More snow fun.

We're really enjoying this rare snowy weather, but are also starting to panic about our flight out of town to Mexico on thursday. Fingers crossed that planes start taking off again so we can get to our sunny vacation...current weather today there was 84 degrees.

This morning I shoveled out a path for Pebbel to use the bathroom and we measured at just under 15 inches....and it snowed all day long today so its even more now.

Hmmmm....wonder why his car wont move?

Our snow covered back yard. You can see on the left of it the spinning thing is compleltey covered.

Look at all that snow on the bird bath! Guess they wont be bathing any time soon.

And just an update on the chair we've been photographing through this storm.

Trying to make it to the park again today. It was much harder to walk today than yesterday. There were areas I was up past MY knees. Crazy.

Our trees curling from the heavy snow.

Our new addition to our Christmas lights this year, and we cant even see him entirely.

A white wonderland

I worked so hard at 9:30 am to shovel this nicely...and it quickly covered again with another 2 inches...crazy.

Should Jake go to work?

......Yeah probably not.

...and this was YESTERDAY.

Some more snow fun.

Jake showing the depth at about 2:30pm on saturday

Today the "big storm" hit, and we had a blast playing in it! At 9pm we measured our backyard at 9 inches...check out that chilly chair!

This was at the park at 3:30, so beautiful

"Im almost there mommy...its so hard to walk!" (poor Eli found parts on our walk where he sunk into the snow up to his knees!)

Zach and Daddy had no interest in playing outside today, so I spent 3 good hours outside adventuring with Eli. We took a walk around the neighborhood, stopping at the park, and just had a good ol' cold time. When I finally got Eli to come in his poor cheeks and hands were so red.

Making the perfect snow angel.

Call me a mean mommy but this is some funny stuff! So I convinced Eli to slide down the snow covered slide, head first. Heres how the pretty slide looked before Eli...

Wait, theres snow in my way....

Awww man, its all over my face!!

His Im angry at you for tricking me face..that usually he gives Daddy..I dont tease him much.

And then he went into panic because the snow was stuck up his nose....

Ahh the adventures you can send your kids on. Jake tought me well.

And to top it off...I convinced him to go down the bigger slide head first because he believed that because there wasnt as much snow on this one that he wouldnt get another face full. Silly boy, so easily tricked. You think with Jake as his Daddy he'd have us all figured out. I apologize I took it sideways and dont know how to turn it on here..but you get the giggle from it at any angle you watch it. And notice how he picks up a pile to eat as soon as he stands up...see it didnt hurt that bad. haha

Frosty lives on...

So durring the "1st" snow storm this week we built a great big Frosty. The boys loved him and talked about him all night. When we woke up the next morning, the kids were so upset that Frosty was sadly laying on the ground. It hadnt thawed out around our house too much, enough to make him fall anyways in my opinion. I came to the conclusion that some teens went around crashing neighborhood snowmen because every snowman on the block was only a bottom. So today with the "big storm" Eli and I picked him up piece by peice and packed him together...kind of....so now, we have a picaso snowman. We love him all the same as when he was beautiful. Zach even wanted to put a hat on him thinking that would make him magic and fix...we just watched Frosty the Snowman movie if you havent guessed already from his comment.

Beauty is within' people!

Some snow day(sssssss) pictures.

Its been such a fun week around here. We've gotten quite a good amount of snow all week (and some ice too) and its stuck around great. Its nice knowing that when the boys go to bed asking if they can play in it tomarrow that we can say YES. Normally in past years you just dont know if it will stay around until the next morning. We've had a lot of fun sledding down our yard, building a big snowman, and just hanging out at home relaxing all together. Zachs favorite thing in the snow is sledding and eating a sample of snow every step he takes walking around...were really working on teaching him which snow is not ok to eat. haha Eli loves to sled and makes now angels. Its been a fun week. Nice and relaxing and COLD...so that when we get on that plane a week from today to Mexico...man will that warm beach feel great!

Even Pebbel had to come check out the white stuff.

Yes Pebbel took a turn on the sled too.

Mommy and the boys making snow angels.

A trip to the park by our house.

Our house all lit up for Christmas...nice job Jake!

Mommy and Zach sledding.

Our big snowman that was really heavy and too alot of work, and we woke up this morning to him crashed. The boys were very upset that Frosty fell down and we explained to them its just like the movie, he doesnt last forever. Curse the neighborhood teenagers whom we think took Frosty's short life.

These are my favorite pictures of the bunch so far. Our first Christmas season here in this house we were hanging out at home and kept hearing firetrucks. It sounded like there were 100's of them. I kept thinking what an awful accident must have happened. Then I kept hearing them get louder and louder, and sounding like they were on the opposite side of town than 10 minutes earlier. So then we started thinking there was some serious car chase going on. Then we looked out to see all the neighbors outside. What was going on in this crazy town!? So as we went outside with tiny little baby Eli, all the local fire trucks came up our street right by our house. Covered in Christmas lights with Santa standing on the first truck waving to all the kids! It was a parade! Its a very small parade, but I have to say its on my top list of favorite parades. I really look foward to it every year. It really gives that small town close communtiy feeling. All the fire trucks make their way through town and visit all of us and wish us a very special Christmas. Afterwards you can head to the fire department to see Santa and have cookies. This year we were concerned that they wouldnt do the parade because of how bad the roads are around here. But low and behold, the fire trucks came out to cheer up us cabin fever families, chains on and making their way slowly around town. This year it was fire trucks only, no trucks with singing children...but it was still a very pleasant suprise. We were outside for about 10 minutes, but came in happier colder and with lots of candy. Thank You Dundee Fire Department for spreading your holiday cheer!

A walk to dinner...

On the first afternoon the snow hit, we got the brilliant idea to walk to the local mexican resturaunt for lunch. It was all white outside and the roads were slick, but it wasnt too cold so off we walked. As we finished up dinner we looked outside to see that it had quickly gotten alot windier, colder and was defintaly snowing harder. As we walked home, full bellied, the snow beat at our faces. It was a cold walk home. Who's bright idea was that? Dinner was good though, and we had a fun adventure.

Having a snack before we headed out on our walk to dinner.

Walking to dinner.

And here Zach convinced Daddy to carry him home because it was cold and he was "tired".

Snow day crafts...

Given our recent snow adventures around here and all being stuck at home (Eli from school and Jake from work too!), we got creative one day when the boys were just going cabin fever crazy...our came a big bowl of popcorn and some string and away they went to work stringing popcorn for the tree. They had a blast, and actually did pretty good. Their favorite part though was when the popcorn would break when they were putting it on, "guess we have to eat this one".

The Little Professor.

Some of you may have already heard Zachs big news, but for those of you who havent..here you go!
Ive always been very big on getting the boys to the their pediatrician and dentist for everything I think is important. Their health is very important to me, but their comfort going to these places is even more important. I was afraid of the denstist growing up, and still tense up for a simple cleaning. So I started the boys at a young age of 2 at the dentist, even though its not recommended until atleast 3. Our dentist says typically children that young wont sit there, but I insisted because I wanted them to become comfortable before the real work began as they aged. It took a few visits of playing with the tools and enjoying the visit before either of them completed a full exam at the age of 3. Prevention is very important to me in health. When I took Eli to our eye dr about 8 months ago for a scratch he got on his eye, the dr mentioned looking at it again at his year eye exam. I had put so much thought into all the other dr's that I never gave an eye dr a thought until he said that. I assumed that since childrens eyes change so much from birth to 6 years that there was no need to go in for year appointments unless you had concerns. He explained to me that its fine to do that, and most parents do. But that in some cases you can catch things in those years that you could correct but couldnt correct later in life after their eyes have set their ways, and its so worth it. That was all it took to get me to make appointments for the boys. Eli's eyes = perfection. Zachs were another story. We had to split his appointment into two days, because half way through the first he melted down...see older posts explaining his "im tired now" meltdowns, litterally melting to the floor and pretending to be asleep. Anyways, Im so glad we did the appointment because Zach happened to be one of those cases where we could catch something early and hopefully correct it so that his vision progresses how it should over the next few years. His left eye is great for where it should be at his age. His right eye he has an astigmatism in it. Jake and I both have them, Jake in one eye and me in both..so of course I immediatley felt at fault. Long story short, in a child his age if the brain gets tired of telling that eye to work and its cant because of the astigmatism and it taking more work then the brain will give up on it and just use the good left eye. Causing his right eye to become lazy and not progress its vision to its full potential ending in bad vision and glasses all his life. So....duh duh duh.....

....were training his eye to not fight his brain and to progress how it should. He has an eye patch that we use to cover his good eye for a little at night, which makes the bad eye HAVE to focus and do its job. He calls it his pirate patch. Then he has the cutest little pair of glasses that he picked out, Go Diego Go ones, that have a slight prescription in the bad eye side that he is to wear as much as he'll let us make him. The dr said as little as 1/2 hour a day is ok....but he's in love with his glasses and has been wearing them most of the day since we picked them up 2 days ago. He calls them his "baby daddy glasses" because Daddy has glasses very similar in shape to his...but without the Go Diego Go zebra stripes of course.
This was his first attempt at smiling for the camera in his new baby daddy glasses for me..I had to tell him not to look so silly the next time. haha

The eye dr gave him this little metal container full of different eye wear magnets in it...here he is showing it all off to big brother Eli. He carries this and his eye glass case around with him most of the day giving me instructions on how to take care of his glasses and such, that he learned from the dr..."ok mommy?". He's doing so good with them, just another mommy moment when I find myself saying "how did you get so big?" And I have to say, he looks soooooooo stinkin' cute!

At first I was very sad that my little baby had to wear glasses. All the normal mommy fears rushed over me...will he get teased? will he hate them? etc. But then I flashed to my all time favorite tv show..Jon and Kate plus 8 and their cute little man who wears glasses and how I always think how cute he is in them and I got this rush of mommy awwww instead of the fears I initially had. The glasses and eye patch are not necessarily a lifetime thing. Hopefully we have caught the problem early enough, and with the great excitement he has for them we hope that we can get his eye to the level it should be at and we can get rid of the glasses in no time at all. Although, Im not sure now that he will willingly let them go...he loves them alot.

At the store yesterday he put them on and layed back in the shopping cart smiling all sweet. Everyone we passed in the store would look at him and smile and make "awww he's so cute" comments. He was so eating it alive. Mabye thats why he likes the glasses so much.

Sherwoods Christmas Parade

I grew up in Sherwood and used to love all the parades they put on in town. We live close enough that we'd just walk up the street to the main road, pick a spot and enjoy the parade. Since having kids and moving out of Sherwood I havent found time to make it back to many. So I talked Jake into going this year to the Christmas Parade. I talked it up so much trying to convince him to go. Its hard for him to get excited about any parade other than Hillsboro's 4th of July parade, the best parade in Oregon you know. So when we got to the parade and there wasnt many people out to watch it, I got a little concerned I was going to get picked on all day long for this. And when the parade was only about 7 floats long...I really knew it. It was the shortest parade I think Ive ever seen, but we were very lucky in the long run. We were at the very beginning of the parade route, NO ONE was around us, and since the parade was so small....we got a TON of candy thrown to us! The kids made out like bandits. Jake may have made fun of it all night but atleast we got as much candy in that 5 minutes like we do in the 2 hours at the Hillsboro parade. AND there was no traffic getting out of town afterwards. haha

The kids all watching for the big parade to start.

Theres Santa....and his dancing cow? I guess thats Sherwood for ya! Oh, and the amazing High School marching band...which I was briefly a part of in my younger years. Ahhh...the memories.

Doesnt Jake look impressed with our town parade?

There was so much candy left all over the other side of the road from us and so my Mom ventured on over to collect.

I swear the parade was much cooler when I grew up....Santa used to land in a hellicopter before getting on the fire truck to make his way in the parade even. I swear.