Last Post of the Year!

A leftover snow picture. Holly took this when the snow had mostly melted. Yes, it's the Red Bowling Ball of Love poking out of the snow.

The boys and I are still in vacation mode. They've been hanging out with friends this week and running the odd errand or two with me. We've also been teaching the boys the card game Hearts over the past couple weeks and tonight started teaching them Pitch.

That's about it for 2008. We're ready for another year now!

A Post that isn't about Snow!

Well, not directly about the snow. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve with Steve's family. Nice and relaxed, everyone arrived safely and left before the streets froze up again.

The Christmas Eve service at church was different, a nice kind of different though. We combined the two services that had been scheduled and didn't do the pageant since no one was sure who could make it and who couldn't. A highlight for us was Tim playing a song before the service started, The First Noel. He did a great job and it was his idea too.

On Christmas day we went out to Holly's folks. They live 20 minutes away but high enough in elevation the roads were quite a bit worse. But we made it and the boys got to play in even deeper snow than we had at home. Now the snow is almost all gone, replaced by the usual rain. Ahhh, good old Oregon rain-six more months of it and we'll see the sun again.

Still Having Fun

Over a week of snow now! A lot of the town may be grumbling but we're enjoying it. Yesterday Steve left to finish up his Christmas shopping, an easy hop on the 75 bus and into town to some nice stores. The only problem was he watched three buses go up the street to where they turn around, only they didn't turn around - they got stuck in the snow. Actually only two buses were stuck in the snow, the third one disappeared and never returned.

He gave up, hit the local stores and we all met up for lunch at the pizza place.

Yet more snow . . .

Yesterday Steve and the boys didn't have school again (and I still had to go to work, again). Grandma and Grandpa B borrowed the boys in the afternoon to finish a project for Christmas - I think they really needed an excuse to build a snowman.

This morning it's snowing - we're expecting 3-5" in Portland. So much for practicing the Christmas Pageant! I never thought I'd get excited about rain on Christmas. :)
-Holly

More Snow!

We had another day off from school yesterday (second this week) and the boys and Steve walked around the neighborhood to the library, Goodwill, down to some others stores and got a bite to eat at Subway too.

Tim looks a little cranky standing in the street-he wasn't. He had a blast running along and sliding as far as he could. Joe really got into it too.

Cold Cold Cold

Those of you not from Oregon probably don't understand-but the city is at a standstill today. That's right, it snowed a couple inches. And it's crazy cold too, 23 degrees right now. But we've had a blast, especially Tim who went out a third time today to roll around in the snow (really, I looked out and he spent a couple minutes rolling around.)
After lunch we walked down to Berkley Park to do a little sledding and have some fun. There are a couple short hills, enough to get going and enjoy it. The boys also ran around on the play structures and went down some slides, extra slick with a layer of snow on them.
And Joe just learned that there is NO SCHOOL TOMORROW! Thanks for the phone call Grandma D. Another day of playing in the snow and board games (today was Robo Rally.)

Breakfast with Santa

We drove out to Forest Grove and went to the McMenamins Grand Lodge to have breakfast with Santa, and all the grandparents too.

Tim was very excited. He dressed up and brought along a visual aid to show Santa exactly what he wanted (a Star Wars toy.) Joe was a little bit more mellow about it (definitely not a 5th grade kind of a thing to do) but reluctantly had a good time too.

Number 32??? Who has number 32????!!?

Tonight was a fund raiser at a Burgerville to earn some money for outdoor school for Joe's class. He helped out by serving the food with some of his class mates. The place was completely packed and kept getting busier all night long. Tim's good friend Elias was there so he didn't mind killing time while Joe served food.

Climbing on the roof

Holly and the boys put up the Christmas lights over the weekend. Joe had the camera and took this picture (and a bunch more) while everyone was crawling around.