And we are back...

Today, at lunch time I beheld a most beautiful sight...the Mediacom repair team. After a week, we now have home phone (and our unlimited long distance, so Anna can talk to Grandma and Grandpa as often as she wants), internet, and cable (this is most important for Skippy).

So without further ado, pictures from the last week. I will let them talk the stories (with some narration).

On the 8th, we had an office Christmas dinner in downtown Jeff City - the meal wasn't impressive. But it was a fun night and marked Anna's first true babysitting experience (sorry, I don't count a morning with T or time with Grandma and Grandpa as true babysitting). Anna was crying when I left, but stopped once the door was shut and started playing with K (the babysitter) and M (K's younger sister who was invited to tag along - otherwise she as stuck home with her brother, as her mom works with me and was at the dinner also).

When we got home (about 5 hours later) - here is the sight we beheld (and of course, I ran upstairs to get the camera). In the first picture you cannot see Anna because she is cuddled down next to K and under the blanket.



A better photo the sleeping beauties. In K's defense, it was after 10 and Anna can wear out even the most energetic teenager.

So dinner was followed by a wild night of thunderstorms with freezing ran. Resulting in the following pictures of destruction of the trees in my front yard (and eventually leading toward a lack of electricity along with phone, internet and cable service). If you look closely, you can see the culprits (limbs and branches) responsible for my outages. Also, these were early morning photos, it got worse as the day progressed. All I heard from 3am to late afternoon was pop, pop, crack and crash.

Luckily, we (Anna, the Boys, and I) were taken in by my supervisor until we regained power.

Friday, December 14th was Anna's Christmas program at the daycare. Remember, even though she is only 21 months (soon to be 22 months) Anna is in the Two Year Olds Room. Her group started out well, because Anna had not noticed me. But look at the fourth photo down - yes, she just saw Mommy. This was followed by a melt down, half way through Rodolph the Red Nose Reindeer. After the first scream of why are you not with me - I signaled for her to come over to me and she stopped the melt down, which included big alligator tears. She never went back up - thanks goodness she wasn't chosen to play Mary for the second song, Away in a Manager.

Lastly, click the following to see Anna, Rem and Jake as elves. Thanks, Jess, for doing this.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1469888158