Can you belive we moved back for this?

The first day of February, Oklahoma was hit with a record shattering blizzard. Over 20 inches of snow fell in Tulsa in a matter of hours. I tried to drive the 2.5 miles to the store (in the worst part of the blizzard) to feed our poor animals. I made it half way when I was forced to detour through a parking lot to avoid about 11 cars scattered through the intersection ahead. In the parking lot, I wound up in a deep drift of snow while trying to avoid yet another stuck vehicle. I rocked my truck back and forth, taking breaks to let the transmission cool, for 45 min. When I finally got my truck into sustainable forward momentum, I was pointed toward my house. I took it as a sign and drove the treacherous road home. Two heroic employees of mine walked through thigh deep drifts of snow for a mile to get to my store and feed the babies. It took them over an hour and a half to walk each way! I spent the rest of that day at home with my family who were out of school and off work because of the storm. It is certainly an experience we won't forget soon. The weather stayed bitterly cold and we got even more snow in the following days. I spent my time shuttling people from their homes to work and back. We were open shorter hours due to lack of customers and for the safety of my employees. (The roads were even more dangerous after dark and I didn't want my people out late.) Joey, Joann and I shovelled the back of my building so they could get the door open to take the trash to the dumpster. Also, the back door is a fire exit and it has to be clear when we are open. The snow was drifted to nearly the top of our 8 foot receiving doors. And this was no simple drift. You couldn't even see my dumpster that stands about 4 feet from the door! It was buried in the snow drift that really didn't taper down until you got about 8-10 feet from the building. There it was about 2 feet deep. Even with 3 adults trading off shoveling, we had to take a few breaks to warm up and catch our breath in order to finish. We began about 10 am and cleared one half of my doorway to allow one door to swing out by around 4 in the afternoon. It was nuts! All in all we spent 2 days closed and 2 more days closing early that week. Joey didn't work the whole week and of course the boys didn't have school. In fact, before all the snow was done coming, the boys missed 2 weeks of school! Talk about stir crazy!! They had cabin fever in the worst way! We were all ready for them to get back to school:) We were very blessed through the whole ordeal, though. We had enough warning that I had stocked our pantry and we were not at a loss for food or basic needs the whole time. I was blessed to have all the experience I gained driving on the snow in Utah. I was not the least bit intimidated to get out and drive, even after getting stuck the first day. I had confidence in my truck and our ability to get around and help others. It was great to be able to help my employees when they would have otherwise been unable to work. I was even able to take one of my girls to the grocery store to pick up the birthday cake she had preordered for her son's birthday! It felt great to be able to do that for her. Her apartment complex hadn't been plowed and she had to climb (literally) over 4-5 foot drifts of snow to get to my truck in the road. Crazy! Truly a time we will always remember.

Birdbrains

The boys have had parakeets since we moved here about 18 months ago. One day, a while after Christmas, we decided to take some pictures so everyone can see what they look like! The top pic is of Shady. He is a pale lavendar color. (Hard to tell, but he is.) Next pic is Max. We actually thought he was a girl for a long time, but his cere color finally changed. Rocky is the turqoise bird with a yellow face in the bottom 2 pics. He is Trevor's favorite. We actually have a solid yellow bird with red eyes. Her name is Tweetums. (yes, like all of mom's canaries) She is hateful, so we don't hold her. :( I will try to get a good picture of their cage and add it to the post. It really is a pretty cool cage. Keeps in all the mess!     Update: 4/2/11 Max passed away today.  I am really not sure why.  It is so hard with birds.  They hide their illness until it is really too late to help.  He passed quietly in a warm, comfortable place.  I took him away from the other birds when I noticed he wasn't well :(  I brought 2 more birds home from work with me.  I didn't want to introduce just one to the group.  I'll try to get pictures of them soon and post the names Gavin picks for them. (Max was his.)

An Okie Christmas

Our Christmastime weather was not much to write about this year. No snow and really not even cold for more than a day at a time leading up to the big day! Christmas itself did not disappoint, though. It did cool down and we even saw some tiny little dustlike snowflakes as we were out and about doing our yearly scavenger hunt! (I say "yearly". This is the second year we have held the tradition, but it's a definite keeper.)

Trevor and Gavin were almost as excited as Joey for Christmas to arrive. Joey spent hours pouring over the internet looking for the right (used) Wii combo for our boys. He made sure we ended up with a system that included tons of games and a complete band setup for the Rockband and Guitar Hero games we love. In all he found a like-new Wii with 13 games, 3 Guitars, a mic, drums and 4 controllers. Of course he tested it all out before buying and again when he got home, just for good measure. ;)

We planned to make it the last gift they would receive, after the scavenger hunt. We worked for most of the evening Christmas Eve making up the clues and hiding them at the sites. We wanted the hunt to be challenging, so we made the clues and the hiding places harder to guess. We had to hide the clues around the house last year because we were literally snowed in! This year, we drove all over within a 4 mile radius of the house hiding clues in places we frequent. One was at the boys' school, one at the Chik fil A by our house, one at Platos closet(that was a tough clue!)and so on.

There were 10 clues in all. We had the boys unscrambling words and playing hangman and solving word riddles to find the next location. Then the boys had to find the clue at the location. We had so much fun! We will have to make it harder next year because it took the boys less time to figure out and follow the clues than it took Joey and I to place them all the night before!

When we finally got back to the house(the safest hiding place we could think of) the boys were so excited to break it out and start playing. We played well into the night and continued playing the rest of the boys' time out of school:)

Joey and I are already plotting for next year's scavenger hunt. Bigger better and maybe a few twists!...