2009 Polar Plunge

This post is guaranteed to give you the shivers! Welcome to the Polar Bear Plunge. My fire department friend Wendy told me she was going to do the Polar Bear Plunge again this year. I marked my calendar and arrived just in time to take pictures. The local fire dept and the local police department have a little costume competition every year. Last year the police won with thier "Pig" costumes. This year the award went to the Fire Department. (the police came dressed as Pigs again this year...gotta step it up guys!) Anyway, here are some highlights of the day!

Wendy and the local fire fighters

Cold people

Wendy's son Josh - he was a rescue team member

One, Two, Three...Plunge!! Love her expression!

Here comes the local Police department!

I'm having Baywatch flashbacks!

My son's Principal

Josh chillin' (no pun intended)

My boys, all bundled up. Except Isaiah, he walked out the door without a coat!

Now he looks ccccoooold!

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Family Time

Spent some quality time with the family this weekend. We took our little foster puppy up to Indy to be adopted by my sister and her hubby. We got to see my parents and my brothers family too. Here are some family pics.

Mom and Isaiah on Valentines Day

Matt and Tracee with their new puppy

Mom with Autumn, aren't they purdy!

Autumn showing mom some love. Dad taught Autumn and her brother to head-butt. It's cute, until they head-butt you when you're least expceting it. hehe

Mom, Dad and Autumn

My beautiful sister Tracee

My good-looking dad

Autumn 10 months old

Big Brother Christopher 2 years old

NEW FEATURE!

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Where's George?

So I reached into my purse to pull out some money to stick in a birthday card today. The bill I took out had a website written on it http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ Curious I checked it out. It's a fun bill tracking site. You enter the series, serial number and dollar value into the website and it tells you if your bill is being tracked. My bill was originally given to a man in Delfied WI as change at a gun show. It has traveled over 356 miles in the last 4 years to reach me. I learned about the original poster, he is a Vietnam War Vet and is an airline pilot. How cool is that?

So, grab a bill and log onto http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ and look up some of your bills and register them. You never know where they will turn up! If you register your name and email with them, they will send you an email to let you know when someone logs in and tracks your bill.

Roughing It and Magic Mike

I'll admit, ice storms are beautiful. I love the look of snow covering the ground making our world look fresh and clean. It reminds me of what my heart must look like after I ask God for forgiveness. Washed clean, white as snow. I love to see ice covering the trees, glistening like diamonds when touched by the sun. The downside to all of this is the disaster that lays in the wake of the storm. Power lines down, transformers blown, roads covered in icy danger. Then comes the worst of it all; a power outage! We lost our power on Tuesday at 4am and it did not return until Thursday at 7pm. Our house grew colder by the hour. It hovered near 50 degrees. We burned through almost all of the firewood, but with vaulted ceilings and a big home, it did very little to help. Enter Magic Mike. That's what I call him. Mike is our neighbor. He is the best neighbor anyone would ever want to have. Mike can fix anything. My son's mini motorcycle broke a chain, Magic Mike fixed it. My lawnmower was spewing oil and coughing smoke, Magic Mike fixed it. Dennis old gray Suburban wouldn't run, Magic Mike to the rescue. I backed out of my garage and smashed my side mirror on the garage door frame, you guessed it; Magic Mike fixed it. (did I tell you he's a auto body repairman?, they're good to have around you know!) So when my husband was out of town the entire ice storm week, who brought me a heater? Magic Mike! He brought me the shop heater from his auto body repair shop, set it up for us and we had heat! Thanks Magic Mike!! You rescued us again.

This is Magic Mike.

I forgot to mention that he cooks up a mean batch of homemade spagetti sauce

and always shares it with our family!

Blanket, hat, cell phone, i-pod! Good to go!

Even the dog wore her sweater

Game Time!

Ok, this is our game room. We brought the heater in this room because it is the only room on the main level of the house that can be closed off from the other rooms, thus keeping the heat in! See the heater in the middle of the room.

Me "blowing" my hair dry over the heater.

When the heater was in the entry way, the heat rose to the second level. Isaiah hung his feet over to get them warm. Also notice the aquarium. Those are fruit flies. Part of Logan's science fair experiment. They were dieing in the cold temps.

Ice Storm

Life has been rough here the past week or so. We got slammed with one of the worst ice storms in this area in it's history. Schools were closed for 4 days. Over 100,000 people were without power and some still are. It was bone chilling cold and we were without heat. We lived like pioneers for a few days (more on that later.) Here are some pictures of what old man winter left behind.
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This is the road we travel down to get to my son's school. A large pine tree fell across it.


Power lines down in the road


Trees down on the power lines


My favorite pond


My Japanese Maple tree bowing down and touching the sidewalk. It's usually about a story and a half tall.




Ice on the side of the house


Ice on the trees






The "war zone" we call our back yard


Ice on our deck rail


Ice on the back of the house




More of the "war zone"


On my next post I will share some photos of us being pioneers .