Family, History and Love

Wanda and I have been discussing, of late, the need to set down in writing some portion of our family history so that in the future our children and grandchildren will have the stories and tales of our lives direct from the source. The technophile that I am, I choose to do this online so that the what we write will be accessible and available for comment to our wider family (though I reserve the right to moderate those comments).

To that end, I have repurposed this blog. In coming posts, we will endeavor to provide an abridged story of our life (hey, everyone has their secrets). We're writing this for our children and their children and those that come later so elements of these tales will be familiar only to our family,

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Winter Play

Winter has definitely arrived here in Portland. We've had the biggest storm in nearly 40 years, from what I understand from the news. Many major highways were shutdown over the past few days due to falling trees, white out conditions, jack-knifed tractor-trailor trucks, and just generally bad weather. My son and daughter-in-law, and more importantly, my granddaughter are on their way here from the coast were they were visiting her parents, but they've got to take a detour to get around an area of Highway 26 where the road is closed due to fallen trees.

There are people stuck all over. In Portland, only the main roads get any service during a storm. The residential sideroads are left alone and it's up to the ingenuity of the residents to determine how to cope with the conditions. Lots of people, like me, choose to walk to get anywhere. Others have chains, 4 wheel drives, studded snow tires, etc. and manage to get around reasonably well. Others just get stuck (like my granddaughter, Makayla).



The children were certainly having fun. My oldest daughter, Nikki, decided she had to have a snowman. So she badgered her mom until she got her to go out into the backyard and build a guardian snowperson to patrol the area:

Yes, that's one of my good hats, but I let them use it in hopes that it will survive a few days in the cold. As soon as it starts to thaw, though, my hat comes in to dry!

The kids next door had a sled, and as we live on a fairly steep hill, the big kids here managed to borrow the sled for a while (payment was a plate of home made cookies and chocolate covered pretzels).

That's Nikki above, and Wanda below:

Of course, it's a pretty good walk back up the hill:


But it's certainly lovely:



And it's certainly cute when little girls play in the snow:


And the littlest ones can only dream about playing outside:







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