Ice Storm: Day 5

An update:

• We are still without power; though there is an Oklahoma crew working in our neighborhood now. (Still 92,000 customers in northwest Arkansas without power.) They say it might be on tonight.
  
• My car windshield broke. I think ice fell and hit it.
• Our cable line snapped in half and is laying in the back yard. That means no TV and no Internet even if we get power back.
• Our phone lines came down and are on the ground too, but the phone still works. (We are not there to answer it though!)
• Three big limbs came off our only tree. One fell and hit Henry's sandbox.
  
• Good news: Erik and Karin now have power. Yeah!
• The weather is warmer today and the ice is melting.

	President Obama Declares State of Emergency in Arkansas Updated: Jan 29, 2009 09:25 AM FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) - Hundreds of thousands in north Arkansas remain without electricity as residents struggle for warmth and wait for milder temperatures forecast for the weekend. Four people died

President Obama Declares State of Emergency in Arkansas
Updated: Jan 29, 2009 09:25 AM
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) - Hundreds of thousands in north Arkansas remain without electricity as residents struggle for warmth and wait for milder temperatures forecast for the weekend. Four people died.

Ice Not Nice

This might look pretty, but don't be fooled. The weather has played a cruel joke on us. On Monday at about noon we started to get some freezing rain. They decided to let school out early so that everyone could get home safely. We have not been back since and probably won't go back until Monday. Northwest Arkansas got about 2 inches of ice. They say about 50,ooo people are without power now and it may not be restored until Saturday. Chad and I spent last night in Fayetteville without power. We built a fire and slept on a blow-up mattress in front of the fire. When we woke up this morning it was 46 degrees inside our house. Pretty much everyone we know in Fayetteville is without power: our whole neighborhood, Erik and Karin, Cory and Meredith. We usually have a nice wintertime view of the lights in Fayetteville from the top of our hill, but last night Fayetteville was completely dark. It was kinda eerie because every once in a while we would see a big flash in the sky like lightning. (A tree falling on a transformer and blowing up.) We are still hearing the cracking sound of trees snapping. It looks like someone dropped a bomb on Arkansas. One million Americans are without power. Chad and I, along with Henry and the dogs are safe in Rogers now where my parents have power; though it has been on and off all day. We are hoping that Erik and his family will be here soon.

Looking deceivingly pretty, eh?

This is a house just three doors down.

Zetta hated the storm, but doesn't seem to mind the aftermath.

Our neighborhood.
Almost every tree in Fayetteville is destroyed or damaged.

Our house. Thank goodness we don't have many trees!

Handsome Men and Beautiful Women

Last night we were at Chad's brother Cory's and we were looking at Meredith's baby name book. I've never seen a baby name book quite like this one. The names were listed under headings like Future Truck Drivers and Future Middle Management. It was pretty hilarious. Chad's name was under the heading Handsome Men and Beautiful Women. He's so lucky; though I do tend to agree with that categorization. Mine was found under Pistols, Wild Things, and So-And-Sos.

Oh, in case you are wondering and haven't heard the good news.......Cory and Meredith are expecting in August!

Nobody Should Have to Sleep Alone

Chad emailed me this picture at work and I got a chuckle out of it. This is how he found Henry's bed one morning.

I just learned a bit of information about Obama that troubles me: he doesn't drink coffee! Bush does, so clearly Bush wins this round. I'll have to admit I have a slight nagging mistrust for non-coffee drinkers. I'll have to keep my eye on this situation. So far it is Obama's only major fault that I am aware of; perhaps I'll let this one slide.

Can You Spell Inauguration?

Work this week was a little crazy. One of the students on my team won the spelling bee at her elementary school last year and her mother wondered whether we were going to have a spelling bee at our school. Traditionally the English department chair has been in charge of the spelling bee, but she is no longer at our school and our current dept. chair is on maternity leave. Anyway, long story short--the spelling bee had fallen through the cracks and nobody had even thought about it until it was almost too late. We threw together a spelling bee in three days and somehow I got caught in the middle of it. I'm really glad we did it for the sake of the kids, but I spent most of the week running off spelling bee rules, emailing word lists, recruiting judges, scorekeepers, and a moderator, making score cards, trying to find websites where we could look up words, definitions, origins, words in sentences, etc... I was also really worried about sending an email out to the faculty that basically stated that instead of whatever you had planned to do tomorrow, you must administer a spelling bee try-out. I really hate it when people do that to me, so I'm sure that they were less than thrilled. But I really didn't hear any complaints and I think it all worked out well; especially considering that the girl with the inquiring mother ended up winning the spelling bee for our school. These kids really can spell! You should have seen the try-out words; they were hard. I think I would have missed a bunch. Anyway, now I've been trying extra hard to notice how things are spelled.

Since I haven't blogged at all in 2009, I thought I would share my New Year's Resolution. I saw an interview with Will Smith and he said he didn't believe in them. He said resolutions are things you should have been doing all along anyway. In theory I agree, but I just don't operate like that. I need a January 1 every year to reflect on the past year. If you know me you know that I must have my coffee every morning. I like to go to Arsaga's Coffee Shop in the morning before school to get a latte or a coffee. I started thinking about all the paper cups that I was throwing in the trash, so I decided to bring my own cup this year. The baristas are sorta the hippie/eco friendly type and really encourage this behavior anyway. Aren't you proud of me?

Last night our friends John & Rachael came over for dinner. They have two kids and another on the way. It was fun to see Henry playing with older kids. We hardly ever get to see that. At Mother's Day Out they are his age and his cousin is younger. Silas and Katrina started playing with Elmo's Pizza Kitchen. They would come running in to the den to show the adults the menu, take our orders, and then bring us our "food." Before we knew it, Henry was doing the same. I thought it was so cute. Here are some pictures from last night. You can see that they had a great time together.



This one is just a random, but sweet picture of Henry all bundled up in his car seat.