Jewel

On January 27th we made our way up to Mystic Lake in Prior Lake, Minnesota to go see Jewel Kilcher live in concert. The tickets were Becky's Christmas gift from Kara and Lance. When we arrived to the hotel we met up with Kara's Godmother, Tracy, as she was going to stay with us for the evening and watch Kara while we were at the concert. In theory, a flawless plan.

Prior to the show starting we had told Tracy that if there were any problems she could call as we would keep one of our phones on vibrate during the show. You know, just in case.

When we had left our hotel room all was well and Kara was playing and having a good time. We went into the showroom and watched the opening performer for about half an hour and then there was a fifteen minute break before Jewel would be on stage. She finally came out and we made it through about four songs before the phone illuminated and said Calling: Tracy. When I could make my way out of the auditorium I called back and tried to find out what was up but a conversation was not so much possible due to all of the screaming in the background. Apperently our daughter had finally realized we weren't there. I ran up to the room and found Kara in the midst of a drama/panic attack and it even took me some time to calm her down. My back up plan, which worked to Tracy's benefit, was to send her back to the show it my place. I still had both of the tickets with me so she took one and sat with Becky for the rest of the show. So while I tried to restore peace in the universe upstairs, the girls got to watch this...

About an hour later we had changed Kara into her pajamas and she was back to her normal self. I figured that the show was about done so we made our way downstairs thinking we could meet them outside the showroom once the concert was done. However, once we were in the lobby area and talked to someone about why I had to leave (and Kara waved bye-bye to them) I was told to go ahead and go back into the concert to watch the last few songs from beyond the doors which were located about in the center of the audience. With about fifteen other people also standing in the area we had to go back out a few times as Kara thought that Jewel shouldn't be the only one making noise. But for the most part the other people seemed to enjoy watching Kara clap and wave almost as much as the encore Jewel was performing.

Once the show was done we found them making their way to the door and before we lef the showroom we had someone take a picture of all of us before we left.

The More You know...

Kara now has several teeth. It was interesting getting them in. Many late nights with a very moody baby. But all is well now as the ones that were coming in are in.

She also has developed a keen interest in getting into places she is not supposed to.

So that's nice.

Just in case you were curious about what our cat, Henry, does during the day...

The Dark 26th

On the evening of December 26th at around nine the Harding family was watching the movie Wall-E that Kara had gotten for Christmas. They were almost halfway through it when everything in the house shut off. Not just their house but the neighborhood. So that was nice.

We would find out later that it was in fact most of west Ames that lost power. Kara had just gone to sleep so she didn't care. We started to look for something to light up our house and found a few battery operated candles that would hardly light up a corner let alone a room and one real candle. The only flashlight we had in the house was a pink princess flashlight that came with Kara's tent set. It also came with a pink compass but we will undoubtedly use that another time. We did have one thing going for us that I remembered. We had some large light bulbs that change color above our living room window. "But the electricity was out," you may be saying. You would be correct but when you see these bulbs in the store and want to test them they have batteries in the box on the power cord. Ah ha! So I removed the cord from the wall and activated the batteries. I can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking. Probably wishing they were as cool as us.

What was so interesting about it happening at the time it did was that most of Iowa was covered in thick fog. So what does one do when something like this happens? Take slow shuttered photos, of course.

Christmas Day

On Christmas day we were able to sleep in a bit before heading back over to Nevada to open gifts with Lance's family. Once everyone had showed up we started in on opening gifts. Lance opened a tool chest, blu-ray movies and some clothes among other things.

Becky received a Cricut cutting machine for scrapbooking and projects, a spice holder, the game Trouble and some movies.


Kara was given a princess car, a talking magnet toy that sticks on the fridge, a Disney story book and some rubber blocks. However, it seemed that her favorite toy of the day wasn't even hers. It was Layne's tool bench.

After gifts everyone was in a hurry to eat some of the Chicken Noodle soup that had been cooking. Or at least what was left of it after Logan had been "testing" it all day. We then watched one of the movies Lance got earlier on in the day and eventually went home when it was time for Kara to go to sleep.