We played the game of Life that the kids got and hope to play Spoons, Uno and a few others through New Years Eve.

Christmas Party

For the first time ever, we were able to go to Mike's Work Christmas Party! More pictures will follow. We had a great time! They had a nice reception and dinner at the Doubletree down town and it was a murder mystery event. It was fun, the food was great and I got to meet a lot of people that Mike works with.

Merry Christmas - a bit early

An Early Christmas Gift from O'ma and O'pa Edwards really helped Mike clean up the mess the ice storm left us!

I know it looks like hard work but Mike loved playing with his new chainsaw!

Okay, so it was a lot of hard work. Can you imagine how hard it would have been without a chainsaw! Thank you soooo much O'ma and O'pa you saved us (you really saved Mike!)

We may be able to save some of the trees, but they are not going to be pretty.

It's ICE here in Owasso

We had quite the ice storm lately. It started Saturday night a little, but really hit hard on Sunday night. We lost most of our trees (if not all). You can't even get to our front door because of the ice on the trees and grass. We lost power (with most everyone else) from 11pm Sunday night until almost 11am. We were very lucky to get our power back. Several families do not have power (153,000 people in the Tulsa Metro area - that does not include cities like Owasso). I made it to church on time and soon found out we were the only church with power and the Red Cross was going to take us over as a designated Shelter. We called anyone available to come help and started to get things set up. We began cooking meals and shopping for more food. Shortly after we got lunch ready we lost power and were closed down.

We lost our big STRONG oak tree on the side of our house by our dining room. The top came down and ended right at our window.

This is our backyard view now. We lost most all of our trees which used to line the fence and give us a nice Green view instead of a view of the cul de sac.

This is the one tree that was in the middle of our backyard. We couldn't sleep at all last night. We could hear the branches breaking and falling off all night long. Luckily we didn't lose our fence.

This is the entrance to our housing development right next to our house. Trees are bent and blocking most all streets and several streets are closed.

These pictures are only of our home and taken from our home, there is damage like this ALL OVER the area. We are just one small sample. We are blessed that our home is safe and we have power! We had two other families come stay with us because they had no power. It was a very interesting day. School was cancelled today and will be cancelled tomorrow as well. Hopefully we are through the worst and things will melt away soon. We still hear branches crash every now and then. We will be lucky to have any trees that survive. Go figure we purposely chose this neighborhood because of all the nice big fully developed trees. Oh well=)

Owasso Christmas Parade

There was a Christmas Parade in Owasso on Saturday. The weather wasn't too bad really. The kids wore coats over their uniforms so you could hardly tell they were Scouts.

They also let Amber ride on the float (which I thought was a kick). It was cool, but not too bad. Amber and Ryan both did a great job at waving at everyone. Ryan walked the second half and handed out candy. He had his Heely's on and was wheeling around like an expert=)

Cub Scout Update

Ryan is still enjoying Scouts!
Celebrating reaching their goals for popcorn sales, they got to silly string the leaders =)

Ryan won a fun compass, LED, magnifying, key chain gadget for his popcorn sales. He did great! And got to watch some Indian dancing at the last pack meeting . . . . . reminded me of Arizona

NARNIA II

Coming to theaters in May 2008 - view the trailer at the link below

http://www.narniaweb.com/news.asp?id=1355&dl=14478175

Swimming in December

Swimming in December =) The neighbor boy had a birthday party at the YMCA and Ryan and Amber were both invited. They had a great time!