We found a new place to play after church on Sunday. Then again, apparently, Nicky can entertain himself anywhere. What IS that face?
Anyway, Rascals' Food and Fun has a restaurant and a big play area. In addition to favorites like skee ball...
And basketball...
Rascals has mini-bowling, laser tag, bumper cars, a rock wall, and all sorts of video games. One of our favorites was a "Deal or No Deal" game to win tickets.
We spent Valentine's Day helping Aunt Cyndy make yummy cookies for her work. Her coworkers must be Nick Cage fans, 'cause I hear these were "Gone in Sixty Seconds".
I know, bad, bad pun.
Chapter 1: In Which Kairi Finds Herself In A Blustery Situation
Kairi came home on Thursday to find bits and pieces of the house all over the yard, a giant tree knocked down, winds swirling and gusting, and no power.
She ran, naturally, to neighbors' houses, but finding no one home, proceeded to where she felt most safe - her band teacher's house.
There, I received her frantic phone call just as I was leaving work, and I flew homeward. (And the car certainly felt like it wanted to fly as the unabated wind storm blew it all over I-78.
Chapter Two: In Which We Thank God For The Direction of the Wind Storm
So, the tree that was knocked down was inches from Kairi's room. I had fussed over the creaking and swaying of that tree during every storm since we moved in. Between the soggy, oversaturated ground and the 75 mph wind gusts, the tree fell - thankfully, AWAY from Kairi's room!
Chapter 3: In Which We Discover How Very Dependent We Are On Electricity
But our adventure wasn't over with a few pieces of blown off soffit and one big ol' tree. Cause the power had been out since 10AM that morning, according to neighbors. We headed to Barry and Cyndy's house for dinner, and kept calling our own house, since our answering machine would only pick up if we had power. At about 6:50, we got an answer, so we headed home. The power had come back on - but an electrical fire in the transformer behind our neighbor's house had turned the four houses on our cul-de-sac right back off. After debating the merits of returning to Cyndy's, renting a hotel room, etc., we slept by lantern light in our rapidly losing heat house. If we're going to live in the northeast in an electric heated house, methinks we need to invest in a generator!
95% of Sunday mornings, you'll find us at church. Other than the occassional sick day or vacation, we spend a lot of time at Calvary Baptist. Everyone in the family loves being there, and loves the Lord. Lately, I've been campaigning for more time spent in worship and less in service, but that's just a side effect of 8 years of children's ministry. We are taking a year off from teaching Sunday School right now, but we're still in charge of VBS. 
Kairi and Scott just joined the bell choir, Scott is "member at large" (which still sounds like a weight joke, sorry Scotty!), Kairi and Nicky are in kids' choir, Kairi plays the horn many Sundays and sings in the praise band, in addition to youth group activities, Scott runs the projector, and Scott and I help with junior church. Even Faith and Juli get into the act - you can see how much Juli loves the nursery!
Sunny and 40 degrees? Sounds like a great day for the zoo! Okay, so we were feeling a little stir crazy. And Kai had a friend over, which meant THREE kids cooped up indoors with far too much three day weekend energy. Scott had to work, so I took the kids and drove to Philly.
We discovered that less animals are in their enclosures, but the animals that are out are very active. There's also a lot less pushing at the indoor exhibits because there's so few tourists. We got to take nice long looks at all of the critters in the reptile/amphibian house. 
This snake always reminds me of the one in Jungle Book.
And this turtle is a favorite, although he always seems too big for his pond.
This guy looks at home in the snow. Kairi decided he must be related to Daddy because it's one of the "Scott - ish" Highland Cattle.
The gorilla always looks so sad. He has a big outdoor enclosure, but all of the monkeys were inside, naturally.
I mean, what crazy creatures would choose to be out when the swan boat pond is frozen over?
Clearly, the tigers. They LOVED the snow by all appearances and were having a grand old time.
It's a little bit scary how shredded that tire is. BIG claws!
And here's all three of the "teenage" tigers in one shot. Their mom was sleeping over by the wall - can't blame her!
Then our visit got really cool. Turns out today was Open House for certain levels of members, and we qualified! So we got to go into the keeper area of Big Cat Falls and see the animals in their holding cages and talk to the keepers. We saw this Amur leopard, one of two who are kept on opposite ends of the zoo. They're sadly really endangered.
Then we saw this leopard gnawing away at a bone. He does actually have spots in the sunlight - black spots on black because he has an excess of melatonin. It's apparently pretty rare.
As we were exiting, we went past the cages for the pumas. Love the sign: Danger - Cat in Yard... yeah, you think???
But this one doesn't look so dangerous, all curled up in the sun!
We had to try out the zoo's newest attraction, the amazon rainforest carousel!
Who is surprised Kairi rode on a frog? Not me!
Kaitlyn chose a leopard.
Nick went for a panther - unless that's a leopard, too, like the one in the holding pen.
Then we headed past the cheetahs...
...after a brief photographic pause...
...to the giraffe barn! Apparently, these guys aren't allowed out unless it's 50 degrees or warmer outside, so they were staying snug. This one is called Gus.
Of course, Nicky was most excited by going into the keeper area at Carnivore Kingdom, where the snow leopard and his favorite Amur leopard hang out. That's Nicky's jacket in the foreground. He was really excited to be so close to the leopard (it was a matter of inches).
Here's one inhabitant who seemed to be enjoying the weather - he probably wouldn't have minded if the temps had dropped even more!
And it wouldn't be a zoo visit without a trip to see Krepke, Nick's favorite Amur. Of course, we didn't know that was his name before we talked to his keepers today. We definitely got a different (and much colder) perspective of the zoo today!
That's how we felt last night, waiting for the predicted snowstorm. We were all fairly confident in our snow day status for today, but as the evening hours passed and not a flake appeared, we were starting to have niggling doubts.
There are few occasions that it's nice to be woken up with a ringing phone at 5 AM. This would be one of them:
So I slept in a bit, cleaned a bit, scrapped a bit. Thought I ought to blog a bit to round it all off! (Especially since our teenage neighbor took care of the shovelling for me. For $25. Took him and his buddy about 15 minutes - would have taken me an hour. Sounds worth it to me!)I found this funny.
I was in a conference call with a customer and a customer support manager this morning, and as we were finishing up, I heard this ringing noise. I opened the conference room door, and sure enough, the fire alarm was going off.
So everyone in the building trudged out in the cold and stood in the parking garage next door until we got the all clear.
When we came back, firemen were standing on the hallway next to the part of the building used by the IRS office. The fire alarm in that office was still going off.
I bet someone got burned on an audit.
(Sorry...)
Nicky graduated to a green belt today in TKD. He has been working hard in class according to his teacher and we're very proud of him.
He participated in one of the forms today, Hanguk (meaning Korea).
It never fails to amaze me that they fail to hit each other in the head, kicking this high! 
We discovered a new restaurant. Fortunately for our waistline, it's way across town. But Dickey's BBQ is amazing. Sure, they have wonderful barbecue. Their baked potato casserole is divine. The ribs are lip smacking, the chicken tasty and tender.
But what made the kids amazed? The free soft serve ice cream and deli pickles. Crazy little runts!
What happens when your drama club rehearsals for a play on January 15th get cancelled due to snow, more snow, ice, and vacation?? A month without rehearsals right before the play, that's what! Even five minutes before the show on Thursday night, actors were still flubbing lines, lighting was missing cues. Make-up artists were dabbing on foundation as other actors paced nervously. Robin's costume was tried on for the first time on the day of the play. But then. The play started. And the audience started to laugh. Really laugh. And the faces of the actors backstage took on a glow of confidence. "This is great!" one whispered over and over as laugher rang into the wings. And somehow, somehow, they pulled it off.
Marian was bold, the sheriff was comical. Robin was captured, and vanished just in time to avoid the sherriff's sword. Witch Waye wasn't so lucky, but her cries of "Neosporin? Anyone got Neosporin?" had the audience in stitches. I still don't know how, but the whole play came together spectacularly. The principal even said it was the best play we had ever performed.
Cyndy and Barry invited us over for New Year's Eve. We had a GREAT time! We watched two movies and ate tons of yummy food while we waited for midnight. The kids were all in a really good mood, even though it was so late. Juli kept bringing me ribbons to tie up her hair, and then wandering off with the kids for awhile and then coming back holding out the ribbon that fell out.
Finally, the big moment arrived. Cyndy passed out noisemakers.
(Although I'm not sure our kids need help making noise!)
We counted down, and set off confetti poppers at midnight. The little girls LOVED the confetti.
No one really wanted to go, since it was Hannah's last chance to see us until Easter. The kids were feeling especially silly.
