Christmas was white... I mean really white, we had somewhere between 2 and 3 foot snow drifts up against our front door, garage and fence. It started falling on Christmas Eve at which point we shut ourselves in for quite a few days.
The girls got nice easels, and with a little (ok a lot) of help from Grandpa they were setup and ready to use.
Juliette has caught her sister's art bug
Perhaps a little too much
The girls were decked out for Halloween, and made out like bandits.
Alternate outfit
Our yearly pumpkin
We've had our car for a bit over a year now and we love it. When we were shopping for one we looked mostly at bigger SUV's so how did we end up with a Prius? I don't know how the magicians at Toyota do it but but there is more head room, leg room and rear seat space than any of the big vehicles we sat in, and countless other little things that have keep us happy with the purchase.
Well, this morning I noticed that the dome light was on because one of the kid's doors wasn't closed through the night. Once before we had left the map light on which is another funny story that I'll save for a different post. I figured a quick jump-start would take care of the problem. Unfortunately we had no luck at all. I figured the battery had a bad cell so we took it in to be tested.
The first place took the battery then came back and said they couldn't test it. Apparently the Prius auxiliary battery is kind of 'special'. Now we're not talking about the hybrid system batteries here this is just the normal looking battery that runs the standard electrical system for the car. So I call the next place, where we usually take our cars for work, and explain what we were told at the first place. He was up front with me and said they had never had a Prius in for a battery issue but their computer shows a compatible part that they could order and get in about an hour. I take his offer... but it turns out that the 'compatible' part is not quite compatible enough. So we're left with going to the dealer. Good news! their battery is only a few bucks more than what we would have paid elsewhere and it's an in-stock part. Bad news is it's an 'upgrade' battery, or in other words they no longer make the battery that fits our car and the next closest model is bigger and doesn't fit in the same bat tray as the original so we have to also get the conversion kit to accept the bigger battery. Well, 15 hours after finding the car wouldn't start this morning, the battery is purchased, the conversion installed, we're up and running, and the car is happy again.
The service guy at the dealer mentioned that even with the conversion kit the fit isn't perfect and some plastic trim needs to be cut from the car to make the thing sit properly. Everything else was too much fun for one day so I saved that bit for tomorrow!
happy driving
Audree's birthday party was going to be tonight, but she's been so sick this week that we had to postpone it.
This was her best day by far, but she still spent much of it in bed and on the couch.
She rallied enough strength to open some presents this morning from Mom, Dad, & Sis.
Audree and I made an attempt at growing our own rock candy.
Growing
Done!
The instructions said to add 3 drops of food coloring, we put in 4 but even that didn't seem to add any color at all to the finished product.
Try it yourself!
Just make sure your stick or string does not touch the bottom or sides of the jar. I remember doing this once as a kid and the crystal grew onto the container. It becomes nearly impossible to pull out without breaking the glass.
We had a decent snow today. Juliette bundled all up, then spent about :45s outside.
Audree bundled all up, then took a phone call from a friend. Speak up I can't hear you!
Why is there a cake?
Who's birthday is it?
Wait... isn't Audree's birthday next month?
Audree insists it was her "birthday" cake... If anyone else understands this please fill me in.
Well shortly after that first haircut Juliette has finally grown enough hair to do something with.
Results:
She loves to look at herself in the mirror, reach up to touch them and then giggle.
Make of this what you will... perhaps zombie Juliette?
Not to be outdone by little sis, Audree has been on a kick curling her hair almost every night.
So we've fallen behind on posts as of late turning this more into a photo blog. So here is a quick attempt at catching up...
The holidays were great... well mostly, I'll get to that in a second.
Jeff Staci and Keana came into town for a great visit. Juliette and Audree love just about any animal and were thrilled to have such a big one around to play with.
Christmas started the same as usual, with Audree getting ill and throwing up. She's made that her routine with 5 out of the last 6 Christmases. This year I decided to join her in the tradition thus postponing the celebration until the 26th.
I took some time off the last week of the year so we filled it with a few fun activities like:
Chuck-e-Cheese
Fritz's
Crown Center's Santa's Workshop
A few birthday celebrations
Monkey Business
Pet Store
PBK
Babies
Juliette in one of Great Grandma Sirois' lovely outfits with her doll Lilly
Snowman
Well those are a few of the highlights... at least the ones I had photos readily available for.
