Around The Home

It has been an interesting week weather-wise, but that is what’s fun about living in the north! We went from near 60s to teens in a matter of days – oh, and a nasty blizzard. More on that in a bit.

This week we will be heading back to Michigan for Thanksgiving, which we are very excited about. We have not seen our families (outside of Dan’s parents) since this past June, so we are excited to do some catching up with them all. Also for Mazy to see her cousins! She has grown incredibly since we were home in June, and is HEALTHY! Back in June, she was still recovering from her pneumonia, so hopefully we all can stay healthy and enjoy some time away. Not sure how much blogging I will do, so hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Meanwhile, here is what’s been going on this past week:

Mazy’s highlight on Mondays is going to Open Rock. This is where we open up the youth group building and invite our kids to come and do their homework. We make supper for the kids and what we love the most, is sharing a meal together, catching up on each other’s lives, before they do their homework. Often times we end up playing games instead, but for those 3 hours, it’s a great time to just hang out. Anyways, Mazy LOVES going there because she likes to show off and be like the youth group kids. She even wanted to be like them and “watch” a computer, so we turned on Praise Baby!

Since Mazy has been sleeping better, she now likes to “pretend” to go “nigh-night” as she calls it. Don’t be fooled – she doesn’t actually sleep, but this is how we practice and tell her that sleeping is okay! She will still randomly wake up in the middle of the night or not want to nap or go to sleep at night, but it is a far cry from where we were in the past! She is a good sleeper now! YAY!

That smile…

One of the humbling joys we have experienced as parents is how Mazy views as her heroes right now. She wants to do everything like us, which is a high-responsibility in our minds. Even like putting on my socks! She did this herself:

We knew there was a blizzard on the way, and we knew it was going to be a doozy, but I guess we did not expect it to be one of the worst since we have been in Minnesota! It started Friday morning at about 8:00, when the rain changed to snow. By 9:30am on Friday, we lost our electricity, and there was no sign of it coming on anytime soon because the storm was only getting worse.

The projected time was 7am Saturday morning, but those guys should not have been outside trying to fix our electricity in that storm! It was NASTY – the gusts and snow were incredible. Our electricity came back on 27 hours later, but it was okay. I will admit I shed a tear when it came back though because Mazy had had it, I did not know what else to feed her, and it was cold. We survived the night, bundling up, but by morning we texted some friends to see if we could hang out with them for the morning because it was too cold for Mazy to be at home. What a gift it was to have a place to go! Thankfully half of our town had electricity! By 12:30pm on Saturday, we heard our fridge go on and it was back!

This whole experience was a life lesson for me. It of course made me thankful for what we have. It made me think of the millions who do not have what we have, who have to deal with no electricity their whole life. We are not prepared to live without it. We thought we could hook up a heater to a battery with a converter, but it didn’t work. We “camped” inside our home to heat up our soup and make grilled cheese, but to stay warm, we did not have a backup plan. So Saturday night we were thankful for the gift of warmth. A warm shower, a warm bed, and even warm water to do the dishes in. All things that we continue to take for granted on a daily basis! The timing was perfect, especially in this Thanksgiving week!

Mazy LOVED waking up and watching the snow! She was begging and begging to go outside, so we put all of her snow clothes on. She lasted about 2 minutes. Dan took her out, but I am sure I would have only lasted 2 minutes too!

This is what happens when you wash blankie. I told her blankie needed to be washed, but she just did not understand. I then told her blankie needed a bath and that helped. Then blankie needed to dry off after her bath, and that also coerced her to make it through the next 30 minutes. Thankfully the blankie was in the first load that finished before the power went out.

Since we were snowed in, I convinced Dan to let me set up for Christmas! It really made it quite festive considering the blizzard!

Dan and Mazy made it down the hill once!

A blizzard called for card games while Mazy was sleeping! We both took a set of 3, so our 4 year long tally didn’t change much.

Dan’s fine ingenuity at it’s best! He thought of a grand idea, to hook the boat battery up to a power converter, so we could use our internet to stay up in what was going on weather-wise. There wasn’t enough power to run our heaters, but this contraption helped Mazy stay occupied b/c this meant she could watch Daniel Tiger!

My outdoorsy husband created what he called “a lanternlight dinner” for me! He heated up the soup I had made a few days prior, made grilled cheese for Mazy, and it was a pleasant meal together in the quiet!