Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas Fun

We definitely had a white Christmas here in Spokane! After last weekend's extreme snowfall, it hasn't stopped.

To get out of the house today, we hooked our little dogs up to the sled and they pulled Caden all around the neighborhood. Can't upload a picture right now, I finally have an MP3 player and am uploading songs from the computer at the moment. Hope to add some posts tomorrow with pictures.

Caden got 2 wiggles DVD's which were a big hit. He got some playdough, lots of hot wheels cars, as well as a hot wheels city. His present from Santa was a Go Diego little couch that pulls out into a bed - great for a nap or if cousin charlie wants to sleep over. :)

We did have a Christmas miracle in the extended family... Justin's sister Ashley got engaged to her boyfriend Chris. We are so excited for them, maybe they will get married at Mickfenway.... They are planning a May 2010 wedding, so stay tuned. :)

Merry Christmas!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

We still have a blizzard!

I took some pictures to put our day into perspective of how snowy it is. On first glance, you may think that this snow pile is from shoveling. It's not. That is our "feeding reindeer" christmas light buried in the snow there. We most likely have 2 feet of snow here.

The snow is deeper than my car wheels! Oh yeah, the Ford Escape is challenged in the snow, but the Xterra (2WD) is out of commission. Justin's car is at least back in our driveway now after his snow driving mishaps.





This is Caden liking the snow. He had fun touching it with his mittens on. When we got back from dropping Justin near the bus route, Caden had a bit of a spill in the snow and screamed for a while once we got back inside. Maybe if Justin ever get's to come home from work, we could go sledding......

Sidebar - Many businesses and offices are closed in Spokane today. The city offices, the federal courthouse, the schools, even kindercare which never closes is closed. Justin's boss calls him to come in early. In fact, his boss couldn't get to work, so his brother delivered him. Justin called when he got there - at 11:15am. He said he wasn't sure how he would get home. I asked who was there - the 2 owners and him. He definitely is employee of the year if I get a vote. :) When he does get to go home, there is only 1 city bus coming north, so when it drops him off, he will have to walk over a mile to get here. I don't think the escape can venture out again to get him.
The good news is, my office is closed today so I am not worried that I am not doing work today. I think I will go work on cleaning my house now!
Oh I almost forgot - yesterday it took me 2 1/2 hours to get home from work. I left work at 4:15 and got home at 6:45pm. I took the bus since it was snowing when I left in the morning. I figured that the bus would be the safest and best option. Well, I waited for the bus for 1 1/2 hours. All that time stressing about if I would make it to Kindercare by 6:30pm. After talking with my sister about 4 times about the various conditions, Matt (her hubby) put on his coat and gave the roads a try. He made it to Kindercare and they gave him a quiz to see if he was really allowed to pick up Caden. Caden was the deciding vote when they said "Caden look who is here" He said "Matt!"
Thank you Matt & Jeannette for saving my hide again! I read your post and if I could deliver you milk I would. We have 2 gallons in our fridge...




It's a blizzard out there!

It has been snowing non stop here in Spokane since 7am on Wednesday. We have around 18 inches at our house. Our street is not on the plow list at this point and the buses are barely running in Spokane. My office is closed and kindercare just called to say they closed! That never happens. It is pretty chilly here.

Our neighbors have a cover that goes over their hot tub, that collapsed this morning. We have shoveled our driveway, sidewalk and front path multiple times. Justin has decided a snowblower may be in our future.

We had to drive my car to a main street for Justin to catch the bus. (His work is open and they called him in early because someone else couldn't make it...) Nice!

So Caden & I are watching Frosty the snowman and Elmo's Christmas. We will not be leaving the house for the rest of the day. When we drove Justin to the bus, we got stuck less than 15 feet from our house. Justin shoveled us out and we were on our way.

I hope to put up some pictures soon. :)

Monday, December 15, 2008

Weekly update (or 2 weeks)

Caden is learning manners. Justin is teaching him to say please, thank you and bless you. He gets please and thank you a little bit confused, but he is learning that if he says please, which sounds like peas, we can't resist. We can resist if it is the 2nd cereal bar in the morning, or watching Frosty for the 4th time in the day (I know, how did he watch it 2 or 3 times).

Caden also has figured out when he sees santa to say santa and that christmas lights are pretty.

I am learning that I need to keep snacks in my car so that on our way home from daycare, I don't have an upset hungry little boy in the back.

Caden also has his own christmas countdown. We have an advent calender and in each box is a sticker. He gets to open a box each day and get his sticker. He also has a piece of green construction paper to stick his stickers on. He really likes it, and they are the island of the misfit toys stickers, along with Santa and Rudolf. Luckily one of Caden's books names the characters so I am not totally making it up.

The weather has turned cold here. We are talking Pullman finals week cold. I think it is 8 degrees or colder right now. It's too cold to snow! It snowed on Friday night and then everything froze. The roads were real slick, and I actually slid through an intersection on Saturday morning. Not my finest hour as I was pretty stressed about being T-boned. Needless to say, we finally sucked it up and bought snow tires. No bargain there. At least with Costco, I like to believe that with the 1% or 2 % rebate, that will go back to pay for some of our membership next year.

Speaking of how cold it is here, I slipped on the ice in our own driveway. I fell on all fours and have the bruises to show for it. Talk about sucking up the pride. After I caught my breath, and held back the tears of pain, I got up to make sure no one saw me! I left the garbage on the driveway (the whole reason I was moving fast was the garbage truck was 5 houses away). Justin ran out after me and finished up.

Lucky for me I bought a down jacket to keep me warm, otherwise I don't think I would leave the house. In fact, I wonder how I could work from home to avoid going out in the cold... something to think about.

We are having our Anda Family christmas this Saturday, so it should be a fun filled family day for all. My brother & sister in law are coming up from the tri-cities with their 2 great danes and staying with my parents at the townhouse. Oh yeah, my parents have 2 dogs too! Should be an exciting evening for us all.

I think that is all for the updates, Merry Christmas!

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Christmas is magical

Well, we are brave souls. We went and chopped down our Christmas tree on Sunday and then put it up when Caden was napping. We did the lights on the tree at the same time. We waited until Caden was awake to decorate the tree. To say our tree is unbalanced is the understatement. On the top half, we have lots of ornaments that all have different significance. We don't theme our tree, we just decorate with our collections of ornaments. We let Caden help. Oh boy! He has some sesame street ornaments that we let him hang up at his level. He likes to name them all every day. In fact, when we get home each night, he runs to the tree and pulls off elmo and carries him to the tv, then asks to watch elmo. I make him hang the ornament back on the tree before he can watch elmo. Cruise to the North Pole - we went on a cruise to the north pole to see santa. It was actually on lake Coeur D'alene. When we got to Santa, his house lit up and it was snowing. Santa read off a list of all the good kids, and Charlie, Caden & Annie were all listed. I guess Santa is coming to our house this year. Oh and for any of you Sigma Kappa ladies out there, it was the same concept as the fall cruise, but there was no green X on our hands, and there was no dance floor. :)

Before we got on the cruise boat, we walked around these shops and Santa's sleigh was there. It was empty and Charlie said he wanted to go see the sleigh. So we piled all the cousins in the sleigh. Caden was a bit angry and upset because he now has a real strong attachement to his pacifier, which he calls binky. Hence the tears, no paci in the picture please.



It's called a picture!

Well after a bit of a hiatus from posting pictures (6 weeks) I am back. I won't make excuses, just know that we have long exhausting days chasing Caden and I am too tired at 10pm to post (or there is a good tv show I want to watch....) Either way, here are some new pics so you can see a little of what we are up to... This picture of the cars is a taste of what we find on a daily basis. This is the remnant of a dog door from the previous owner, could be a cat door. Caden put his cars in there one day and we noticed it after he was in bed. It just made me laugh that he would think to line his cars up on the ledge in the dog door. Caden went to a birthday party for his friend at daycare. It was at Chuck E Cheese. That is a lot to live up to for a 2 year old birthday. Caden had fun with Ray. They just kept making each other laugh. Don't worry, we are setting the bar low for Caden's 2nd birthday. We will be inviting people over to have pizza and play. Nothing fancy, just time to watch the little ones have fun.

This is what a cord of wood looks like. We have a wood stove and we need wood. Since oil was $3.70 a gallon for the furnace (in September) we decided we needed some wood too. We found a bargain, had it delivered and Justin & I stacked it. Caden helped a little, but Justin really did most of the work.


This was pumpkin carving. We had fun with this. Caden was really fascinated by the pumpkin carving and was real interested in what Justin was doing. He even scooped the inards out.


We took my nephew Charlie with us to the pumpkin patch to give my sister a breather. Her husband is in grad school and has to spend any extra time he has studying, giving my sister little relief. We rely on her for help quite a bit, so we were delighted that she asked us for help. We made a fun morning of visiting green bluff. We walked through the apple orchards, walked through the pumpkin patch, picked our pumpkins, watched the farm launch corncobs from and air gun, and then finished off the morning with lunch at McDonalds. Charlie climbed all the way to the top of the play structure and then stopped in a tube. He was about 10 feet in the air, and I was worried that I would be going up there too. Charlie powered through and we all had a nice lunch. The boys even ate their cheeseburgers.