CHA 2012

Wow, i am way behind with this post. In January I headed off to meet up with my best friend Tiffany in LA for CHA. We try to see each other at least once a year and a scrap book convention is typically involved. Tiffany had quite the adventure just getting to LA from Alaska, check out her blog for the details but just let me say it involved boats, cars and planes and took about 36 hours. Yikes, poor thing. This year we decided to fit in a trip to Disneyland and I must say, I am so glad we did. We had an amazing time, we rode every ride within the 2 hours thanks to Tiffany's cousin and Mom who were both using handicap carts. We went to the front of the line for just about every ride and had to wait just a few turns before we were able to get on each ride! It was crazy fun!! The convention was great too, my first stop each day was Teresa Collins booth for her amazing make and takes. I love her new lines, especially the color combinations- really nice. We took lots of classes, including  few duds, but generally they were pretty good. It's always nice to try out the new products first hand. I had such a great time with Tiffany, Susie and Taylor, it was very relaxing and I cant wait to do it again next year. If we can convince Tiffany to leave Seldovia.....

Shower for the new baby Cain

Rachel and I went to the newest baby Cain's shower on Saturday and had a ton of fun. The food was great, the games hilarious and the new friends were fun to meet. They had a game called pin the sperm on the egg, a new one for me- I wouldnt even have imagined this one. It was hilarious!! I dont know what was funnier, hearing an 8 year old Cyra saying "here gramma, here's your sperm" or Rachel and I both being the only ones to get the sperm on the egg. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!! LOL!! We both had  great time and are looking forward to seeing that new baby in a few weeks. Congratulations Scott, Shawna and Cyra!!

A few more ice pictures

Ice storm January 2012

Today was a bit of a crazy day. Yesterday we had a snow storm that dropped about 16" of snow and made getting to work tricky. Then today we woke up to freezing rain and a cold temperatures. As we headed out to work there were a few trees down along way, one or two in the driveway but not a big deal. Right? Wrong! One of the roads we normally take had a huge tree across it and downed power lines. So we went around and made it to work safely. Then the power went out at work and trees were coming down everywhere so we got to head home early. On the way home we saw more and more trees down in the road and obvious signs of power outages along the way. Then we got to our driveway. Yikes, trees everywhere. So we called Mike at the house and told him to bring the chainsaw down so we could cut a path. We got out of the truck to move a few of the smaller branches and were surrounded by the sound of falling branches and breaking trees. I freaked out, it was so scary. You could hear a "crack" and then look up to see a branch or part of a whole tree falling down. There are no less than 7 downed trees across our driveway, and there is no way we can risk cutting them to clear the road, it's just way to dangerous. So the truck sits at the end of the driveway and we are sitting in the house listening and watching trees fall every few minutes. Eventually we'll have to get out there and cut the downed trees to clear the road, just not today!!

Sledding with the Schoenings

Wow, it's been a long time since we have spent any time with the Schoenings. So when they called to see if we wanted to go sledding today the answer was definitely yes. As you can see, Cody was limited on his fun today since he is still is his brace from breaking his back in a car wreck a few weeks ago. However, the rest of us all jumped on the sleds and took a few runs, some of them took lots of runs! It was snowing like crazy up in Capitol Forrest so we had plenty of fresh snow to sled on. Mike managed to catch some air on one of his runs and then crashed into the bushes on another. Sledding today reminded me of the trips we took up there together over the years, now our kids are almost all grown up so it was nice to do it again and have fun hanging out with each other like in the "old days".  I hope we can get all of the kids and do it at least one more time this year while the snow sticks around. Fun times!

Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas from the Cain and Williams crew! We hosted my family at our house on Christmas eve and had a blast with the White Elephant gift exchange. Morgan brought over a Santa hat and everybody had to put it on when it was their turn to choose a gift and there was lots of swapping and laughing going on! Rachel brought both her dogs over and combined with ours and Morgans we ended up with 5 dogs in the house, Jim had mixed feelings about it as you can see by the picture. All of the kids stayed the night at our house so we were able to have Christmas morning with our whole family. It was a nice, peaceful Christmas and I enjoyed every minute of it. We went to Jim's Moms house on Monday afternoon and I totally forgot to take a single picture, grrr. It was nice to spend some time with Twyla, Shell and Bob though. I hope all of you had a great Christmas too!