Kentwood

Things have changed at our house this week.  Changed for the better if you ask me.  Zak has decided that he wants to attend/graduate from Kentwood High School.  He moved in with us on Friday.  Brought a bunch of clothes and some of his favorite things from his Moms and set up camp.  I think he did about 12 loads of laundry his first night here and got his room all put together.  He had all of his clothes hung up, posters hung, pictures/drawers rearranged, etc. 
He was supposed to start school on Monday.  You can't believe the hoops we've had to jump through in order to get this to happen.  Come Monday, he and Josh arrived at the school just to be told that the counselor was busy that day and wouldn't have time to show him around or give him his schedule and to come back on Tuesday.  What a disappointment.  He was so excited.  Needless to say, Monday was pretty boring.
But Tuesday!!  He was nervous, excited, scared, all at the same time but he made it through his first day back to the Kent School District and was all smiles about it.  He's been doing great so far this week.  Getting his homework done, reasonable hours hanging with friends, getting to bed on time.  All those fun responsible things that were part of the deal.  We've also spent every night this week at Wal-Mart buying school supplies and misc things that he needs around the house but it's been tons of fun having him around.  Here's to two promising years ahead!!  Go Conks!!!

Happy New Year!!

The year 2012 has certainly started off with a bang!  For the 6 years that I've lived in Seattle, we have yet to have "normal" weather.  People tell me every season that "this isn't what it's really like in Seattle".  So far, the winters have been the most unpredictable.  It rarely snows here, but when it does, it shuts the entire place down.  I have driven to work in HORRIBLE snow storms one day and then two days later it looks like Spring.  This year was no exception. 

The first snow storm of the season was a DOOZY!  The first few days were very pretty.  Lots of new snow, pretty, fresh, fun for the kids to play in.  We took the kids to Nana and Papa's (since all of the other fun sledding hills were PACKED with people).  We pulled the sleds behind the gator, built a snowman, built a sled ramp, all kinds of fun stuff.

Then the rain started and the real fun began.  There was ice all over everything.  I don't have any pictures of all of the broken trees but I would say about 70% of the trees in Seattle broke because of the heavy ice.

 Because the ice was so bad and all of the trees were falling, the power conveniently went out.  It went out for a few hours.  Came back on for about 45 minutes and then went out again for 2 days!

We had friends over the first night the power was out and hung out around the fire and had some dinner.  The next day we went to Josh's parents (they had power) did a puzzle and took showers.  While we were trying to decide what we were going to do that night, we got news that the power was back on at our house so things were back to normal.  Or were they?

Just as things started thawing out and people could once again brave the roads and get back into the swing of things, we had a major wind storm.  Although we managed through the snow and the ice, we weren't quite so lucky when it came to the wind...   Yep.  This is our back fence exactly two days after Josh and his Dad built it.  The wind picked it up and destroyed it AND the 3ft brick wall that it was on top of.  They spent an entire day this week rebuilding the brick wall and resetting the posts, now we just have to put the fence back where it goes and hope there isn't anymore wind in the forecast..