Last year I was going to try to blog at least once a week. Failed big time there! LOL! Looking at old posts I realized this is kind of a diary of our family and fun to go back and read. I'm going to try to blog more often so years later it'll be fun reading and saying, "Oh ya, I remember that!"
This past Fall was very warm, much more so than normal. It was like global warming had decided to settle over us. Then in December temps went down to where they normally are and more! Around December 14th, it decided to snow.
Ok, no big deal, we often get a bit of snow that time of year. Except this time it didn't stop. And to make things worse, the temps stayed below 30 for several weeks! At home I saw our outside thermometer drop to 12! It was the most and longest snow I've seen since my family moved up here in 1976. You can't see it very well in this photo, but we got probably a total of a foot of snow. It was very dry. A few very windy days blew it around a lot and gave us spots that had very little snow and drifts up to three feet deep!
This is when I really love my job. What I do doesn't require me to be in the office. If I have questions, I can email users - or now that we have our new VOIP (Voice Over IP - internet phone) at work, I can run the software on my work laptop and when my phone at work rings, it rings on my laptop. Just like I'm in the office. Very cool! The only hard part about working from home is trying to get the kids to let me work. I have to work for a little bit, play with them for a little bit, work, play, etc. But fortunately things were slow and I could easily take time off to play with them.
We went out in the snow a lot. Every morning they'd get up and say, "Can we go out and play in the snow now?" For Christmas 2007 Riley got a little sledding board that he was able to use this year. They both loved sledding down the driveway, sometimes making it all the way across the street. Marci and I tried sledding a few times, it certainly was fun! I took a TON of photos that you can see by clicking on any of the photos.
We live within a mile of a little strip mall and grocery store. That was really great because we could walk there instead of needing to drive. When there was a break, Marci went out with the car and did a little shopping. She got another sledding board that was big enough for both of them. That came in handy when we walked up to the store. Both of us pulled the kids on these. It was a little tough at times, but much faster than trying to walk with them, especially Maddie who's little legs just doing go that fast yet.
I also took a bunch of video that I put together into one long 9 minute video. I'm glad my camera can take such good video. Our little camcorder can take better video but this way I don't have to carry both with me.
Thanks to the snow, this was the first time we didn't go anywhere for Christmas. Usually we go to Salem Christmas Eve to be with Marci's family, get up Christmas morning to do a quick Christmas with our family, then over to Rich's parents for Christmas with his family. We couldn't get anywhere so this year it was just us at our house. That was actually pretty nice. No rushing to get here or there, just a nice relaxed time at home.
Finally things cleared up enough by the weekend and we were able to go to Salem Saturday and Rich's parents Sunday. We had a fantastic time at both places. It looked like the snow was going to be gone, the roads were clear, everything was melting. Then it snowed some more, melted, snowed, melted, just kept doing that. The snow also caused a delay in getting together with Rich's Dad to celebrate his 70th birthday - Dec. 19th. We finally got together Sunday Jan 4th and had a nice dinner at Stanfords to celebrate.
But as we were leaving, Old Man Winter had to remind us he's still around by snowing on us one last time. It snowed hard and got bad to drive quick. I'm more of a wimp driving in this than Marci is, so after I got off the main roads, I switched with Marci and she drove the rest of the way home. We got about 1.5 inches, then by midnight it was 40 and everything was melting. By morning it was all gone, everyone was able to go to work and school.
It was a fun and wild way to end 2008! Now we're all back in the swing of things, back to normal sleeping schedules, being tired at work, etc. Lots of fun things coming up in 2009 that I'll be sharing here. On Jan. 31st, Riley has his Cub Scout Pinewood Derby car races! He's really excited to build his car. Also that weekend is the Chocolate Festival, so be ready for lots of photos of cars and messy faces!
We hope all of you had a great 2008 and 2009 is starting off great for you!
This past Fall was very warm, much more so than normal. It was like global warming had decided to settle over us. Then in December temps went down to where they normally are and more! Around December 14th, it decided to snow.
Ok, no big deal, we often get a bit of snow that time of year. Except this time it didn't stop. And to make things worse, the temps stayed below 30 for several weeks! At home I saw our outside thermometer drop to 12! It was the most and longest snow I've seen since my family moved up here in 1976. You can't see it very well in this photo, but we got probably a total of a foot of snow. It was very dry. A few very windy days blew it around a lot and gave us spots that had very little snow and drifts up to three feet deep!
This is when I really love my job. What I do doesn't require me to be in the office. If I have questions, I can email users - or now that we have our new VOIP (Voice Over IP - internet phone) at work, I can run the software on my work laptop and when my phone at work rings, it rings on my laptop. Just like I'm in the office. Very cool! The only hard part about working from home is trying to get the kids to let me work. I have to work for a little bit, play with them for a little bit, work, play, etc. But fortunately things were slow and I could easily take time off to play with them.
We went out in the snow a lot. Every morning they'd get up and say, "Can we go out and play in the snow now?" For Christmas 2007 Riley got a little sledding board that he was able to use this year. They both loved sledding down the driveway, sometimes making it all the way across the street. Marci and I tried sledding a few times, it certainly was fun! I took a TON of photos that you can see by clicking on any of the photos.
We live within a mile of a little strip mall and grocery store. That was really great because we could walk there instead of needing to drive. When there was a break, Marci went out with the car and did a little shopping. She got another sledding board that was big enough for both of them. That came in handy when we walked up to the store. Both of us pulled the kids on these. It was a little tough at times, but much faster than trying to walk with them, especially Maddie who's little legs just doing go that fast yet.
I also took a bunch of video that I put together into one long 9 minute video. I'm glad my camera can take such good video. Our little camcorder can take better video but this way I don't have to carry both with me.
Thanks to the snow, this was the first time we didn't go anywhere for Christmas. Usually we go to Salem Christmas Eve to be with Marci's family, get up Christmas morning to do a quick Christmas with our family, then over to Rich's parents for Christmas with his family. We couldn't get anywhere so this year it was just us at our house. That was actually pretty nice. No rushing to get here or there, just a nice relaxed time at home.
Finally things cleared up enough by the weekend and we were able to go to Salem Saturday and Rich's parents Sunday. We had a fantastic time at both places. It looked like the snow was going to be gone, the roads were clear, everything was melting. Then it snowed some more, melted, snowed, melted, just kept doing that. The snow also caused a delay in getting together with Rich's Dad to celebrate his 70th birthday - Dec. 19th. We finally got together Sunday Jan 4th and had a nice dinner at Stanfords to celebrate.
But as we were leaving, Old Man Winter had to remind us he's still around by snowing on us one last time. It snowed hard and got bad to drive quick. I'm more of a wimp driving in this than Marci is, so after I got off the main roads, I switched with Marci and she drove the rest of the way home. We got about 1.5 inches, then by midnight it was 40 and everything was melting. By morning it was all gone, everyone was able to go to work and school.
It was a fun and wild way to end 2008! Now we're all back in the swing of things, back to normal sleeping schedules, being tired at work, etc. Lots of fun things coming up in 2009 that I'll be sharing here. On Jan. 31st, Riley has his Cub Scout Pinewood Derby car races! He's really excited to build his car. Also that weekend is the Chocolate Festival, so be ready for lots of photos of cars and messy faces!
We hope all of you had a great 2008 and 2009 is starting off great for you!
