Waiting for the Big Guy

'Twas the night before Christmas

and two boys could hardly wait

for the arrival of Santa, his sleigh and reindeer,

Rudolph's red nose leading the way.

Hoping the weary travelers could

weather the "Arctic Blast of 2008!"

and find our chimney,

NORAD's Santa tracker they did watch.

A note of thanks,

some homemade rootbeer,

carrots and a couple of cookies

left out for the visitors.

When they first awoke,

in the hour of o'dark thirty,

Mama said "No, no, still sleepy time"

and back to slumber they went.

At day's first light,

neither Mama nor Daddy could

postpone the trip to see

what might be waiting for

them under the tree.

When who should they spy

but Aunt Tiffy and

Aunt Tiffy's Pat!

Surprise!

Oh, Santa showed up, too.

Snow Update

Yeah, so it's still here. I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. And, we're supposed to get more!

We did leave the house yesterday, which was great. We chained up the car and headed out to pick up important supplies - like honey roasted peanuts for the boys, the fixins' for enchiladas, toilet paper for D and Cheez-its for me. And a couple of important presents.

Here's some of the latest scenes from around Portland and the snow palace.

Look - it's warming up!
There's a car under here somewhere ...

Snowshoes on Lombard - not a normal occurrence.

I think Paul Bunyan could use some mittens.

How Structural Engineers Play in the Snow

Snowball fight? Perhaps.

Snow angels? Maybe snow angles.

What they really like to do is worry about the integrity of nearby structures - the garage, the house, and most importantly, the roof over the brew structure. At least there's access to the last one - and something for the engineer to fix.

Breakfast Anyone?

Why yes, those are peanut butter fudge filled aebleskivers ...

Happy Boys

Winter Wonderland

Snow Day, Part Two

The real deal. Today's snow was not like normal Portland snow. Friday night, we got a smidgen. Enough to make things more white than green. Saturday morning, the boys said "Mama!" at 5 am. It wasn't snowing then, so I convinced them to go back to bed. Gentle threats. Anyway, it started snowing at 6:30 am. It's now almost 18 hours later and it's still snowing. Much to Ry's delight, there was enough snow for sledding. We used the neighbor's driveway and Ben practiced some new techniques. Ry was a quick study.