Poor trees!

This is terrible! But, I am thankful we still have our electricity. A bunch of people in the area are out. The snow is really deep and pretty, but oh the poor trees! I don't even think the pictures really capture how bad it is. I am scared more are about to fall. The one on John's car had not fallen at 630 when he checked and then at 7, there it was. We both have colds and he is out there trying to clean it all up. Ugh.

Snow Day!

Oh my goodness! It has been snowing in Arlington ALL DAY! It is so pretty, but is now causing some issues. I couldn't get 5 feet from my drive way today in order to pick up Macie, Mica and Logan. My neighbor had to drive me up there in her pretty new Lexus. I felt so bad with 4 wet kids in there! The truck would just not drive on the slushy snow. Now, tree limbs are falling left and right. I'm not just talking small little limbs! Big huge, half of trees. It's really scary. Almost 1/2 of our tree in the front is covering half our street. And, another huge tree from our house just hit our neighbors house. Our neighbors on both sides have HUGE parts of trees down too. I am sad and scared. I love our trees, so I want them around. But, scared that one is going to come crashing through our roof! Or, smash John's car. (maybe not such a big loss there!) Literally, as a I sit here, I am hearing limbs crash and hit our house with a big boom. Anyway, just writing, cuz it helps me to vent I guess. Here are some pictures of the fun and the ugly. Poor Maris hates the snow, or maybe she just hates that jacket. Ha! We took a big bubble bath after they played in the snow a little.

Broken Bow

Our family needed some refueling and reconnecting! Macie had a 4-day weekend, so we decided to go to Broken Bow, OK. We almost didn't go because of various issues, but I am so glad we did. Sara had suggested (insisted) that I watch Oprah the other day where Peter Walsh was on there helping a family reconnect. We didn't have the same issues as that family, but at the same time, it still hit home. John and I watched it together and (I) decided to make this family trip a reconnecting time. In the show, the family had to go without any tv, computers or cell phones for a certain period of time. So, even though we rented this luxury cabin with FOUR flat screen tvs, we decided (I decided and John agreed) no tv all weekend. Except for the Cowboy playoff game, which I think John wishes he missed. But, anyway, can you believe we did it? In the show, the family was also given 4 other rules to live by. At the end, the family tweaked the rules for something that would work for them. We used this model and came up with our own 5 rules.

We also read through Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. I was always kinda reluctant to read his stuff and John was too. But, we needed something and several people reccmended this. It was a great book! We are going to be putting his ideas into place in the coming month.

I really hope we can stick to all of our little "resolutions" we made this weekend.

So, here are some glimpses of our weekend. It was really fun and I highly reccomend going. We ended up staying an extra night because we loved our cabin so much. Ha! It was a splurge, no doubt. We will have to figure out in our new money makeover how we can do it again though!

We were greeted by this cat at our cabin. At first, we thought it was wild. Obviously, it was not. But, I don't think it had an owner. I was totally going to bring her home! I think I could have convinced John, don' t you? But, she was gone the next day after our bike ride.

This was in our backyard. Blury picture. We roasted hot dogs. Girls got too cold, so we had to do the smores on the inside fireplace.

Picnic in Beavers Bend State Park. Beavers Bend park has rolling rivers with trout fishing and rock throwing, a big beautiful lake, hiking trails, a museum and massive network of ATV trails. There is camping too, but the nearby abundance of "luxury cabins" are just too fun!

We tried a few off-road trails, but bikes with passengers just aren't made for mountain biking. We took these roads through the state park campgrounds. No one was there. We saw a bunch of deer. It was beautiful and fun.

The front of our cabin.

The above 3 photos were all taken with the self timer. We were pretty proud of ourselves. Ha!

All that fun stuff to do, and all Macie and Maris needed was a bucket and some rocks and plants.

Our cabin also had a hot tub. We all enjoyed that every night too. It was chilly outside and it felt great. I usually don't like em and I thought Macie and Maris would hate it. But, I was wrong!

So, have I convinced anyone to go any time soon? If so, let me know, because we left our pack n play there and I want it back! Ha!

Macie's pictures from Broken Bow

Here are some of Macie's photos from our trip:

This is a view of our cabin from the loft.

This was the coolest tree. We saw several like this, growing horizontal and then straight back up.

Fairy House

Pretending is so fun! When I was little, Paul and I had a family of mice (imaginary!) that lived by our stairs and we had a friendly ghost that lived in the attic. We had so much fun with them. Also, depending on how many times we spun around, we could turn ourselves into either Peter Pan or another boy (for him) or girl (for me). Some how I stumbled upon this fairy door on etsy at the faerywatcher shop. The lady was super nice and it was only $10. Now that I have it, I see how easy it was to make. She made it out of popcicle sticks and twigs with some fake leaves and stuff. I tried to convince Macie that a fairy made it, but she really wasn't convinced. She said a fairy could not have made it because the leaves were fake. But, she was excited about it and was all caught up in the imaginative part of it. She moved the door to another tree and we made a front walk with a welcome sign and she made a backyard with trees, pool, table and chairs, all out of sticks and leaves. It was fun. My original idea was to just put it in the backyard and wait for her to discover it. But, I couldn't wait and I wanted to capture her reaction on video.... SO, I kinda guided her to it. I wasn't too obvious I don't think. I was going to post the video on here too, but I don't have time to figure that out and can't find the cord to the video camera. Maybe someday, but I doubt it. Anyway, here are the pictures. I think we could totally make our own fairy doors!

Cool Jeans Fix

I haven't posted in forever and I really want to, but always end up doing something else. But, I thought I would share with my 3 readers (ha!) a neat little trick I found and tried today. So, this is a lame post, but an easy one.

So, when you find a great pair of jeans at the thrift store for $3 and they fit and feel great over your big butt, but are WAY too long, what do ya do? It kinda defeats the purpose to take them to the tailor for $10 cuz then they are $13 jeans. Not such a great deal. And, hemming them myself isn't an option cuz it would look like crap. So...... I found this website that tells you to just sew some colorful stitches at the bottom and then just cut them off! It is a controlled fray. It was just what I wanted and was so easy and quick, goes perfect with the worn vintagey comfy look of my jeans. But, I think I cut mine a little short. Oh well. Thought I would pass it along...

kitchen decorating

I have finally put my kitchen somewhat back together since we repainted it in March. I am trying to use my bakers rack for extra storage, not just junk or pretties. I wanted my coffee pot over there, but it opens from the top and wouldn't fit on the shelf. So, john had this idea to put the thing on a drawer slide. Now, I just pull it out to add the coffee and water and i have a whole little coffee station. I am really liking it. The yellow bowl holds my filters and the coffee is in the canister. I still want to repaint the whole bakers rack. But, haven't decided how yet. And, I am undecided on the curtain thing. i made it out of a thrift store table cloth. it looks kinda stupid. I bought the drawer shelves in Round Top and the new drawer pulls at Anthropology. Yes, the pulls were more than the drawers. ha! Sara took the lovely pictures of our girls cooking when she was here in june. i got the idea to display them this way from a magazine. Can you belive i did that all by myself? The guy at Lowes cut the boards for me..... Ok, and john hung them. oh, and Sara took the pictures. ok, so i just put them on the board. ha! i was still impressed with myself.

Just as a side note.... i am totally addicted to the thrift stores! i have been going almost every week and finding all sorts of tresures. Several Christmas gifts are coming from there. maris picked out her own sit n spin for $3. That will be under the tree. ha! And, i found a cute vanity bench for Macie that i am going to re paint and fix up for Christmas. More stuff that i won't reveal at this time. hee hee. ok, bye!