Oooo, ooooo! More Gwen Cam on a Stormy Weekend!

Hello all - we're still here and the house has not blown away....yet. To further grease the wheels of the Blog Challenge (We can mention it outwardly, right?), the House of Miller is hereby submitting recent video of Her Highness. Enjoy! (And if this gets disqualified as blatant judge bribery..at least we made grandparents and great grandparent happy in states/countries afar)

An Explanation (In Mary's Words)

For the record, Mary of Cohagen Chronicles quite nicely summed up what is going on in our little Jordan world - hope everyone outside the county is enjoying this as much as we are!

"In explanation:

So the blog readers don't think we've lost our ever-loving minds....
Marisa (of the blog MomentsWithMarisa) challenged Anne (FarmchicksFrantics) and me to a storm blog challenge for the weekend. There were no real boundaries, other than the blogging had to take place between Saturday morning and Sunday night. Anne and I, being competetive to the core and also needing projects to keep us from going insane, took the challenge quite to heart and have nearly filled our camera's memory cards and strained our minds for creativity.
So, if you couldn't figure out why we all have had numerous posts, new quizzes, animated greetings (I mean really, Anne!), that's what's up. It's definitely spurred creativity!
Enjoy! You can read each of the blogs by looking at my list of blogs that I'm following at the bottom of this page."

It's heeeerrrrre

And here we go, with high winds and growing piles of snow! Not a true white-out yet but will be with a few more inches. Roads are considered severe driving conditions and some (Eddie's Corner near Lewistown down to Big Timber) have closed entirely. So far, the Miles City road appears to be open....but we pity (and worry about) anyone trying to head that direction without packing their house with them.

Storm Prep 101

Yesterday was spent getting ready for the storm that was due to hit this morning. Anne awoke to the noise of Eric in the crawlspace, feverishly insulating the floorboards...at task so unfavorable that he declared blizzard conditions the primary and only motivator at this point. Hence, you will see no pictures of the aforementioned insulation - it is finished in the living room/kitchen/entry areas and, once he crawled his way back out, there was not any going back in for a photo op. Can we really blame him?

As you can see above, we made many other provisions. Much needed staples like hot chocolate and teas were restocked. Our water supply was expanded (for those of you outside the area, this is like Mexico...no drinking the tap water as of yet. We are working to remedy this with an RO system at some point). Our beautiful stove is going full blast & the wood is stacked out on the front porch. Our vehicles are backed into the drive, in an attempt to make an exit easier to navigate around potential drifts, if neccessary. Anne has trouble backing in and out of the drive anyway....so who knows what may be possible with additional obstacles! Keep in mind, this female once got her University of ID Plant Science Dept work subarban so stuck between two passanger vans in the College of Ag parking lot that she nearly needed a can opener to get them separated. Her usually calm, collected boss/friend spent the next 20 minutes with her trying to get the vehicle out from between the parking spaces without any scratches or incidents worthy of telling the Dean.

Moving on (no pun intended)...we've also purchased gasoline for the generator in the case that we need it to run lights and other neccesary household utilities. However, candlelight is much more fun and we think every tealight, column and stick candle is being used. Those of you looking for candles during holiday shopping this weekend to no avail, don't worry, they're all at our house!

In any case, we are prepared for just about anything!

Battening Down the Hatches

Hey everyone! You know you live in a wonderfully tight community system when you get emails like the one below. We knew that this weekend would be bringing cold temps that would make us glad we have plenty of wood, a backup system of electric heat and tons of hot chocolate (Anne call this "survival material"), but it appears that we should be digging out more long underwear and maybe even rigging a Little House on the Prairie style guide-line to get back and forth to the shop! The cameras are ready and will be rolling!

"Hi all,

No newsletter this time around, just a heads up that this storm this weekend is going to be a big one. Snowfall totals of 7-11 inches will be common throughout NE Montana, with some areas possibly seeing up to 12-14 inches (mainly Phillips, Petroleum, NW Garfield, and perhaps the Big Sheeps and Larb Hills).

The cold front will be moving through the region on Saturday morning. The winds with this system will be pretty significant as well (NW 25-40 mph gusting up to 55 or 60 mph), causing blizzard conditions, and snow drifts measured in feet. The snow should end by Sunday morning.

The winds will be less on Sunday, but the colder temperatures will keep wind chills pretty low. We'll see lows of 20 to 30 below on Monday morning and again Tuesday morning with highs on Sunday and Monday in the 5 to 15 below range.

You can keep up on the latest forecast and conditions from your area by going to http://www.weather.gov/glasgow.

If you have outdoor or travel plans this weekend, it would be really good to reconsider those, and stay home, read a book, catch up on movies, or play a game with the family. Those are my plans (and to clean the inside of the refrigerator!). ;-)

Tanja"

Top Ten Indicators that Your Life Has Changed Forever

1) You will never be "Anne" and "Eric" again. Meet "Mom" and "Papa", whom for some strange reason find themselves referring to one another in the third person...despite whether or not Gwen is actually present.

2) When feeling particularly sorry for herself at the lack of sleep, Mom self-cures with a single episode of "John and Kate Plus 8."

3) Showers are not longer for hygiene purposes only....they are a luxury that goes well beyond the smell factor.

4) You can supply an entire army with food, clothing and undies (although perhaps non-traditional) out of a single bag.

5) You want to whack silly whatever engineer designed every carseat/stroller to be slightly different in mechanical operation.

6) Papa brings home not one, but TWO candy bars after deciding that Gwen might have kept Mom from working in increments longer than 20 minutes, tops.

7) You try to make lasagna and decide that you will merely pour the meat/sauce layer over the pasta and eat it, abandoning all hope of that nicely layered dish shown on the pasta package.

8) You thank the heavenly father for inspiring someone to invent a coffee pot with an auto-start timer (definitely wasn't the dufus that designed the strollers).

9) You suddenly understand those parents that seem to talk in code about objects in their homes (i.e. - lifesaver = rice cereal; spa = shower; cold=less than 70 degrees)

10) You can't remember what number 10 was going to be....so you make due with what you can remember!

Gwen Cam Part 2

Hello from the House That Never Sleeps! Here is another video to again stave off pleas of more updates :) We promise more diligence on our part - however, right now the parental units are trying to get mentally organized to the point that the tv remote doesn't get found in the refrigerator, the coffee gets made with grounds actually put into the filter (thank you for the goodie box including coffee for the adults Aunt Molly!!!!) , and there isn't any drifting off the pavement...er...gravel. More to come - in the meantime..might we suggest taking a look at beautiful Glory and Kate, the baby twins that arrived recently at the Eddy House?