An Eventful Birthday

Yesterday was Devin’s 30th Birthday!!!  Mother Nature wanted to celebrate the day big, and put on quite a wind storm in honor of his birthday.  At around 2 am, the wind picked up and blew HARD for the next 12 hours, getting up to 83 mph around 8am.  About 10 min away from where we live, the wind was up to 102 mph.   The power was out for most of that time, schools were cancelled, work was cancelled and life was pretty much put on hold until the wind died down.  It caused quite the destruction in our little town (and we even made it on national news)!  Everyone around us (at least as far as I could tell) either had chunks of shingles blown off or trees blown down.  It was crazy to watch the amount of shingles and debris flying through the air. I didn’t dare to stand outside for too long for fear of getting hit with something!  My parents had a big blue spruce growing in their front yard and it had been there for probably 30ish years.  An icon in my mind.  Sadly, it blew down in the storm.  I was really sad to see it go since it ha been there ever since I can remember.  It was a beautiful tree.

Wind Storm

We were one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people to have this happen.  Driving down the main street and through the neighborhoods, it was sad to see so many beautiful trees blown down.  
My in-laws had it bad as well.  They lost a ton of their shingles and had a few trees in their yard fall down.
As soon as the wind slowed, it was time for cleanup.  Dev took a chainsaw and went at it.
 
Even the boys helped out

Notice the fence in the background of this pic.  A lot of fences ended up looking like this one by the time the storm was over:


The pile of branches. More piles to come! 

This one was at Devin’s parent’s house:

Devin’s mom hated to clean up the leaves from these huge trees. Guess that problem’s taken care of:

Wind Storm

The cool part about all of this is how everyone was so willing to help each other out! Neighbors came over ready to help get things cleaned up as soon as it was safe to be outside.  A lot of the guys would go from one house to the next all day long (yesterday and today) doing what they could to help.  It’s great to see such unselfish service! 
I felt bad that Devin had to spend his 30th birthday cleaning up fallen trees, but he said it was cool to spend his birthday using a chainsaw all day. He’s such a man :)

Men In Tights

On Thursday night, I was able to go see my niece Liza perform in the Nutcracker ballet. A local ballet studio puts it on every year and I love it!  It’s a great kick-off to the holiday season.  Most of the cast is made up of the young ballet students but it also includes a few more professional dancers from Ballet West ( Utah’s big ballet company), which I think is pretty darn cool for these little aspiring dancers to be able to perform with these professionals.  I have to say that the ballet can sometimes be a bit slow but I realize how impressive their abilities are!  And I don’t know what it was--my old age, wacky hormones, my new found maturity(ha!), or the way-too-hot auditorium—but for some reason I got quite emotional when those professionals performed. And no, it wasn’t the fact that the dudes were wearing tights.  It is incredible to see the skills that these people have. And mix that in with a live orchestra playing fantastic music. Beautiful. 

The man and women in the middle were from Ballet West.  I was sitting on the back row and I could see the muscles in their legs. Whoa!

During my favorite part I forgot to take pictures because I was caught up in the moment (look up Nutcracker Pas de deux sometime in youtube. Amazing) but here is a pic from another favorite part of mine. Somehow there are 8 little kids stuffed under the skirt. 



And here is my niece (with her cheese smile). What a cute little dancer she is. She was a pink baby mouse and did a fantastic job!

Halloween

Wow, I’m on a roll with blog posts.  My readership (aka Devin) rejoices.
A few days before halloween we went to a shopping area called Gardner Village for Witchfest.  All around the shops are different witches that are AdORabLE!  But I was more focused on some cute WALKING boys. 







On Halloween, the boys played in the leaves.
Cam:
Nate:

Then we went trick or treating, sort of. We went to see Grandma and Grandpa Farr. The boys had a handful of candy put into their pumpkin baskets and then piece by piece they would take the candy out. They’ll have to practice how trick or treating works for next year.  Cam was Tigger and Nate was Pooh. 

Nate didn’t even make it off the porch before he wanted to find out what sort of gift was put into his bucket. 


Growing up, it was tradition to go to a neighbor's house to see their display of carved pumpkins. Every year I am amazed to see all of the pumpkins. So we headed there with the boys. Devin counted the pumpkins, and this year there were around 95!!! All carved and lit up.

Dev, of course, liked the eye pumpkin: