what a week!(so far!)

big ice storm came through new england-seen the news lately? we lost power for 96 hours. i cannot describe how it felt, standing in a cold, dark mall food court, car packed, with nowhere to go with our 4 youngest kids. yucky feeling. i could make this a big long story but im just too spent right now. in the end, we stayed with my best friend Libby in another town. she has 4 teenagers, 2 huge birds, 2 naughty kittens, an indoor bunny and a lassie dog. she also has a husband with a cold. they were so good to us. they fed us great dinners, let kendyl hog the TV and washed our clothes. we baked cookies and cinnamon bread. joe even fixed Yogi's chainsaw! Ken & Shawn got to bathe in the big, deep jetted tub! they loved that. the not knowing and feeling bad for our lonely, cold dog was the only hard part. the rest couldnt have been better. shawn took to co sleeping like a champ-yogi & i shared the basement pull out couch with him- and kendyl loves Libby's 13 year old daughter Steph who is an AMAZING care taker. she kept kendyl upstairs with her, and jack slept under the Christmas tree. doug has strep throat so he stayed with all his sick friends here in town lol. why infect us all, right? sometimes things happen for a reason. steph showed me a shortcut i never knew about and i cut like 10 minutes off the trip, so maybe thatll get me to visit more often. life just gets so busy. we had so much fun catching up. we promised to get together more often. why does it take a local disaster??????? i totally fell head over heels in love with one of the birds. Bones is a HUGE scarlet Macaw with a vocabulary that would knock your boots off. he is a A TRIP. only joe can handle him, but its so fun to sit by his cage and listen to him talk, get him to mimic you and try to teach him new stuff. if we didnt have kids, we'd have birds. it is so much fun. but BOY do they love to screech. they want what they want and take up alot of your time. they are messy too. i had a smaller parrot years ago and 4 years was long enough. he wanted to take my eyes out. i miss my bones already :( i guess i better visit them all more often huh? power came on at 7 last night and we packed up and came home. forgot a few things, so i have to go back anyway :) why cant i start a new paragraph? whats wrong with blogger today? so... today was spent cleaning up this dumpy place. yogi's friend Tim will be here in a few days, was held up by weather and a gross 24 hour flu. OY. did lots of un packing, re -organizing and meal planning for the coming weeks. we may not get a tree until like 2 days before Christmas! no space anyway, i know.. i know... BAH HUMBUG! but the last few days have worn us all out. Yogi is working in Boston again, out in the cold all day every day so we may just keep things really restful this holiday. almost done shopping, need more for the 2 bigger boys and stocking stuffers. kept it LIGHT.
ok... i better get going, still so much to catch up on!