Everyone helped decorate 

Wind storm
A strong wind storm hit us Dec. 14th. It was just one day before Ann came to stay with us. She ended up camping out with us. We went 5 days with out electricity. That means no heat. We all did well. We all had something we could not wait to do when the electricity came on. I think all of us could not wait to sit on a toliet seat without worry of frost bite! I feel bad that Ann had to suffer through it with us, but she was a good sport. Our house doesn't look that bad from this picture but we found out today that we will have to have the roof replaced and the ceilings in Blake and Mickayla's room replaced. The damage was worse than we thought. We are still very grateful we are all well and our house came through as well as it did.

Our neighorhood was hit hard by the storm. This house is 5 houses from us. IT was hit by 5 trees. It's chimney is gone.  

This is a house at the top of our street. 

This truck wasn't very lucky. It's engine was in very poor shape after this tree landed on it. 

This tree fell between the house and the two cars int he driveway. It was amazing.

It took two of these dump trucks to haul the debris from our yard alone. This picture was taken from our front yard. 

Reed, Blake and Scott kept warm moving debris from the yard to the street. I didn't get a picture of Scott working. We sure appreciated his help getting this all moved. 

This is kind of a cool picture of us playing games. It wasn't really this dark, the next picture shows it being a lot lighter than it was. The amount of light was kind of in between these two. .

We had fun playing games by candle light. You can see by how we were dressed that we weren't freezing. Even Ann just has a sweater on. We were warm in the living area. Now the bedroom and bathrooms were a whole different story.

We spent a lot of the time laying by the fire trying to stay warm. You can see Mickayla's P.J.'s hanging on the glass doors of the fire place. We would put our clothes on there to warm up before we put them on. Near the end of the ordeal we would put the persons clothes by the fire that was taking a shower so their clothes would be warm. It was so much nicer to put on warm clothes. 

Blake Pinning one of his many opponents. Blake has pinned everyone so far. 

This is Mickayla giving Blake wrestling instruction. 

This is Blake's girl friend Ari.  

Blake's Wrestling team took 1st place in a Wrestling Tournment. Blake won all his matches either by pinning or forfeits. He had two teams forfeit his weight. 

Dad on the ship as we are leaving for our vacation to South America 

Dad getting hooked up for his adventure of flying through the trees in Jamaica. We had so much fun. I thought I would be scared but I wasn't. We ony 60 feet off the ground at most places. We were moving so fast that we didn't get to see much scenery.  

Dad gliding through the trees. 

In Costa Rica we road down the Canal in a boat. Here are some boys we saw fishing. After the boat ride we went on a train and then last of all on a bus and went to a Banana plantation. 

Dad at a Banana Plantation in Costa Rica 

Dad watching as our ship enters in the Panama canal. He enjoyed watching in comfort. 

Here we are going into the second lock in the Panama canal. That was a cool experience! 

This is some art work from the temple that I wrote about below. 

This is a temple located in Salaverry Peru. This temple is from 100 years before Christ. It is the Moche time period. It was extremely interesting! We loved every minute of it. 

This is what the homes look like in Peru. It was so heart breaking to see what poor conditions the people live in.