Have you ever seen this?

I am guessing that there's something here you haven't seen before.

An ice storm happens when there is cold air at the surface of the earth and warm air up in the clouds.  The rain comes down and freezes to everything.

 

These pictures were taken first thing in the morning on Thursday.  It continued to rain for another 6 hours after this.  Everything got heavy and broke.

Eventually these needles were one solid block of ice.  Not as cool as seeing each one in an individual shaft of ice.

How do you open this?

 
Here's a close up.  By the time dad got around to deicing his car, it was 3/4" thick (not pictured).

 Check out how thick the ice was. 

Guess what this is.

 

See the web?

The ice is as big as pearls on a necklace.  That is one strong web.  Originally there were two, but dad grabbed one trying to figure out what it was.

Here he is trying to kill himself.  It is still raining when this was taken.  We call that Wackadoodle!  The ice weighed down the branches and caused them to explode like fire crackers.  Imagine tying a bag of ice to every little branch.  When the top broke it took out two other branches on the way down.

The ice caused the tops to pop off of the trees.  These came from 60' up in the air and some stabbed into the ground several inches. 

This is a 12" diameter tree that broke off and landed in the neighbors yard.  There is a branch in the foreground that makes it look smaller.  It hit the ground first and then fell back into the fence. Amazingly it only killed a few bushes in the yard.

It takes a lot of weight to do this.

 This one is just "Awesome"!

Dad has more than 20 pictures of different trees in the neighborhood that all look like this.  Here are just a few.

The entire neighborhood was planted with gorgeous flowering plumbs.  They look amazing in the Spring.  At least they used to.  Virtually everyone of them had major breaks.  Many are going to be a complete loss.

 

Daddy made a snowball!

We got our first snow of the year and it was lots of fun!  Daddy took me sledding. 

This is the street coming into our neighborhood.  It wasn't getting much action from the cars.  Getting up the hill was so easy.

 

Coming down was harder.  I had my eyes closed almost the whole way.  The snow was blowing in them.

Mommy and Sissy are getting ready for their turn.

They weren't as good as me and daddy.  

The sign(s)

My Dad is not very good at following directions.  I have told him over and over and over and over again that he is not allowed to use my bathroom because he makes it stink!  But it doesn't matter how many times I tell him, he still poops in there!  Well, now that I'm learning to write, I decided that maybe Dad would remember what I keep telling him if I wrote is down and stuck it to my bathroom door right in front of his face.  Of course, Dad doesn't like to read as much as I do, so I had to read the sign to him, and then he wrote it down on his own paper and put it right next to mine. Weird.

But do you think two signs on the door has solved the problem?  You guessed it.  Dad is still stinking up my bathroom.

Look Who's One!!!

Me!!!

I got to open some presents again.  It feels weird to have Mommy help me rip paper cuz normally she's telling me "no" when I try it other times on my own.  But this colorful paper sure has fun things under it.

I got a toy boat for bath time, a little dog pillow pet just like Ty's big one, and a lot of clothes.  Apparently all the ones I've got are getting to small because I'm getting taller.**

After opening my presents, I got to eat my very own cupcake!  I didn't even have to share it with Mommy or Daddy!  Although, when Mommy put the cupcake in front of me, there was this bright, hot thing on it.

I tried touching it, but Mommy said "No, No!" and that really scared me.  I heard that the same thing happened to my brother on his first birthday. 

And here are some fun pics of me trying to eat the cupcake:

**At my 1 year old doctor appointment I was in the 70th percentile for height, 25th for head size, and 10th for weight.  I had no idea I was so tall and skinny!  I'm dying for Mommy to turn my carseat to forward facing so I can see everything that Ty does, but I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer cuz I'm only 18 pounds right now.  Guess I need to eat a few more cupcakes!  : )

Merry Christmas!

Mom has set a goal for 2012 that she is I am going to update our blog at least once a week.  What a slave driver!  So it's the second day of 2012 and I'm already hard at work.  However, this post is about Christmas last year, so I'm not sure if that should count as a post for last year or this year.  Hmmm...

We visited Cooper on Christmas Eve Day.  The weather was perfect outside.  In fact, the sun was so bright that we had trouble keeping our eyes open while looking at the camera!

My cousins and both Gmas and Gpas were here on Christmas Eve.  We had fun opening presents from each other and playing with toys.

This was Sydney's first time ever unwrapping a present. She wasn't sure what was going on, so we had to give her a little help.

But she sure did love the doll she saw when all the paper was out of the way.

I was so excited on Christmas Eve.  I went to bed with the flashlight I got from Gpa Johnson and my camera so I could see to take a picture of Santa when he came.  Unfortunately, I fell asleep pretty quickly.

Fortunately, I woke up again at 1:45am and stayed awake until 5am!  Mom and Dad weren't nearly as excited as I was when I came into their room and kept begging to go downstairs and see what Santa had brought.  They finally put on a movie for me.  I got to watch Shrek and then Megamind in bed before I finally fell asleep again.

Thank goodness I didn't sleep too late after that.  I was up and ready go at 7am.

Look what I got from Santa!  A Lego Star Wars AT-AT Walker!  Awesome!

Me with my stocking stash and Santa presents.

Syd didn't really get what was going on.  Santa brought her a shopping cart and a bottle and some dried blueberries in her stocking (even though she really wanted my Smarties).

Look!  A remote control monster truck!!!!

Yay for green army men!  Dad and I had an awesome battle on the kitchen floor later in the day and Grandma and I played again on the dining room table.

 Sydney had fun snacking on the fake food she got.

Guess who wrapped this present for Sydney. Yep! Dad. Can you guess what she got?

A table just our size!  (Although Sydney prefers to climb to the top and stand there until someone comes to help her down.)

Another fabulous wrapping job from Dad.  Mom was worried that Dad had given her giant boots, but they just turned out to be a lot of cardboard wrapped around boots she already had!  Later she opened her real present--a pair of Uggs.

The traditional "after" picture.

I hope your Christmas was as great as ours!  I've already started my list for next year and I wrapped my first present today for next Christmas.  (But I couldn't wait almost a whole year for mom to open it, so I gave it to her early.  Can you tell what I drew?)