Michigan Winter

Here's a little taste of our weekend storm. The wind let up a little for a brief window yesterday. Cori fearlessly bundled up and headed out to clear our driveway. Good thing he went when he did. Not long after, the wind picked back up and so did the snow. When he plowed again this morning, the drift on the right side of the driveway (where he is standing in the last picture) was over his head. We have a large snow drift that arcs around the west side of the house. This is why the driveway is dry next to the garage and swamped in the middle.

And the forecast for the rest of the week: a whole lot more of the same.

Grant Attack

Couldn't you just eat him alive? I have to restrain myself by the minute.

Blessings

Attending the World-Wide Adult Leadership Training broadcast yesterday. Timely and inspiring as always. There was particular attention paid to family matters, and Cori and I felt very uplifted and instructed in particular ways specific to our family and our callings alike. It was also wonderful to be addressed by President Monson for the first time. His new mantel is evident.

Our new camera! I've been conducting a little self-induced crash course on aperture size, shutter speeds, and ISO settings. We're pretty much still pointing and shooting. But we're learning and taking pictures of just about everything.

Sleeping in this morning. Grace had the roughest night ever. Long story short, Cori, Grace and I didn't get to sleep until approximately 5:15 am. It was bad. An hour and a half after we were asleep at last, we got a call from our Branch President telling us that church was cancelled. Hence the picture of what we found on our back porch this morning. For all the snow that fell last night, the real danger has been the extreme wind. Gotta love the Midwest in the winter. After Cori made some calls to inform other members of the branch we went back to sleep. For a long time.

Our lovely day at home today. We prayed that the day would still feel like the Sabbath, and it has. Our day has included: the Children's Song Book and MoTab. on our Bose, fudgy brownies a la Cori, lots of stories from the Book of Mormon reader, a light game of Yatzee, slow cooked pulled pork sandwiches and fruit and jello parfaits, long naps, hot showers, some quality guitar time, PJs and hoodies all day long, smiling faces, lots more snow, and a fierce relentless wind. Oh, and bunches of pictures.

Pictures

In celebration of our new arrival, here are some pictures my talented sis took with her camera back in November. Little Grant was just two weeks old.

Now you can prepare yourselves for an inundation of Grant pictures. Because we've been snapping away!

Wordless Wednesday: Scene from an airport layover

Nothing In Particular

I haven't posted pictures in a while (mostly because the battery charger for our camera has been MIA since Christmas and I am rendered helplessly unable to either take any more pictures or extract pictures already on the card.). ( Although, in other news, I just got done ordering a new camera scheduled to be delivered in 3 days and can barely contain my glee. I'm so excited!) Anyway, I found some fun never-before-seen-on-this-blog photos to share.

Featured:
Gracie helping me make pizza
Grant talking. He's such a little chatter box.
A view of some of our snow. Its a good 8-10 inch step down onto the deck. So, that's a lot of snow piled up against the slider. Its beyond beautiful when the sun is out. Hopefully I'll be able to get a good picture of that before the week is over.

Blessings

• The Funeral. It was so comforting and uplifting to watch the special funeral and tribute given for President Hinckley. I'm so grateful we had access to the broadcast.
  
  
• Project Completion! At last, the parade of workers and countless days of being at home waiting for people to show up are over. We have a couple of final inspections this next week, and then the basement is completely done. I'm soooooo happy. (Yes Jessica, I'm sew heppy!)

• Date night. It had been a while since we had a legitamate date night. You know, the kind with a babysitter. But Friday night, we did it up right. Dinner out followed by a few hours of night skiing (complete with a hot chocolate for 2 in the lodge) and then a little trip to the grocery store. Ahhh, I needed that.

• My sweet Gracie. She woke up this morning with a yucky sounding cough. In the interest of everyone else's health we decided to keep her home from Church which meant that Cori and I got to do the Church attendance switcheroo. I got ready to go and was getting Grace down for a much needed nap when she started crying. "I can't go sleep! I want to go to Church!" Sorry Gracie bug, you are sick today. We need to get you better. "I's fine, mom. I want to go to Church!" cough, cough, cough...

• Our sister-in-law Megan who celebrated a birthday this week.

• My health. Superbowl Sunday last year, I woke up feeling fine and went to bed completely nauseated. I wouldn't feel better for another 3 1/2 months. We look forward to having more kids. But today, I'm grateful to not be sick and pregnant.