February

Well, it seems that I have not been doing a good job at keeping up my blog. I have been asked to post pictures, reminded that I need to update, and yet over a month has gone by since I have done anything. Who knew it was going to be work?

I did get a new camera in January. A very nice, very wonderful Nikon D60 that I am VERY excited to start using. So far, however, I don't have many exciting pictures because we haven't been anywhere exciting to take great pictures! Don't get me wrong, I have taken nearly 300 photos so far, but somehow I just don't think you all want to see our blog postings full of the kids playing board games!

I am adding some beautiful family photos. Our dear friend Debbie is starting her own photography business, Debbie B Photography, and she took photos of the girls last fall, and then our family pictures. We haven't had a family photo taken since Addi was born so I am very pleased with these. Last time I saw Debbie she had finished her website, but had not quite launched it. If you are in need of a good photographer, let me know and I will get you in touch with her. She specializes in kids and pets.

Thor is busy as I type putting wainscoting in the dining room. It is going to look wonderful, so I will be sure to post the end results. He wired in a new light and new plugs last weekend and it looks like he will finish off the project this weekend.

Yay! The kids are back in school, and we are finally back to having some schedule in our lives again. To be honest, I actually enjoyed the time spent with the girls doing very little and not accomplishing a lot. However, it was time to start putting away the Christmas decorations and get to some New Year's cleaning.

We were able to celebrate Christmas with the Ivanoff family on January 3rd. The snow kept us from our annual trip to Astoria for Christmas Eve. It almost looked like we were going to be waylaid by the weather again, but drove over HWY 30 and made it just fine. Here are some of the photos from our celebrations at John & Katrina's home.

We spent New Year's Eve with the Lucas Family. The girls had fun watching all of Brad's fireworks, playing DS together and dancing to all the songs from Mamma Mia! There was plenty of food and drink, and I am embarrased to say that we stayed out until 2 o'clock in the morning!

This year was our turn to host my parents for Christmas Day, but as we got closer to Christmas the roads changed our plans. We agreed that since Thor has four-wheel drive, we would go over to their place. However, two days before the big day, my parents woke up to no electricity! We kept hoping that PGE would get the power back on, but it never happened. So Thor drove over to pick up Grandma & Grandpa and bring them over here for the day. Just as he pulled into their driveway, the power came on! That made it nice because they were able to enjoy the day without worrying about going home to a cold house. We all got spoiled with plenty of gifts and a nice ham dinner.

Since we could not make it to Astoria for Christmas Eve, we went over to celebrate with the Jacobsons. It was a very relaxing, fun night spent with the family, although the drive over and back was pretty nasty with all of the frozen snow ruts on all of the roads.

All in all, Christmas of 2008 will go down in the records for us. Three weeks of Christmas Break, more snow than Portland had seen in over 40 years, cancelled flights out of PDX and flooding rivers as the snow melted and the rain came in. After the snow was done, we set an all time record for 24 hour rainfall, with over 3 inches.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Here is Annika and Ally, Addison in the snow, Thor in front of the house, the family sledding on Saturday while celebrating Christmas with the Hauke Family, and the girls sledding on the driveway.

Christmas Break 2008

Today is the first official day of the Winter Break, but those of you who live near us in Oregon will know that our Winter Holiday started a week ago. The girls missed the entire week of school due to snow and ice on the roads. The funny thing is that while we were happy with the mere inches that fell sporadically thru the week (and slightly less happy with the ice each morning) the real snow didn't start falling until this past weekend. I am not sure of the 'official' snow accumulation, but I am guessing that we have somewhere between 8-12", depending on if you are near a drift. Annika and Addison have been sledding more times than I can count. Thor has had to play the hero for all of us when we need a trip to the store or orthodontist, since he is comfortable getting around in his 4-wheel drive, while I pretty much won't venture out. I'm not even sure if I could get the van down the driveway! I will post photos of our latest events so you can see all of our beautiful snow, as well as the busy life we have been leading lately.