Christmas of 08

We survived it! Between treacherously slick streets, semis looking to run us over, broken tire chains, a flat tire from someone else's broken chains, and horrid weather it's a wonder we're still here. Since we couldn't make it over to see Forrest's mom because of the snow here, there, and in the mountain passes we made a last minute decision to join my family in Portland on Christmas Day. By the afternoon of the 25th it was supposed to be warm and rainy. So we ventured out of our neighborhood in a thick snowstorm Christmas morning. Our 15 minute drive to the freeway took an hour. Then we had fairly smooth sailing till we reached Kelso where it started snowing again. By the time we reached Battle Ground huge flakes the size of silver dollars were swirling around us and sticking to the freeway. The final 30 miles of our trip took nearly two hours. Cars and trucks were spinning out all around us. I don't know how we avoided getting hit.

Thankfully once we reached my parent's house in Portland we could enjoy quality family time with cousins, grandparents, and my sibs and their spouses. After two weeks of snow the kids were all tired of it and none of them went outside to play. Wonderful food was eaten, movies were watched, English crackers were popped, and a very competitive game of Scrabble was played (Alyssa and I teamed up and were victorious).

On Friday we did some post Christmas bargain hunting capped off by a yummy German feast at Gustav's. Per Noah's request we had breakfast Saturday morning at la petit Provence before we headed for home.

This week is chore time. The carpets are being professionally cleaned which required us all to sort through some junk for a final trip to Goodwill. I'm going to clean and reorganize the laundry room. Our puppy, Cowboy, is getting neutered this week. And I just might get the photo albums all up to date. Our neighbors are coming for dinner New Year's Eve. The snow is finally melting although I'm still not sure that our garbage will get picked up today. Our road is still very icy. So now you're all caught up with the Jones family. Alyssa is sitting beside me as I write doing homework for her AP US History class. Her teacher emailed the assignments out to his students.

Forrest gets to Blog

Its the Eve before Christmas Eve and my gracious wife has give me permission too blog on her site. You may be asking yourself what is Forrest doing bogging? Well, partly from boredom and partly because I bought a new inexpensive digital video recorder that I wanted try it out and post to see how it works. The video is a bit grainy but I forgot to take off the flim on the lense and it was a bit dark.

I guess I will also update you on the happenings in the Jones house hold. As most of you are aware of and are experiencing a similar fate, we are on day 10 of blizzard 2008. As you have seen on previous blogs we have hit the slopes of Stanwood to tube down the local hills. I found it refreshing especially the part when I hit the jump and was fortunate enough to have my spine cracked from tail bone to the neck.....aah refreshing.

We ventured out yesterday to the mall... whew. I keep hearing that nobody is spending money, but there sure are a lot of nobodies at the mall. We met up with some friends and to give back their kid that spent the last two nights at our place. After braving a few stores, eating at the food court and leaving Alyssa in my dust at a kiosk vendor... man those people are aggressive. I later told Alyssa that it was a lesson for her and to next time never make eye contact :o). I then left Heather and the kids in the mall and started to drive to the other side to meet our friends and drop off our visitors overnight bag, at which point I would meet them on the other side at the movie theater. I am not sure if it was the snowy roads or that all of those nobodies that aren't spending money decided to leave at the same time, any how, it only took me about an hour to loop around the mall to meet the family for a movie.

Today, Heather and went and did a little last minute shopping in town and Heather went to have her shoulder looked at. The doctor said something to the sort of shoulder tendinitis. I'm not sure but maybe we are getting a little older these days. My neighbor walked by me as I was shoveling out my driveway asked me if I had taken my aspirin before I started. Noah also got a present from his "Girl Friend" today in the mail. He sent her one earlier in the week through the mail also, sense they did not get to see each other at school due to the snow days. I get a bit worried sometimes that he is a bit too young for a girl friend at age 12, but I know they basically communicate by texting and hold hands occasionally.

We are now watching that comedy classic Christmas Vacation and chuckling at the stupid jokes being thrown around and the bad acting. We are also debating whether or not the roads will be good enough to possibly make are way down to Portland on Christmas day. Noah's Basketball Tournament was cancelled and we were originally going to go to Spokane for a few days but the weather also turned bad over there and my mother advised us not to risk the trip. So Lloyd and Jacque if you read this before we call, you may have some extra company if its OK.

Well, I guess I will close for now and finish watching our movie as Clark chases a squirrel around his living room as his cousin Eddie kidnaps his boss.

Enjoy and Have a Merry Christmas!

Sledding by the High School

Yesterday Forrest took the kids to a new sledding spot on a beautiful hill next to the senior citizen center and just above the high school. Today we all went back with our friends and neighbors with tubes and an air mattress. Very exhilarating!

Snow Day #3

I've been trying to remember if we've ever had three full days off for snow in a week before. I don't think we have. The week after Thanksgiving 2005 we had two full days off and three late starts. That was the winter that we missed five days of school and had seven late starts ( the last of which was in March). I hope this will be it for us, but most winters January and February bring the worst weather. Since Forrest doesn't work on Fridays he was home yesterday with our four wheel drive truck so we got to leave the neighborhood and venture into town. One of our most important stops was the post office. We had lots of packages to ship to eastern Washington. Our original plan was to drive to Forrest's mom's house to visit with her before Christmas, but the weather made us change our minds. We have about a foot of snow on the ground with 4-8" more forecast for tonight and blizzards forecast for the mountain passes. Spokane has about 2' of snow with more on the way. It's currently 5 degrees here this morning at 6:18 AM. It's very peaceful. The kids had three friends spend the night, and they're all snoozing in the living room, Forrest is asleep up in our room, and our dog, Boo is snoring beside me as I write this. If you're not tired of snow pictures yet here are a few more. If you look closely you'll see ice on the bay, amazing!

Lights of Christmas

We got two free passes to the Lights of Christmas display at the Christian camp near our home. They use one million lights. It was beautiful to see the lights shining through the snow. We had another snow day today and school will be closed tomorrow too. It was nice to get out of the house. I was getting a case of cabin fever.

Snow Day

Today I got a call at 5:21 AM telling me that school was closed for snow. It has snowed most of the day off and on. The temperatures rose to 35 degrees this afternoon and things got slushy, but now that the sun is going down the temperature is dropping again and everything should freeze up and get very icy. I'm betting that tomorrow will be a no school day too. Which is bad because my students have ornaments and decorations for the holidays sitting in my classroom. Hopefully we'll at least have school on Friday. Our staff party is supposed to be tomorrow afternoon, and the principal has a yummy waffle breakfast planned for tomorrow morning as her gift to the whole staff. I guess we're at the mercy of Mother Nature. Today was a bit productive, but not too taxing. Forrest had to work till 3:00 PM and then his boss sent everyone home so they could get there before dark

Today's Accomplishments:

1. 1 snowman built by the children
2. One steep hill smoothed out for sledding
3. 2 batches of spiced pecans made

4. 3 loads of laundry washed

5. half of the woodpile has been moved by the children (they'll finish tomorrow)
6. 1 sappy Christmas movie (White Christmas) watched by me

7. multiple games of Kabooki played by the kids on the Wii with the neighbor kids

8. Pantry cleaned out

Enjoy the photos of our day off.

Christmas is Coming

The search for the perfect tree took about an hour of wandering around the tree farm back and forth over and over again. Forrest insisted that it was his year to choose the tree, but he kept asking our opinions which kept sparking arguments. Finally we found it. It takes up quite a bit of our dining room. My folks came up for an early Christmas celebration this past Friday, but they only stayed about 24 hours as the weather was turning snowy, and they wanted to get home before the worst of it hit. Noah had two games on Saturday. He won one and lost the other. Both were very tense, close games. Today we had a quiet day watching football and baking cookies. So here are a bunch of photos to get you all caught up with us.

Maturing Follow UP

Last week's eye appointments were so convenient.  Alyssa picked Noah up from school, and they both went to get their eyes checked.  I showed up just as they were finishing up.  While I was getting my eyes checked Alyssa picked out new glasses and ordered her contact lenses.  Then she took Noah home.  I didn't have to put up with whiny children asking  "When are we going to be out of here?"   It was great.  By the time I got home the dishwasher was empty, and the kids were doing homework.  Yesterday  Alyssa picked up her glasses and contacts and my contacts too.  It's so nice to have an errand girl who is so responsible and trustworthy.  I promise to post photos of our hunt for the perfect Christmas tree soon.  Since we got rid of the piano we figured that we could get a much bigger tree.  We were wrong.  Check back later for photos of the tree.

Maturing

Today Noah has his first school basketball game.  The coach requires that the boys dress up for school on game days so Noah went to school in cords, a dress shirt, and a tie.  He looked so grown up and handsome.  And darn it I didn't get a picture.  Mornings are too busy at our house.  Last night we went to the first high school basketball game of the season and all of the youth select league players were down on the floor in their jerseys to usher in the varsity players before their game.  I could start to picture Noah being down there on that high school floor in two or three years.  We were talking on the way out and Noah's voice suddenly cracked.  He's always had a deeper voice than a lot of his friends, but this was the first real sign of it changing. 

Alyssa's scholarly paper is due Friday.  It's the next big step towards completing her senior project and graduating next year.  She wrote a persuasive paper promoting greater use of nuclear power in the US.  It's quite good.  She has me convinced.  We've reached the point now that Alyssa can drive herself and Noah to their eye doctor appointments tomorrow, and I'll meet them there after I get off work for my appt.  They're getting along better which makes my life much easier.  Alyssa is even going to Noah's game tonight.  I won't make it there till half-time, but she's going to be there for the whole thing.  We are so blessed to have such great kids.

Holiday Prep

Forrest did some of our Thanksgiving shopping yesterday while I was at work. He was amazed by how many people were at the grocery store on a weekday morning. He was also amazed at the cost of the crystallized ginger I asked him to buy for a new cranberry sauce recipe I want to try. I'll never hear the end of it if this recipe flops after he spent so much. I had the same experience today at a different store. It almost looked like Black Friday crowds. With Linen and Things going out of business I stopped in to see if I could find any bargains. I found a couple of things that were marked down enough to make me pick them up, but I put them back when I saw that there were only two cashiers working and a huge crowd at the front of the store. My time is worth more than those two little items. I took advantage of a dry day to take some shots of the kids for our Christmas card. I'll post a couple and you'll just have to wait to see which one I picked for the card when you get it in the mail next month. Alyssa and her girlfriends are planning to go shopping on the Black Friday. They want to be in the stores at dawn to take advantage of the bargains. She must take after her Grandma Jones who does the same thing and has for 50 years. I've done it a couple of times, but I don't enjoy it. Forrest and I are pretty much done with all of our shopping anyway. We found some great bargains earlier this week when we both took a day off to visit the dermatologist. Each of us had a mole removed from our legs, and we're waiting for biopsy results. The doctor didn't think they were anything serious, but she's just being cautious. After our appointments we went shopping and had lunch at a new Thai restaurant. It was awesome! We'll definitely be going there again.

When is free not really free?

Our energetic, sweet "free" puppy, Cowboy, has cost us a lot of  money lately.  He has become an escape artist so Forrest has had to rebuild part of our backyard fence.  Right now our free dog has cost us about $300. Those of you who have been to our house know that the fence on the side of the house where the roses grow is short so that we can enjoy our view of the water, Camano Island, and the garden.  Our older dogs have never jumped out of the yard.  Cowboy discovered that he could stand on a planter box, put his paws on top of the fence, and jump out of the yard.  Now the fence is two feet taller and he can't jump it.  Forrest and Noah spent most of Veterans Day tearing out the old fence and building the new one in the wind and rain.  The next expense will be neutering during Christmas break.  Hopefully he won't be quite so hyper after his procedure.

Catch Up Time

I know it's been three weeks since my last post so I'll try to get caught up here quickly. It's been hectic around here. Since my last post Noah had basketball tryouts while his football team was still practicing for the play offs. Forrest went out of town for a week. Alyssa worked, went to school, and put in many volunteer hours for honor society. I worked, took Noah to practice, taught two evening writing classes to teachers, and kept up with the housework (sort of). Forrest had to work two Fridays. He usually has them off because he works 4 tens. I've gotten used to him being able to to some chores on his Fridays so this further complicated our lives. Halloween crept up on us. Noah and I picked up our pumpkins from a farm stand on the way home two days before Halloween. We didn't even get around to our annual trip to the pumpkin patch as a family. The kids carved their pumpkins the night before Halloween after football practice. On Halloween we had a high school football game to go to so we left our bowl of candy on the front porch (we've done this before without incident). We returned to find the bowl had been emptied and thrown into the front yard.

Noah's team won their three play off games and were crowned Junior Division Champions tonight. They beat one of the other Arlington Jr. teams 18-8 for the win. The boys were so wound up they were making silly mistakes and were called for lots of penalties. Forrest said they won despite themselves. As you can see by the photo Forrest had an important job. He was part of the chain crew tonight so he got to be close to the action. Noah had some impressive blocks and tackles tonight. He did get called for being off-sides once and for blocking in the back. It was a great season. Basketball practice starts tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Michelle! Welcome to the over 40 Club

Alyssa and I had a whirlwind weekend. Yesterday we left the house at 6:45 AM so I could drop her off to take the PSAT. I was working in my classroom at 7:30 and stayed there till she was done with her test. By 11:00 we were on the road to Portland to surprise my sister, Michelle, on her birthday.

Her wonderful husband, Paul, set up everything perfectly with assists from my folks and my sister-in-law, Enid and my brother, Jim. To kill a little time on the way down Alyssa and I stopped in for a visit at Jim and Enid's in Vancouver. We talked school and politics and took the dogs for a walk on a beautiful fall day. Then it was time to be off to Mom and Dad's to decorate for the party. The party was a great success. She was surprised, the cake was delicious, the decorations were divine, and Michelle received some wonderful presents. She was queen for the night.

Alyssa and I spent the night, went out for a yummy breakfast on Sunday, made a quick stop at the University of Portland to check out the campus (they've been blitzing Alyssa with mail lately), and then took off for home. We took Enid's suggestion and checked out downtown Olympia on our way home. It's terrific! lunch at a little place called, Plenty, was worth the trip off the freeway. Now it's back to the grind. Parent/teacher conferences all week for me. Yippee!