wordless{ish} wednesday: we've got power!

after five days & five nights without any electricity in my entire neighborhood, the lights {& the heat!} are finally on at our house.  i think at the peak of the craziness, there were over 400,000 homes & businesses in the greater seattle area without power.  that's insane.

luckily we kept warm & were taken in by friends & family for all five nights.  but you guys?  it feels so amazingly good to be home.  i've had the heat cranked up to completely ridiculous levels in the house just because i can.  parker ran around from room to room scooping up his toys like it was christmas morning... he was so excited to be reunited with his stuff.  one thing that wasn't so awesome?  throwing away everything in our fridge & freezer & then going out last night to replace it all.  not the high point.  but climbing into my own warm bed?  pretty dang good.

and now maybe life will return to normal.  whatever that is.

{linking up with wordless wednesday at and then she {snapped},  baby baby lemon, the paper mama, & a little king & i}

wordless{ish} wednesday: snowmageddon.

so if you live in the pacific northwest, follow any blogs of people in the northwest, have friends on facebook from the northwest or maybe if you watch the news?  then you may have heard what's going on around here.  yup.

snowmageddon.

and in seattle that means "ohmygawshwegotsnowandyesoneinchtotallyqualifiesassnowday!!"  but we're pretty legit down in the south sound where i live... we got like, four inches.  look out!  close the schools, work from home, re-stock the flash light batteries & food storage because the world as we know it is stopping until the last little bit melts.  and tonight we're supposed to get hammered with more.

how does this affect p-ray & i?  it makes us pretty much home-bound.  sam takes my car to work because his car currently doesn't have working windshield wipers {which are slightly important in the seattle area... especially during snowmageddon} & he's really not the type that will call in to work for a few inches, despite his hour long-on-a-good-day-commute.  it's one of his worst features.

so while stuck at home?  we make the best of it.  and that usually means getting outside.  for most of the morning, this was our view out the front window:

during these hours french toast happened, a couple episodes of thomas & friends happened {don't get me started on p-ray & tv.  i hate resorting to tv for entertainment.  but just keep in mind we've been stuck. at. home. now for days & days... remember before this we were stuck at home sick?  gah!!}, house cleaning happened, puzzles happened, dance parties happened & then putting on snow clothes happened.

long story short?  parker's not a huuuuuuge fan of the snow yet.  he can't really walk around in it too well {his boots are still kinda big for him & hard to maneuver in even on dry ground} so his confidence in it isn't the best.  this is how p-ray best enjoys his snow time:

yeah.  he pulled out his little umbrella stroller, insisted i open it up & then climbed inside.  then he pointed for the snow.

and when i pulled him out of the stroller & tried to show him how awesome snow is to walk around in?  he wasn't convinced.

before long we were back inside for round two of puzzles & other indoor antics.

he's lucky i like his face.  because we're supposed to get another 6-10" tonight & are looking at another couple of long days stuck at home enjoying each other's company

i guess it could be worse.

{linking up with wordless wednesday at and then she {snapped},  baby baby lemon, the paper mama, & a little king & i}

windstorms, earthquakes, & bonus sam time

well the last twenty-four hours have been nuts for us pacific northwestern-ers.  a crazy windstorm last night & a random 4.2 magnitude earthquake at 8:00 this morning have completely upset our normal routine.  didn't see that coming.  i can't remember the last time i saw/heard/felt winds as strong as last night's {if ever} & our yard now looks like a war zone.

...that is, if lots of leaves, branches, & random debris were used in wars.

here are some pictures from around the area, but please note that none of these pictures are of my house/yard/road & i didn't take these pictures.  they were all borrowed from here.

crazy right? we were pretty lucky though.  we weren't really affected by the storm & we didn't even lose power even though most people around us did.

the lights were flickering a ton though, so i had sam get out a couple flashlights.  of course he goes for the mag light & then proceeds to shine it in my eyes every chance he got saying dumb things like, "miss, how much have you been drinking tonight?" and thinking it was hilarious.  i think i'll be seeing blobs of white behind my eyelids for days now.  awesome.

and, after getting up & heading out to work like normal this morning, sam got to his office to find they were out of power too. so he got to come home for a couple hours until the power came back on.  parker enjoyed having his dad to hang out with around the house this morning.

and i enjoyed it too. mostly because i got to take a nice medium long shower & not even use p-ray's nap time to do it.  but also because it was nice having sam around.

i always get weird mixed emotions about natural disasters.  it's totally exciting, & i'm always sad when life goes back to normal & life isn't all disrupted by it anymore.  is that weird?  but in the midst of it, i always kinda freak out too.  like, if the power goes out at least we have internet through our phones.  but what if our phones die?  then i can charge them in the car.  but then what if the gas runs out?  well we can walk to the gas station a mile away.  well what if they run out of gas because everyone else is stocking up??

yeah, it's weird.  then i resolve to always keep my phone charged above 75%, keep my gas tank above half full, & keep lots of batteries handy for flashlights.  then life goes back to normal & i forget.  oops.



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