Merry Christmas

We got to be at my mom and dad's this Christmas. It took some doing, but we finally made it. Our trip began on Saturday, December 20th when we received a phone call from United telling us our original flight had been canceled due to weather. Go figure! It's December in the
Midwest...we've come to expect such things. Which is why we packed carry-on only! It's amazing the things you can do without when it becomes necessity. After several attempts by phone to get on a new flight, we decided the best option was to head to the airport as quickly as possible. You see, we weren't just worried about Chicago. Portland was in the middle of an "Arctic Blast" that was threatening to close the airport, we needed to get out of here! I loved listening in as C gave the phone operator several options of where to fly us..."How about Sacramento? My mom lives there, we could stay with her.....no? Okay, let's try San Francisco! We love that airport....no....hmmm....LA? That would be perfect! My dad is there, he'd love it!" I can only imagine what she must have been thinking!! Racing to the airport was really out of the question we soon realized as we ventured out onto to the icy roads. We couldn't go much above 35mph, not because of traffic, but because of the Slip-n-Slid our car was on. Ahead of us a huge Ford truck was simply attempting to change lanes and his tail end slid out from under him which made him slide sideways down the freeway a short distance. We soon noticed cars stopping alongside the freeway and drivers getting out to chain up. We had chains, but no time to chain up! It took us much longer than anticipated to arrive at the airport, but we finally did. The plane we were hoping to catch had already left but we were able to get on standby for the next flight out. Our original flight had us leaving Portland traveling to Chicago then arriving at Springfield where my brother, Kurt, would pick us up. Our new flight schedule had us going from Portland to LAX, spending the night in LA, leaving LA on Sunday morning and flying to Denver then finally to St. Louis where my brother, Bret, would be picking us up! My brothers are the greatest!! The only caveat was actually getting out of Portland, as by now they had canceled all flights leaving after 6 p.m. and were continuing to cancel more. We were sitting in the terminal waiting to see if we would be flying standby to LAX on the 1:30p.m. flight when we got the call that all other flights from Portland had been canceled. This was our only chance...and two minutes later they called our names for standby! We made it!! A blessing in disguise as it gave us the opportunity to spend the afternoon and night with Roland and Daniel, which we hadn't anticipated. The following morning, after a scrumptious pancake breakfast, we headed to LAX to continue on our journey. The rest of the trip to IL was uneventful. We made it to Denver and then on to St. Louis where Bret and Jessica were waiting with -4 degree weather. C looked at me and said, "I don't think I brought enough warm clothes!" Hard to fit all that in a carry-on! It was wonderful to be home and see my family. It's always too long between visits. Dad had worked hard to clear the attic so us "kids" could go up and play our choice of pool, foos ball, or air hockey. Mom made delicious dinners and decorated the house so beautifully. Bret and Kurt rocked on World Tour and even shared the limelight with C and me (C on guitar, me on drums!). Dad even got into it! What a fun week! All too soon it was time for our trek home. The weather in Portland had settled down, but weather in the Midwest is always unpredictable. There was a ton of rain, wind, thunder and
lightning none of which is a good thing when you're flying out of a tiny airport. We decided to leave early to Springfield and again try standby. We just had a feeling our flights would be canceled. Kurt drove us there, since that's where he calls home. We had a short visit to his apartment before heading on. Once we got there we found that all flights had been delayed. To make a long story short, we got on a standby flight that was supposed to leave at 2:30p.m. but didn't actually leave until 6:30 p.m. Our original flight was canceled, so we got lucky to get on the standby. We made it to Chicago in time to catch another standby that had been delayed and we made it to Portland around 11:30p.m. C's brother and his wife were at the airport to pick us up. Home again, home again....jiggity jig! Merry Christmas!

Walking in a winter wonderland :)

More Snow Photos.  This weekend we welcomed Roland and Daniel for their first visit to our new home. They arrived Friday afternoon after driving up from visiting Daniel's mom in Red Bluff. We took them to dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant and came home to enjoy the rest of the evening by the fire. The temperature has been dropping for days, snow has been in the forecast and we really started feeling it on Saturday. We took a walk around the neighborhood and decided it was better to stay by the fire! Later in the evening we headed to the movie theater down the road to see the epic Australia. As we left the theater we thought it was definitely cold enough to snow. This morning we woke up to a wonderful, white surprise! It snowed!! And it kept right on snowing all day long! We think so far we've gotten about 5 inches and I just received a call saying we have a snow day tomorrow, no school!! It's absolutely beautiful outside...and it's still snowing! I've posted some photos here and I'm including a link to our photo gallery as well. You can tell we're pretty excited about the snow! :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

...and I'm loving it! This week C came home early and surprised me with stringing lights on the outside of the house. He did a great job and I couldn't help but tease him about being Clark Griswold. Yesterday we took a trip to Lee Farms in search of the perfect Christmas tree. We soon found there are a great many places to go tree hunting and we chose Lee Farms. It was a fun place to go with acres and acres of trees. We tasted some yummy treats in the gift shop and perused the tree lot until we found the perfect one for us! Lucky for us they cut, shake and wrap the tree for transport. We just had to haul it home and stand it upright! It now stands in our living room adorned with lights. We're thinking we'll do ornaments tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are blessed in so many ways and for that we are truly thankful. This year we spent Thanksgiving week in Southern California visiting C's dad in Huntington Beach, my big brother in Montrose, and C's mom's family in Camarillo. We had so much fun taking our niece to Disneyland on Wednesday. Who doesn't love seeing Small World lit up for Christmas?! We are truly blessed! I hope each of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and continue to have a very happy holiday season!

Don't wait to rake...

A few weeks ago I posted a photo of our front yard covered in leaves. It got worse! And then it rained!! This weekend we were blessed with sunny skies so we decided to take advantage and get out there and rake up the leaves. I love trees and I am so happy to have tall, beautiful trees in our yard. However, after filling 20 - 30 gallon leaf bags full of leaves (yes, that's 600 gallons of leaves!!) I decided it was a little too much tree love for me! I guess that's what happens when you wait so long. It doesn't help matters when the neighbor pokes his head out and says "WOW! You guys got buried!!" As for disposing of them, we got lucky. Our town offers two weekends in November when people can bring their leaves to dumpsters provided by the city and this weekend happened to be one of those weekends! We disposed of all 600 gallons and are relatively leaf free. To top it off, we decided that all that raking gave us good reason to spend the rest of the day inside watching football! Go 49ers!!!

The sky is falling.....literally!!

This weekend my girlfriend, Andrea, came to visit us from the Napa Valley. Saturday the three of us got up and went for a run. After brunch we decided to walk around the neighborhood for a bit. We had a late lunch at PF Chang's which is a Chinese restaurant near the house. After a trip to Whole Foods we headed back home to settle in for the evening. I'll stop here and add that it had been raining for 6 days. Not just a little rain, torrential rain. On Saturday it turned into a light rain, but it kept going, and going, and going. Okay, back to the story. After Whole Foods we headed home to settle in for the evening. It was about 6p.m. when we arrived back home. C was building us a fire and I was putting away the groceries fully intending on changing into my jammies when I heard Andrea from the guest room sweetly say, "Guys....you have a leak." C and I rushed upstairs to inspect. As we reached the landing at the top of the stairs we saw the huge puddle of water on the floor and side table. We quickly rushed to dry and move the side table away from the water and put towels on the floor. As we worked we noticed that the crack in the ceiling where the leak was coming from...had gotten larger. C climbed up in the attic to see what he could see and found that the insulation was soaked and there was a two inch circle in the roof where the water had come through. At that point we realized...the ceiling was going to fall. We quickly moved the bed to the wall and put down more towels just in time. We barely finished when a two foot chunk fell right out of the ceiling and smattered all over the floor and entire room. After the initial shock, we inspected the ceiling again...it wasn't finished. Another two foot chunk fell right out. What a mess!!! I'd like to claim the credit for cleaning up, and the photos are quite deceiving. C is the one who actually cleaned up the entire room while Andrea and I made dinner. We spent the rest of the evening soaking in the hot tub, writing a letter to our landlords and being thankful once again that the responsibility of repair is not ours. Our landlords were here with a repairman by noon on Sunday. The repairman had the hole patched in no time and now we are just waiting for him to come back and paint. Poor Andrea spent the rest of her time camped out in the family room. On the positive side, our couch is very comfortable and it is pretty cozy by the fire! And just for the record, there were no further mishaps for the remainder of her stay.

Happy Halloween!

This weekend we were visited by our niece, Brandon, who lives up in Washington. She didn't have school on Friday and was able to come visit from Thursday to Saturday evening. She spent Friday with me at school participating in all the fun kindergarten Halloween activities. At the end of the day I asked her what she thought about it. Her reply was, "Those kids are SO naughty!" So insightful! Friday afternoon was spent buying candy to hand out to all the trick-or-treaters and carving a jack-o-lantern to place in the driveway to let people know we had candy! Brandon dressed up as Cleopatra, she loves anything Egyptian! She was quite a hit, everyone she visited felt honored to have the ancient Egyptian queen on their doorstep.
Saturday morning we woke up and took a lovely walk through the park and to the donut shop! What a treat I got when I found my donut was fresh out of the oven! YUM! Well worth the walk in the rain! The rest of the day was spent around the house and in the hot tub but all too soon the time came to take Brandon to be picked up by her Nana. Hard to tell who had more fun!! Hope your Halloween was "Spook"tacular!