Matt is out of town in WI this week. It’s the second week in January he has been gone – he was gone two weeks ago too. We always survive and realize how much we appreciate each other when he returns home.

It’s been COLD. We had a high of 7 last Sat. with -20 wind chills. The perfect day for us to be out FOUR times LOL First I had a kitchen meeting in our new (FREEZING) church addition. You could see your breath in there, and I was out there for an hour and a half and I think it took my toes that long to defrost as well. Then we had Chrisian’s Basketball at 11:45, home from lunch, then Ryan’s Basketball at 2:45 – home again. Then I crawled into bed under the warmest blankets I could find. Then Matt came home and said he wanted to go to the Fish Fry at the kid’s school that was to benefit the flood victims. It was the five area churches that put it together, so our church was a part of it and he thought we should at least show up. So we did, had a nice time. They took in $20K from 11am-7pm! Amazing! What a blessing to see the community pull together to support each other. That is one thing I absolutally LOVE about living out here – everyone is willing to help everyone at any given time. It really is a gift that you don’t see as much in the big city.

I had this huge burst of energy today – the only problem was that yesterday the boys and I tried out a new exercise show that I recorded on TV. Well…. my thighs are in complete pain. Apparently the exercise worked! It’s that squat position – so sitting down or going up and down stairs just kills. I can’t wait until tomorrow – the 2nd day after is always supposed to be worse. Ryan kept telling me we should go do it again today. (He’s so like his father) I was trying to explain that he is young and can handle such things every day – mom on the other hand.. needs a couple days to recover! So I got one room clean, but bending squating etc. to pick up toys was about all I could take of that.

So why is this post entitled crazy kitty? Tonight I heard a cat obviously upset – meowing and meowing, but I could not find it. I thought perhaps one was trapped in the garage – nope… In the house? Nope… Finally I looked out the window and it was standing right there at the door crying. I was busy and thought – good grief I know it’s cold, (but not as cold as the other night) do you really have to cry that hard just to come in? So I ignored it through dinner and homework. It was STILL Crying… So finally I went and opened the sliding glass door and went to pick it up and give it some love. Only problem? I couldn’t get it up! It was stuck to the metal strip on the door. It had gotten it’s paw wet and then stood there so long it frooze to he metal. Poor baby! So we went and got a cup of warm water and freed her. I think her paw is a bit sore from trying to free herself, but I think she’s okay. Crazy kitty!

Well, I think that is about all the news for now.
C-

Last time I wrote I was talking about the flood. Well, our basement was NOTHING compared to what so many people have endured in our community this past week. Pleae keep our community in your prayers. I haven’t heard official numbers, but hundredes of people have lost their houses, and even more have damage. No one has seen it flood this bad or this quickly in this area. I think everything finally crested Thurs / Friday and is gonig down now. We finally made it into town yesterday (many roads were closed – it was the long about way, but we could finally get through) and it was just so sad to see so many peoples houses with boats in their front yards and water everywhere. Apparently this area used to be swamp land before the farmers came in and put in drainage tile and such. You think everything is flat out here, but we actually are on high ground compared to many others. I head stories of people waking up in the middle of the night with their windows breaking and water pouring in. There are about 90-100 people staying at one of the local churches, and many others staying at friends and family. The McDonald’s and KFC had water almost up to the roof. You drive by local park and see bent slides etc. from the water currents. It is incredible and so sad. The food bank is running out of food, many places have called and asked for blankets, hats and gloves. We are very grateful to not have been drastically affected personally, but there are many in our community in need.

Other than that, Matt made it home safely from his trip to Minnesota. He leaves next week for Wisconsin. We have been shuttling the boys to basketball practice, and my Menu Planning Central website had a huge disaster. We had a hacker put a weird banner on the site, so our webhost went in to take it down. The hacker thankfully didn’t get any info. such as members names or anything like that. However, in the process of repair our webhost accidentally erased everything from our site since Sept. We lost over 500 recipes we had paid people to enter, all of our members and a lot of other info. So we are basically starting from ground zero again on that site – very sad. It’s a mess, but not much we can do about it, but face the fact and rebuild.

Well, I just wanted to give a brief update. I need to go pick up the boys from school.
C-

We had huge storms last night… I kept waking up to the entire house shaking from the thunder. Then this morning I woke up to the phone. It was Matt and he said Troy, the guy he is with in MN, had a foot of water in his basement and that I better go check ours. What a great way to wake up first thing in the morning. We did have water in the basement, but thankfully it was not a foot. I got the kids off to school (Christian informed me when we got home this afternoon that I was in too big of a hurry because I forgot to put the top piece of bread on his sandwich. UGH LOL He said then his whole class sang a song “No bread on sandwich” which he is singing for me now. So glad I could be the entertainment for the lunch hour. Oh Ryan now says I did the same to his. Guess I just popped on the lid to the containers and thought I was done. OOPS) Anyway… I came home and used the old carpet cleaner to suck up all the water. Unfortunately, there was a red fabric basket on the ground that stained our new painted floor…. So if anyone has an idea on how to get that out please let me know… I tried goo gone, and a bleach spray and neither of those worked… I am out of Mr. Clean Erasers… Guess that will be my next course of action. I’m kinda thinking if bleach didn’t do it nothing will. Of course I haven’t gone down to look lately, maybe it eventually did work.

So yes… it rained A LOT… I am not positive on the totals but I have heard around 4.5 to 5 inches. The Milford schools were closed because you can’t get to town due to flooded roads. So yes we enjoyed the warm weather, but now we have a mess. I can only imagine how much snow it would have been if it was colder.

Christian is supposed to know his birthday, phone number and address for school. They test every quarter. He has failed so far, and is at the point that Dane now knows our phone number because I repeat it so often for Christian and Christian STILL doesn’t get it. UGH. I am writing it down for him now in hopes that maybe that will help. I think he has birthday memorized finally. We won’t even talk about address.

So that’s the excitement of the day here.

Does the Tooth Fairy believe in God? Christian would like to know the answer if you happen to know. He thinks probably so, because if she didn’t she woudn’t be nice enough to give away all her money.

Back to school today. The day pretty much zoomed by. Got up, hauled the kids to school, came home and worked in bed while Dane watched Bob the Builder and Miss Spider, took a shower, had lunch, went to an eye Dr. Appointment, Grocery Store, unpacked groceries, picked up the boys, homework, had an early dinner, hauled the boys off to basketball practice, reading/story/snack time, bed. Phew! Matt is in MN is I’m a single mom this week.

Speaking of MN, they left yesterday (Matt & one friend), and thankfully they decided to go through Iowa instead of Wisconsin. There was a huge fog issue in Madison, WI with a 100 car pile up (on both sides of the freeway) and an eight hour back up. Unfortunately, a family from our church was in that accident and thankfully they only had minor injuries. Sounds like it was pretty scary and crazy – you can look it up online for the news story. Anyway, they would have hit Madison about 30-45 minutes afte the accident occured and been in that 8 hour back up!

It was 70 degrees here today, can you believe it? January 7th! It was rather windy though. Now we are under a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch. Fun fun! It’s bright and loud out there! We got home from basketball right before it started – as in I was closing the garage as it started to pour. It is supposed to snow by the end of the week again – go figure. We’ve alreay had I think three snow storms that have melted. Last year we had that huge snowstorm in Feb. so only time will tell I guess.

I think that is just about the gist of what is happening here.

C-