The Littlest Writer

I've posted little stories in the past that both Hannah & Courtney have written. Yesterday after school, Hayley announced that she wanted to write a story so she set herself up at the computer and typed away. She asked me to spell a couple of words and then proudly read me her story when she was finished. I know I'm her mom, but I must say that I am impressed! It's not very long, but what a story for a 6-year-old! (And I love her title too!)

Hayley's Night Whispers
by Hayley Humpherys

On a cold night, Hayley was safe and warm in her bed when… The closet started shattering and big black shadows came creeping out of it. They got closer and closer and closer until they were so close to me they could almost touch me. I got out of bed and started following them… out the door and into the family room… and into the kitchen. I opend my eyes and was safe agen in my bed.

(She was also proud to inform me that she knows what the "three dots" are called!)

Our 5 Minutes of Fame

We were surprised a few weeks ago to receive a phone call telling us that our local library branch had selected our family as their "Library Family of the Year" for 2010. There are 5 library branches in Amarillo and each branch chooses a family every year that they (the library staff) feel utilizes all the many library services.

I admit that I am at the library a lot -- probably 3-4 times each week. During the school year I usually stop by during the day by myself but in the summer the kids frequently go with me. I generally don't stay long, but will pick a few pictures books off the shelves for the kids and almost always have books or audio books that I've placed on hold waiting to be picked up. So almost all the librarians know me by name (and they are a wonderful group -- so friendly and helpful). I love being able to manage our library account from home and request books through the computer. I also love being able to request (free of charge) practically any book that our library doesn't have in their system through the Interlibrary Loan program. Needless to say, our family loves the library!

The first part of being a Library Family was to go to the downtown library and have our picture taken for the plaque that gets displayed at the library branch. Fortunately this wasn't a terrible ordeal, despite the fact that Brian and Hannah had both been sick with the flu. (Hannah had stayed home from school that day with a fever, but we tried to keep her away from everybody and they let our family go first.)

Then last Saturday we attended a special ceremony honoring each of the library families. We got to stand up at the front while the librarian from our branch introduced us and told a little bit about our family. We heard a few words from the mayor of Amarillo (the kids were excited to meet her) and a few other people. I think the kid's favorite part were the fruit and cookies!

As part of the ceremony, we were presented with our own plaque to keep (an identical one is displayed at the library) and we also received a book bag and a very nice World Atlas book from Barnes & Noble.

They had told us the newspaper usually prints up a little story about the library families, but I haven't seen anything yet so I'm not sure if they will this year since it's been a week now. The kids have been waiting to take our plaque into their classes at school but they've been waiting to see if anything is printed in the paper.

It's an honor to be selected -- hooray for libraries!

Cold, Cold, and Cold (and some snow and ice too!)

The last couple of weeks have brought some interesting weather to Amarillo. I think the temperatures have been the coldest since we moved here -- several mornings when we got up it was below zero outside and there was a wind chill of probably about -20 degrees. Yikes! Plus we really struggle to keep our house warm (several factors contribute to this), so we were going around wrapped in jackets and blankets. Our hot water heater kept freezing in the garage and we kept a fire going as much as possible.

In addition to all the cold, we had a big snow storm come through the city. I think the official report was 6.5" of snow but there was a lot of drifting, so some spots didn't have a lot and others had more. Here's a drift on our driveway:

School got cancelled for a day and the kids were very excited! The girls spent the day playing and creating.

I walked past the table and spotted this which made me smile:

McKay spent a good part of his day off listening to Harry Potter audiobooks. He recently decided to re-read/re-listen to all the books in a row and then go through and watch the movies.

A couple of days after the storm, the roads were starting to clear up but there was still some ice. The kid's school bus slid off the road coming home from school in the neighborhood just below our house. There were only a few kids left on the bus at the time (ours included).

McKay called us using the driver's phone to see if Brian could bring down a chain to help tow the bus out. Another bus in the area stopped to help but they didn't have any tow chains. So Brian and I drove down to see what we could do. The other bus was able to pull the bus back onto the road using our chain.

When the bus slid off the road, it hit a tree and broke some limbs off.

In addition, the tree limbs broke out one of the back windows of the bus (on the far side of the picture).

The girls standing by the tree:

We're glad everyone was safe!

The snow was just right for playing in when we made it back home -- better hurry before it all melts!

Sliding down our own hill:

Hannah and Hayley's mini snowman:

The only problem with melting snow is that it turns our road into mud! But fortunately this time around the weather warmed up pretty quickly (and we have worked on improving our road) so the road has dried out for the most part. At least until the next storm comes through!

Back to the Remodel

So, remember how almost two years ago we started our remodeling upstairs addition by raising the roof over the garage? Well, after that initial push to get the roof up and our helpers left, unfortunately not much happened since then. Brian got swamped with other work (there's no escape!) and while he did a little bit here and there -- mostly on the heating system -- not much has changed.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, Brian's brother Randy had a lull in his work and he was able to come and give us a big push! Brian helped as much as he could, and during the two weeks that Randy was here, the upstairs changed A LOT! YAY!!

They started out putting in the ceiling and some of the heating stuff in the attic space.

Then the rooms (4 bedrooms; 1 bath) were framed, wiring done, heating ducts, etc. A lot of work!

Sheetrock was started (we brought up some apartment workers to help with this job) and is not quite finished.

Finally (but unfortunately not before the below-zero temperatures hit), we got the insulation in the walls and ceiling.

I have hope that the kids might actually be in their bedrooms by summer! (Of course, now that Randy has left again, work has come to a stop while Brian catches up on other work, but I'm still hopeful!)

Oklahoma City Weekend

I always have a hard time when it comes to shopping for my husband for Christmas or his birthday. I like to surprise him, but it's not easy to do. If he needs something like a tool or a computer part, he has to tell me exactly what to get or I'll inevitably get the wrong them. (One year, shortly after we were married, I bought him a hammer and of course got the wrong kind of hammer so we had to go exchange it. Who knew there were so many different kinds of hammers?)

This past Christmas when I was trying to decide what on earth I could give him, I had the idea to surprise him with a little overnight getaway -- he has been working so hard and has so many things going on I figured he could use a little stress-free break. I started thinking about that and then thought I'd check and see if there was a show or something coming somewhere close that I could get tickets for since we rarely do that kind of thing.

I checked around and finally settled on getting tickets for Riverdance, which was coming to Oklahoma City (about 4 hours from here) the weekend before Brian's birthday in January. (Christmas and Birthday!) Then I decided that if were going to make an effort to drive to OKC we might as well make a whole weekend out of it! So I found a Bed & Breakfast Inn at a restored historic home in the city and booked a night there. It was a bit expensive to do two nights there, so the second night I booked a regular hotel close to where the Riverdance performance was. I had to enlist the help of my niece to buy the tickets so Brian wouldn't see the credit card charges before Christmas and we managed to pull it off! I think he was pretty surprised!

We had to make a last-minute change of plans in making arrangements for the kids due to a conflicting missionary farewell in Dallas for our nephew that happened to be scheduled the same weekend, but it all worked out. Our great friends the Roberts family came to our rescue and agreed to take all 4 kids for the weekend (thankfully they didn't move too far away from us!). The kids were so excited to stay with their friends -- it ended up being as much of a treat for them as it was for us.

Brian and I pulled the kids out of school early on Friday and dropped them off then headed for OKC. We checked in to the B&B -- the Grandison Inn. It is a restored historic home in the city -- they told us the home was built in 1904.

Here is our cute room. There was even a little step stool to get up on the bed.

We looked up some nearby restaurants and saw that there was a steak restaurant not too far away called Cattleman's Steakhouse that was voted a favorite in the city so we decided to try it. It was a Friday night so it was quite a long wait, but once we were seated we were served pretty quickly. The food was fine -- although we weren't overly impressed (Saltgrass is still our favorite).

Saturday morning we were served a lovely breakfast. It turned out we were the only ones staying there that night so they just brought breakfast up to our room.

After breakfast we decided the weather was nice enough to walk over to the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum. It was about a mile away and we knew there was some road construction in the area so we weren't sure what parking would be like. It turned out to be a very nice walk.

The memorial and museum were very interesting and well-done. Brian and I both remember the day of the bombing of the Federal Building in April 1995 -- we happened to be up at the University of Utah hospital that morning undergoing one of our many infertility procedures and we watched the coverage unfold on the TVs in the waiting room.

First we walked around the outdoor memorial. It was interesting to learn where things used to be. The reflecting pool is where the street was that ran along the back of the building and where the van with the explosives was parked.

The field of empty chairs is in the location of the original building. There is one chair for each victim (small chairs for the children) and they are arranged in rows according to what floor of the building they were on.

This is the only picture we managed to get the whole trip of the two of us together!

This is the "Survivor Tree" which survived through the bombing:

This is one of the archways at the end of the reflecting pool. It is marked with the time 9:01 -- the minute before the bombing. The arch at the other end of the pool is marked with 9:03 (the minute after).

Then we went inside the museum. It was interesting to see all the displays and learn more about the bombing. You could really spend a long time in there if you stopped to read everything (and I was glad the kids weren't there -- they would have gotten bored with it all fairly quickly). As it was we ended up hurrying through the end to get back and check out in time. We could have easily spent more time there. Here is a section of original rubble from the bombing that was preserved in the museum (this is from one of the neighboring buildings that was damaged):

I can't even imagine what a tragedy that was -- it was heartwrenching to learn more about the stories of victims and survivors. But at the same time it was touching to read about how the community and the country pulled together in the face of all the devastation.

After the memorial, we changed our clothes and headed out to the other side of town to find the Oklahoma City Temple. We had to make a couple of stops to try to find somewhere to pump up a low tire, but we managed to make it in time for the last session of the afternoon. And it was packed! They had to bring in several folding chairs to accommodate everybody -- it was great to see the temple so busy. And it's always neat to visit a temple we haven't been to before.

We stopped for dinner after the temple session, checked into our second hotel room and got ready for the Riverdance show that evening. It was a fun show -- I had thought it would all be the Irish dancing so I was a little surprised at how much singing there was (as well as some other styles of dancing and just instrumental music) but it was all a lot of fun.

On Sunday we found the closest church building (which wasn't very far) and went to Sacrament Meeting. The people were very friendly and several people greeted us before the meeting started (checking to see if we were moving in!). It was kind of strange to be in church with just the two of us and no kids or Primary or Sunday School lessons to worry about. We only stayed for Sacrament Meeting so we could get on the road headed home and pick up the kids.

All in all, it was a fabulous relaxing weekend! Brian said at one point we should do it every weekend. I guess that means he enjoyed his present!

Double Digits and a Binary Birthday to Boot!

Hannah will always have a "binary birthday," seeing as how she was born on 01-10-01 at 11:11am, no less. But this year was an extra special binary birthday because she turned 10 on 01-10-11!

She was very excited about her binary birthday and requested a "binary cat cake" this year. Hmmm. Not much luck finding ideas for that one online! So I drew a couple of sketches for her and she told me she liked this one:

It's definitely not my cutest cake creation, but we were going for the simplistic, binary theme. I tried to make the 01-10-11 in a different color from the rest of the cat, but a lot of it ended up blending all together anyway. Oh well -- she seemed to like it!

She couldn't wait to open her presents after school that day.

She is still our cat girl and still loves the Warriors series of books. I think she has read the entire series (which is probably close to 25 books now) at least 3 times through. Here she is with the newest book (that she hasn't read yet) and a Webkinz cat from Grandma and Grandpa.

Her big present this year was a Nintendo DS system. She has been asking for one for a couple of years now and I have resisted. She was able to play with her cousin's DS while they were visiting and I could tell she really enjoyed it. She didn't get a "big" present for Christmas, so I gave in and decided to see what was on eBay. I ended up finding a used DS system (pink!) that came with 3 games for a pretty good price. I happened across it just before the auction was ending, so I was able to put in a bid and ended up getting it. And you can see what she thought of it:

Can you just hear the squeals? Alas, the big problem now is the tears and arguing over whose turn it is to use it. (And the other main thing she asked for? A Kindle. Yep. But she didn't get that one.)

Here she is with all of her birthday loot:

Time for some binary cat cake!

Double digits - finally! This girl cannot wait to grow up.

Make a wish!

I hope all of your wishes come true, sweet Hannah. We love you!

The Bee!

Last year, McKay's middle school started a Geography Club, sponsored by his Social Studies teacher (one of his favorite teachers). He decided to join the club -- at the time it wasn't yet an "official" school club -- and really enjoyed it. He seems to enjoy Social Studies, especially maps and charts (one of the UIL competitions he has done quite well in the last two years).

One of the things the Geography Club did last year was participate in the National Geographic Bee, sponsored by the National Geographic Society. McKay decided to participate and while he did okay, he didn't make it to the final round. This year, the Geography Club is official (they get a picture in the yearbook and everything!) and McKay even convinced Hannah to join, since it is open to 4th - 8th graders. They held the National Geographic Bee again a couple of weeks ago and McKay ended up being the school winner!

The competition consists of a variety of oral questions on all aspects of geography -- states, countries, physical features, cultures, maps, etc. The first rounds are easier because they give you a choice of two answers. But in the later rounds, there is no multiple choice. The competition came down to two students and we all kind of laughed later (McKay included) because they went through so many questions where neither McKay nor the other finalist knew the answer. They were pretty hard questions! So they just kept going until they finally came to a question where McKay got it right and the other student missed it, so he was declared the winner.

The next step is a written text that McKay will take this week -- we're told it's 70 questions in 60 minutes. I dont' know if it's all multiple choice or what exactly the format is. The tests are then sent in somewhere to be scored and the top 100 kids in Texas will compete in the state finals held in Austin (and from there the winner goes to a national competition). McKay's been studying, but whether or not he goes to the state finals, we are proud of him!

Family Pictures

Of course while everyone was here for the family reunion, we had to get some family pictures! We set up the camera on a tripod and spent what seemed like an awfully long time getting everyone situated! It's not easy taking a big group picture when so many are under age 12!

Setting up:

But here we go! Overall, they turned out pretty good.

The entire gang!

Just the grandkids (some of whom decided they were quite done with pictures by that point!):

My parents and their 6 children:

My siblings and spouses:

Now the kids in order. My oldest sister Sandra and her family:

Our crew:

My sister Malinda and her family:

My brother Tim and his family:

My sister Amy and her family:

And my parents with my youngest brother Tyler:

Whew! Taking pictures can be a bit exhausting, I think! Does anyone feel like they're at a wedding reception? :-)