Celebrating Birthdays and the Lego Kids Fest!

The beginning of December is a busy time for our family. Josh, Jake, and Kate all have their birthdays from December 3rd-December 5th. Well, this year, the Lego Kids Fest came to Hartford over that same weekend! So, we got to go celebrate all three birthdays by going and having all sorts of building fun. It was a great way to spend over 4 hours!

On our way to the Lego Fest we stopped and had lunch. Since it was the boys' birthday they got to pick where we went. They picked Arbys.
Here are Josh and Jake about to get their birthday lunch.

One of the many activities at the Lego Fest was building something to contribute to a map of the United States. Here is a big picture of the map and what some people had already built.

Josh built a house he was very proud of.

Jake built a park that he said was his best thing he's built so far.

Kate was excited to be at the Lego Fest, too. She found a statue of Santa built all out of legos!

And then she got to see Santa! She was so excited!

As you can imagine, there was A LOT of building going on! The kids were in heaven!
Josh and Jake building their race cars.

Kate and Robb showing off Kate's car.

More building

Daddy/daughter building

Kate

Jake

Josh

A display of a lego scene

Who is that?

Another activity was a mural build. Each person was given a small square to build with certain colors. Then the square was put on a wall that built a mural. It was pretty cool. Here is Jake putting together his piece.

Josh with his completed piece.

And the mural...

One of my favorite parts of the Lego Fest was seeing all the AMAZING statues built completely out of legos. It was awesome to see and there were so many! Here are quite a few (not all, believe it or not) of the statues we liked:

Kate with a builder lego man.

A baby dinosaur

Look at how big this one is? I wonder how many pieces of legos they used to make all of these!

Egyptian Kate

Jake the lion

Ninjago

Jack Sparrow

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

Kate seems to like the dinosaurs.

The Toy Story crew

Spongebob

Harry Potter

Lightning McQueen

Some Star Wars friends

The big lego pile. The kids got to play in all these legos. They even made "lego angels!"

Resting after a long day of fun filled play...

Josh

Jake

Kate

After we got home from the Lego Fest, we had "birthday" cake. Every year I ask each of the kids what they want for their birthday dessert. This year, Josh and Jake picked cheesecake. So, here they are with their treat.

Blowing out the candles...

Birthday presents before....

And after...

Kate's birthday was on the Monday after our big weekend celebration. During the day she had a few friends over to play and have cupcakes. Here they...

Eliza, Lizzie, and Kate

Kate and her cupcake

That night we had another family celebration where Kate got her Buzz Light year cake and presents. As you can see from the look on her face, she was VERY excited!

Opening her presents...

Eating cake and ice cream...

Everyone had a great birthday weekend. It was fun doing something new that everyone enjoyed.

The Big Snowstorm and Halloween

Yes, it's December. December 31st to be exact and I am just now posting about Halloween. Do you want to know something that made me chuckle about this? I was looking back at old posts and noticed I posted my Halloween pictures in December last year, too! Oh well. We've had lots going on and I am happy to be updating my blog for the year. So, here is what we've had going on...

The end of October brought a really interesting experience for our family. Well, and the entire state of Connecticut. We had a major snowstorm hit us that resulted in extreme power outages. We were out of power for a whole week! There was so much snow that trees were falling all over the state. On powerlines, buildings, blocking roads, etc. A tree even landed on our house in the middle of the night, scaring me half to death! It took out the chimney which I think actually ended up protecting our roof. The chimney was destroyed but our roof was just fine!

Having no power for such a long time (if you ask me, a week without power is a LONG time) made me realize how much we take for granted. We had to haul stored water to the bathrooms just to flush the toilets. We boiled water to wash our hair and bodies. We had to think of ways to use food in the fridge before it spoiled. We bundled up during the day to keep warm and even more so at night. We had many friends look out for us when their situations were just as difficult. Luckily, we were able to keep track of each other and help each other in different ways. One of our close friends invited us to stay at their house because they had a gas fireplace that helped heat their house. This was so nice and did help us keep warm. Others came to help chop down fallen trees. Another friend was lucky enough to not lose her power so she invited us over to do laundry and have our kids play and watch movies. I was truly grateful for the giving spirit of others. I was also grateful for the things that we had that made us feel somewhat prepared. The whole experience was a great testimony builder of being prepared. The prophets have always counseled us to be prepared with food, supplies, etc. and I am so grateful for that counsel. Don't get me wrong. There were many things we were not prepared for. BUT now we can work to get better prepared! Anyway, I'm rambling. Here are some pictures...

This picture is of our driveway. I know you can't really tell but it is. The tree that is laying on the ground is actually blocking our driveway. We were trapped until the tree got chopped by a neighbor and his chainsaw.

In this picture you can see the tree that landed on our house. The tree that's split down the middle is the one I'm talking about. The curved part landed right on our roof. Over Robb and my bedroom to be exact. It was so loud and scary when it actually happened!

This picture is of some trees in our backyard. The branches on the ground were actually a tree. It's so heavy with snow that it has fallen. This was pretty much what a lot of our trees looked like. There was so much snow where it was early in the year, there were so many leaves still on the trees. Let's just say they were very top heavy!

This is the other side of our backyard. You can't really see it but right where that mess of trees has fallen is our backyard fence. It was a real mess to clean up all the branches and fallen trees! We were so grateful for all the help that we got!
Robb sure worked hard to get the yard back to normal.

Since the storm took place the weekend before Halloween, there was no power for Halloween activities like trick or treating! SO...our town decided to postpone Halloween until a couple weeks into November. The kids went trick or treating with some friends and the schools arranged a giant trunk or treat. They definitely did not miss out. We still have Halloween candy left that I'm thinking of secretly throwing away. Hee Hee. Here are the kids in their costumes:

Kate as my little Lovebug.

Jake, the ninja

Banana Josh

All ready to collect gobs of candy!