Plowed

Yesterday afternoon the entire family was outside playing in the slush when were pleasantly surprised by the loud sound of SNOWPLOWS!!  It had been 10 days that we were more or less homebound due to the incredible amount of snow and lack of plowing/salting.  When the snowplows showed up yesterday, it was as if I had been stranded on an island and I was seeing the rescue boats.  I literally got choked up thanking the snowplow driver.  After they came through and cleared out street, I went to the grocery.  I have never been so excited to get into my car and drive to the store.  The freedom to hop in the car…not something to be taken for granted.  Although I really enjoyed the beauty of the white Christmas, I couldn’t help but feel periodically trapped.  We only have gotten mail 3 days this entire time, and many of our packages (including some Santa gifts) still have not arrived.  Luckily, the hula hoops I bought were a huge hit.  The girls didn’t even notice that they were missing most of their Santa gifts.  God bless them…they haven’t acted slighted at all.
Bitsy, Zack and Ben are coming tomorrow for a couple of days to celebrate a late Christmas with us.  This is really a blessing — Ben spent Christmas in the hospital with a return of gastroparesis, and Bits and Andy missed their trip to Connecticut due to the crazy snowstorms.  We’ll put up some more pictures soon.  Maybe some hula hooping video clips too…

“This isn’t normal”

So that is what everyone keeps telling us about the weather.  First, it was the heavy rains late this summer.  “This isn’t typical, really” they said.  “Yeah it rains, but not this hard for this long, and only during the rainy season”.  Now, it’s the snow.  “It may snow, but it always melts almost immediately.”  “This isn’t normal” for Seattle.  “It’s really not this bad here usually.”  I was laughing with another neighbor who moved here from Texas last year.  She said she thinks that Seattlites are a bit defensive about their weather.  Perhaps they are extra sensitive since they kind of have a bad reputation??  Anyway, we have a lot of snow, probably a foot and a half, and 27 plows in all of Seattle.  27.  Yep.  Christmas Eve is 2 days away, and if I don’t get out and do some shopping, we might have some empty stockings here.  No joke.  And if they aren’t able to deliver our Amazon.com order on Wednesday, we will have only 1 gift to give the girls.  Seriously.  As for little Harry, I got nuttin’.  Thank goodness he’s too little to know better.
So the girls have been off of school since Wednesday and they don’t have school tomorrow, and then Christmas break starts.  So it will be a total of 19 days that we will be just hangin’ out together.  With 27 plows, I don’t know when we’ll be able to actually go somewhere, but we’re having a lot of togetherness here at home.  Lots of baking, reading, and hey…who wants to go outside and play in the snow!!??  Luckily they were out for 3 hours today.  You can imagine how fun it is to have the girls going stir crazy while Chris is trying to take conference calls in the next room.   But geez, you can see how beautiful it is, and our first Christmas here is definitely one we will remember.  Ben is supposed to come for the holiday, but Portland is snowed in too.  Bits and Andy were supposed to fly to Connecticut but their flight was cancelled so they can’t go.  I feel lucky that we aren’t trying to go anywhere.  Well, aside from maybe a trip to Target for some stocking stuffers.

More snow

This is Chris again. You are probably sick of hearing about snow by now, but I have just a few more pictures for fun.

You can also find them here: [link:http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.browder/Dec08]

Seattle Snow

This is Chris.  It’s started to snow again today.  We are likely going to get up to 8″ where we are (and the city stops when we get only a few inches).  Yesterday we went sledding down the street.  Yes, the street.  They don’t plow here.

Camille about to sled down with Dad!

Today we continued with our “ice castle” and went sledding again.  Here are some video’s from yesterday:

I’ve also posted some pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.browder/Dec08#

The problem with this weather is that it’s very hilly (mountainous) here in Seattle.  With no icing or plowing of the roads, it’s pretty tough to get back home once we get out.  So it’s looking like I’ll be working from home next week.  Hmm… maybe I’ll just take the whole week off?

So much for Seattle being “mild” and getting little snow. We’re on snow day #2 of probably 3. Temps are supposed to be in the 20s and 30s and I have no voice to reprimand my kids. Ba humbug.

ho ho ho

Harry

Harry is now 7 months old.  He is minutes away from crawling.  He likes  most foods he has tried but is not so sure about avocado.  He ate it, but the expressions he made while doing so were priceless.  Unfortunately, no camera was available fast enough to capture it.   He likes cheerios but likes them to be fed to him.  He can pick them up in his hand, but can’t get them from his hand into his mouth.  Ditto goes for his sippy cup.  He puts it to his mouth and sips, but he hasn’t figured out that he needs to tilt it up in order for the water to come out.  Better when someone does it for him.  I hope this is not a trend developing…but the girls and I may be enabling him a bit.
Both of my girls made the “da da da” sound before the “ma ma ma”.  But not Harry.  He says “MA MA MA”, not necesarily referring to me, but it’s darn cute anyway.  No “da da” sounds just yet, but we’re working on it. 
He has a major aversion to lying on his back.  I am becoming very proficient at putting on a clean diaper the opposite way it was meant to be done.  The kid is way too strong to fight him on it.  Speaking of strong, he got a flu shot today.  Didn’t cry, didn’t even wince or make a face.  It was as if he didn’t even feel a thing.
Enough about Harry though…
Here’s Elyse’s tooth picture from previous entry…

It’s a lower one.  She’s lost 3 teeth now, all bottom ones.  Her top 2 are loose too though. 
So, does anyone notice how Camille can’t stand for a picture to be taken without her in it?  She seems to be appearing in pictures even if the picture isn’t necesarily of her.  She is a ham.  I think she just fell out of bed as I am typing this at 10:30 pm. 
One more word before I go check out the situation upstairs. 
I decided to try to do some Christmas decorating this afternoon.  Our Christmas boxes were in the garage.  Does anyone remember the pictures from moving day of our garage?  let me refresh your memory:  BOX HELL.  Can I blog that?  Anyway, it’s better but not much.  We have filing cabinets practically blocking the place where our holiday stuff is stored.  SO you can get in there, but good luck trying to actually get the boxes out.  And if you get them out, even better luck trying to find a place to put them.  Anyway, my decorating didn’t get very far.  Basically I just made the garage even more of a mess.  Maybe I’ll hang a wreath and call it Christmas.

So I went up to check on Camille.  She was sitting in the middle of the bathroom floor bladder full, eyes wide open, but perhaps sleep walking?  She has done this before.  She wanders around appearing to be awake but totally lost about her mission.  I have to put her on the toilet, she goes, and then I walk her back to bed and she may be asleep the ENTIRE time.  I’m not sure.  She is definitely not fully alert.  Poor girl. 
Also, one more thing.  The girls are both DYING to open presents.  I won’t let them.  SO, they have decided to wrap presents (items already in their posession that they are regifting to themselves) and place them under their baby trees in their bedrooms.  Each of them has at least half a dozen presents under their trees, and some of them the other sister has wrapped as a surprise object.  It is a riot.  I will take pictures tomorrow and post.

Chris worked from home today, and watched Harry while Camille and I went to the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s performance of  The Nutcracker.  I tried to explain to her that she might want to get dressed up but she decided she wanted to wear her pink leotard, pink skirt, and pink tights.  Of course, if we had just been staying at home today, she probably would have been doning her usual formal wear.  But…that’s just Camille.  Anyway, the little girls were dressed to the nines!  One little boy had a tie on.  The girls in front of us not only had their formal dresses on, but matching handbags and shrugs to boot.  It was a hoot.  Although Camille enjoyed seeing some of the girls’ dresses, she didn’t seem to regret not dressing up herself.  I, personally, was glad I put on a blouse, slacks and even makeup.   But, enough about the attire.
The ballet outing was a huge success.  We left in plenty of time and I had forgotten what a wonderful luxury it is to not be in a hurry.  I think this was the first time in 6 months that I was actually early for something.  It was so relaxing to arrive 20 minutes before show time.  We parked the car, had time to go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, chat with the other moms and kids and see where the orchestra plays.  I can’t remember the last time I was so relaxed.  I had written down directions to get there and did a pretty good job making my way through downtown Seattle.  I forgot to not how to get home, but was rather proud of myself for making my way through the one way streets back quite a ways to the highway. 
Anyway, we were in the 2nd row.  Yes, 2nd row!! aisle.  We were right there!  Camille was in heaven watching the performance.  She barely said a word the whole time…just watched in awe.  On the way home, she told me she wanted to do ballet.  I said “well, you took ballet at LIttle Gym”, and she said that was just playing.   She wanted to go to “REAL” ballet class.    I told her that the ballerinas we saw today had to practice and be very serious.  She said that’s what she wanted.  Hmm.  We’ll see.

Teeth

Elyse finally lost her tooth!  It was hanging on by a thread forever.  I was sure it was going to fall out at school 2 weeks ago.  When she came home  on Friday with the tooth still attached I thought for sure she’d lose it over Thanksgiving break.  But, she really wanted to lose it at school because she wanted to get a tooth necklace (a little plastic white tooth “locket” on a string).  Sure enough, today she burst into the door with a huge closed mouth smile and a tooth necklace.  I’m so happy for her…she got to lose a tooth at school.  She was in such a good mood she couldn’t stop kissing Camille.  Camille said “Why are you so happy on me?”  Leave it to Camille to get annoyed with someone else’s good cheer.  But i think she liked it because then she kept asking Elyse ”Aren’t you going to kiss me again?”  She is so complicated.  Anyway, Elyse is so happy to have her tooth necklace and tooth that she doesn’t want to put it under her pillow, just yet.  Good thing ’cause I think I only have $20 bills in my wallet. 
Speaking of teeth, our 4 1/2 lb bag of chocolate chips from Cosco is down to crumbs.  Disgusting.  That means I easily at 2 1/4 lbs. of chocolate chips in the past month and a half.  YIKES!

Every picture tells a story…

Well, Chris sort of stole my thunder there by posting the pictures before I could write the story.  But, for those who like commentary to accompany the photos, it was definitely a Thanksgiving to remember.  We drove to Portland Thursday morning, stopped off at Bits’ for a half hour just to get out of the car.  Then we hopped back in the car to drive to Happy Valley where Ben’s girlfriend Michaella lives.  I don’t know how much you can see in the pictures (see previous post for the link) but her house is lovely.  Her table was beautifully set.  She even had little pumpkin bowls with lids for the soup!  The girls had made special turkey placecards for everyone which were a perfect compliment to the autumnal table.  The only problem was that none of us seemed to be able to sit down together at the same time.  It was comical really.  There were equal number of adults and kids (Michaella has 2 boys 6 and 3) and yet, we all seemed to have our hands full.  Whenever we thought all of us might be able to sit, somebody (mostly the baby boys) always needed something, whether it was fed, or diapered, or put to bed (over and over and over again cause neither of them wanted to sleep).  Finally, all the adults were seated to eat the feast…oops, but Andy was on the phone with his family.  We gave up.  We ate.  Without him.  Until we heard him winding up the conversation at which point we all thought it would be funny if we hid in the living room so that when he came into the dining room he’d be sitting at the table alone.  While we were hiding we laughed so hard at how funny it was going to be when he showed up with his plate of food to an empty table that we nearly wet our pants.  But, he wrecked our plan by lingering too long in the kitchen and so we all slowly wandered back to the table and the joke fizzled.  The food, however, was really good.  Well, I can’t speak for the turkey, but the sides were all very good.  The gravy Chris made was heavenly, and I don’t even like meaty products.  Michaella’s salad–to die for.  I ate 3 helpings.  That is why you see me pictured at the table alone, laughing hysterically.  I was still eating and everyone else had gotten up from the table.  What’s new.  I’m always eating way after most people have finished.  When dessert time rolled around, Harry was getting super tired, and the girls were starting to get close to bedtime, so we headed back to Bitsy’s, without Bitsy and Andy.  Zack had finally decided to go to sleep at Michaella’s and they weren’t about to wake him.  NEVER WAKE A SLEEPING BABY! 
Funny things to note in the pictures:
1.Look at how tidy Harry is after eating his Thanksgiving feast and then look at Zack.  Hee hee hee.  
2.  Harry entertained himself during the adult’s dinner, not with toys, but with the grate in the floor.  The kid is easily entertained.
3.  The kids got so hungry waiting for the feast that they ended up eating peanut butter sandwiches 1/2 hour before we ate and so they barely touched their dinner
4.  Adam chose toast instead of all of the wonderful Thanksgiving sides (I guess he eats toast a LOT)
5.  There’s a picture of the girls eating sweet potatos…well, maybe just the marshmellows on top…

Highlights from the rest of the weekend included some wonderfully mild temperatures which allowed us to take walks through some of the nearby neighborhoods, and also to get the girls over to the park.   The light drizzle was barely noticible.  We also got to take the girls ice skating for their first time.  Well, Chris took them, while Bits and I looked on from the side with the babies in strollers.  We ended up coming home a day early.  Chris had a sinus cold, Harry wasn’t sleeping (also coming down with a cold), Riley the dog isn’t used to kids, and we were a little too cozy (all 8 of us) in Bitsy’s house.  But, looking back at the pictures, we had fun, we laughed, and we’ll always remember our 1st Thanksgiving in the Pacific Northwest.  We have so much to be greatful for.  And are those babies CUTE!!?? or what!