Snow pictures

Well, the snow is definitely melting fast. I had hoped to get some pictures of the maze around our house when we got 19 inches last week. But both our digital cameras chose that time to be temperamental and neither would work. Earlier in the day I had taken some pictures at work, most of windows with snow on the ledges. The work camera is working again so I'm going to share those photos with you. The first picture is looking out my office window. The second picture is the windows on the south side of the library, the bottom of the windows is about 5 feet off the ground. We had a lot of wind with this storm. The third image is looking out my office window towards our house and the fourth is looking out the doors on the east side of the building before the sidewalks or stairs had been cleared.





Hope your spring is looking up.
Diane

Spring?

I know the calendar still says spring is six days away and we have 2 plus feet of snow on the ground but today the sun is shining, it is already above freezing and chunks of snow are falling off the roof scaring the cats.

Last night we drove to and from Northome to pick up Stephen. He got a ride as far as that to come home for spring break. He has a full plate scheduled for the week. He is planning to sleep, do homework, go to the movies, sleep, eat, sleep, do homework, look for a summer job, sleep, eat and oh did I mention sleep.

Today Rachel is in Eveleth with the speech team. Hopefully she can do as well this week as she did last week. I think I am going to cut out the pattern to make her River dress today. I have made a mock-up and we're fairly happy with it.

Jeff is working on the next podcast for IBRT this weekend. He still has to mix all the parts together.

Rachel is getting very excited about her trip to New York. She leaves in 10 days. We are glad that fund-raising is done and we've paid our portion of the trip and can now focus on getting her ready to go.

Hope you are experiencing some spring weather. Enjoy.
Love,
Diane

YEAH!!!

Rachel and the speech team were in Ely, Minnesota today for a smaller speech meet. The team is fairly young this year and it was a good chance for them to gain some confidence. And it was a good confidence booster for Rachel.

She is again competing in the creative category, which means she writes her own piece. Today she placed second!! She was very excited. That gives her a good chance of placing well at sections. She will continue to work hard on the piece and the week after returning from New York will compete at state.

She has improved so much since she began competing in seventh grade. She is really enjoying this speech season.

I have had a good weekend as well. I am working on a River costume for Rachel and creating a dress almost from scratch. It is finally coming together and I'm enjoying the process. I also planted tomato seeds today. It is about 12 weeks until we can plant outside but I haven't given plants long enough to get established so am trying to start earlier this year. I am looking forward to seeing some green.

Have a good weekend.

Diane

OSCAR PARTY RESULTS

The results are in from the annual Adams Family Oscar party! A good time had by all as we watched the 81st Academy Awards go down without the obvious oversight of a Dark Knight Best Picture Nomination. The Clayton Family bracketed our competition this year, with Kenna taking top honors with a total of 27 points, and husband Tom taking home the Booby Prize (a K-Mart Double Feature DVD featuring Space Mutiny and Firehead) with a total of only 1.

The competition heated up early when Beth Nelson ran off four of the first five awards by using her 'Last Minute' strategy of picking the winners only after all the nominations had been read. This would eventually backfire, however, when Nelson had to exit the competition early to take care of some sleepy girls at home. Her subsequent picks, all done in advance, did not fare as well. Vicki Olson came on strong late to finish second with 26 points while Rachel Adams took third with 23.   All three top finishers batted 1000 on the major categories of Best Picture, Actress, Actor, and Director.

Two categories stumped the field this year. No one came up with the right answer for Sound Editing, nor Documentary Feature. Wall-E's victory in Animated Feature was the lone category the entire field picked right, though all but Tom did peg Health Ledger's performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight as the winner in the best supporting actor race.

FINAL SCORES
Kenna Clayton 27
Vicki Olson 26
Rachel Adams 23
Beth Nelson 21
Jeff Adams 15
Kirsty Sinclair 15
Steve Sinclair 12
Phoebe Marx 12
Eric Marz 5
Justin Kapla 5
Tom Clayton 1

(Scoring: Best Picture was worth 5 points; Best Actor, Actress, & Director 3 points; Best Supporting Actor & Actress 2 points; all other categories 1 point each.)

End of January already?

Wow! The month has both crept along and flown by. We have been very busy with band fundraising efforts as well as spending time with Stephen before taking him back to Morris for his second semester of school.

January has been cold until today. We had a high of 29 predicted and hit 38 (the first time above freezing since Nov. 14). We haven't had much snow this month, just dustings and an inch or two once or twice.

Rachel has finished her piece for speech season and is working on memorizing it. Next Saturday will be a local practice meet as the team has grown exponentially in size this year and most of the kids have never competed.

Rachel and I found fabric and yarn in Bemidji on our way to Morris to make her next costume for Convergence. I am designing the dress and jacket so am being stretched creatively in the coming months. I am planning on making a mock out of a sheet and have started on the knit jacket (a shrug with long sleeves).

Rachel is working on music for her movie and completed a small project for a class project. She has another idea for a short movie to potentially enter in a regional film festival.

And Jeff just keeps plugging along. He is doing a lot of writing and recording in the studio and is beginning prepartions for a live show at the end of April/early May. He is posting new podcasts every other week and is seeing an increase in those numbers.

I hope this finds everyone looking for warmer weather and staying healthy this winter. You are in our thoughts and prayers.

Diane

Merry Christmas One and All!

We have had a wonderful season of advent. Preparation for Christmas has been the priority and we are ready to celebrate. We hope you are too. It will just be the four of us on Christmas day and we are looking forward to a relaxed, low-key day. We have our customary smoked turkey and will enjoy presents, grazing, and each other.

We got our tree last Saturday. The weather was perfect. It was snowing lightly, about 5 degrees (which was warmer than the entire week up to then, so it felt almost balmy). We found a beautiful tree and have thoroughly enjoyed having it up in our living room.

I know the west coast has been pummeled with snow for over a week now but we have had some great snowfalls as well. We have been below 15 degrees since early December and have about 3 feet of snow on the ground. Below are a few pictures of our lights and snow drifts after the first big storm. We also had a night of easterly winds and that pushed the mill steam onto the trees in the area. I don't think the picture does it justice but the next day everything glistened with horefrost.

Diane

Blizzard Day

Such a wonderful day to be indoors. Diane, Rachel and I all worked at church this morning, and are now back home with no reason at all to go outside. This is good, because we are experiencing our first ever blizzard in Minnesota. It’s impossible to tell how much snow has fallen since it’s piling up in drifts up to two feet, and they say the winter storm warning will be in effect until noon tomorrow. There’s plenty of wind out there, and perhaps strangest of all, bitter cold. Our backyard thermometer currently reads 5-below-zero. This is strange because you usually don’t get that much snow when it is so cold. REALLY cold air tends to dry up moisture making precip a little tough to come by. Not this time, however. So I’m just sitting here, watching the Vikings play Arizona, and I thought I’d update this blog.

Last week was Calls to Santa week for the Icebox Radio Theater. Five nights of playing the big man on the radio. This week, our focus turns to Stephen who is undergoing his first finals week at college. Not to mention a round-trip on Thursday to go get him. That’s what we have going this next week. I’m sure someone will update this blog before Christmas, but if it isn’t me, let me say Merry Christmas to everyone, and I’ll be praying for travel mercies all around.