Snow Day #3

I woke up this morning to find more snow. At 6 o'clock this morning, when I got up to call work to let them know the I would not be in due to the weather & road conditions, there was no snow on the Tahoe. I got up for the day about 2 1/2 hours later to find this. And the weather man said no snow for today??? It continued to snow until about 11 o'clock at which point I decided to get out of the house with the dogs so I dusted off my snow boots...haven't had to use them in years...got out my heavy coat, scarf, and gloves, and layered on the clothes.

The east wind had blown the snow up against the front door. I had to push real hard on the screen door to get out. See how deep it is. The is about 2 inches between the top of the front porch and the thresh hold into the house. I was able to get this shovel but I didn't even try to shovel the walk. There is just SO much snow. I started to shovel the driveway so that Jack could get the X-Terra out of the garage to go to work but I noticed that there is a layer of ice under the snow so I stopped because I thought it might make it harder for him to get out especially since it is up hill to get out of the garage. We will have to re-evaluate one he tries to get it out.

The dogs had a good time running around in the deep snow & catching snowballs. They haven't been out too much so it was good for them to use some of the pent up energy. I was going to walk them down to the far end of the block but the snow was so deep I had a hard time walking through it. So we just walked to the neighbors boat.

This is a picture from the back yard. Notice my black compost bin & the fence are almost covered.

We were outside for about an hour while it wasn't snowing. Almost as soon as we came in it started snowing again.

There is so much snow that the city is having a hard time keeping up with the removal. The Mayor of Gresham has declared a state emergency because fire, police, & ambulances are having a hard time getting around the city.

At this rate, we will have a white Christmas. It would be our first since moving here.

Taser fun!!

The week after Thanksgiving we went to Utah to visit Jill & Keith. We had good travel weather...not a single snow flake even in the mountains. It was great being able to spend time together.

One morning Kenton & I painted while Jill was busy tidying up after the morning rush to get kids to school.

The night before we left Vince & Rusty came over. They are 2 guys that Keith & Jack have been friends with since they were all teenagers...they have been friends forever!!! It is always fun when old friends get together. While Jill & I were talking about what color to paint the master bathroom the guys had broke out the taser for some fun.

They wanted us to join in the fun but we both refused. I was fine just watching. Joelle was the only girl brave enough to participate. What a trooper!!!

Now Vince, on the other hand, he is just plain crazy. He is always the first one to step up & try some crazy stunt. Years ago, he let Jack try his paintball gun out on him while wearing just a t-shirt. He had HUGE welts on his back from that.

Canceled Again

Yes, church was canceled again. This time I think it was a little more justified. It snowed most of the day yesterday. It is a little hard to tell how much we really got because it was windy all day also. As you can see from the pictures we have big snow drifts in the back yard. The front yard is the same. We have places were we can still see the grass but it is so piled up on the front porch that we can barely get the front screen door open. Early this morning the freezing rain started. So now we have a thin layer of ice covered everything including the snow. The dogs have had a fun time playing in it. They don't seem to like the cold. They only like to be out for a few minutes & then they are ready for their warm cozy inside beds. Can you say "spoiled"???

"Church is canceled"

I woke up this morning to a little bit of the white stuff. Wasn't surprised because they have been talking on the news about the impending snow for 2 days. It wasn't snowing very much..I could still see green grass... so I proceed to get ready for church. Just as I am getting ready to get my dress on the phone rings. It was my visting teaching partner calling to tell me that church has been canceled. Really??? It made me laugh. Portlander's don't deal with snow very well. Everything shuts down at the first sign of a flake. Anyway, I made a phone call to my visiting teachee and we both had a good laugh about it. Then the home teacher called. While I was on the phone with him I took another look out the window. This is what I saw....

A Blizzard!!! It is suppose to snow off & on all day with high winds from the Gorge. Needless to say, the grass is now covered. But still not a "ton" of snow. Still makes me laugh.

Milo is very interested in the snow but everytime there was a wind gust he would come racing back into the sunporch....it was funny.

Thanksgiving

Paige, Doug, and kids made their way to Oregon for the Thanksgiving holiday. We had a great visit with tons of yummy Thanksgiving food.

Here is Jack preparing the 2 turkeys for frying. YUM!!!















Then Jack putting the 1st turkey in the fryer. The fried turkeys are great. They take no time to cook and are really yummy and moist. And also frees your oven up for other cooking.

Here are the kids ready to eat our feast. We had fried turkey, ham...both because the 2 turkeys were small...fryer can only hold a 10 lb turkey, along with funeral potatoes, sweet potato cassarole, Paige's homemade rolls, raspberry preztel salad (it was my favorite...and the kids too...it was the only thing I didn't have leftovers of on friday), cranberry sauce...from scratch..no canned stuff at our house...stuffing, and broccoli. All SO good!!!

We were greatful that Paige & Doug could come visit. We had a fun time & were so glad to have them.

Another Four-Wheeling Trip

Yesterday, we went four-wheeling in the Tillamonk State Forest with 3 of Jack's co-workers. We have had some pretty wet days over the last 2 weeks so it was a muddy trip but luckily it didn't really rain too much yesterday. Mostly just drizzled. And it wasn't really too cold either.

As we were driving down one of the trails we came across this little off shoot of a trail that was super muddy with lots of big holes but no rocks. Jack decided that he wanted to try it. I was in the truck the first time he tried and then got out to video the next 5 or 6 attempts. He ended up not making it up. It was so muddy and there was this huge hole he couldn't get past. By the last try the tires were so caked with mud you couldn't hardly see the tread on the tire and it was so slick that the tires were just sliding along the ground when he put it in reverse. We had chunks of mud flying all over when we got back on the gravel trail.





After lunch, we tried to find the Rock Garden trail (see the first video of The Beast) but we had a hard time finding it but we did come across a trail called "The Waterfall". The trails are each assigned a difficulty rating, like snow sking trails, with blue being the easist and triple black diamond being the hardest. Well, The Waterfall is a double black diamond. At the top of the trail we stopped to check it out (we didn't know what trail it was and the difficulty level because the maker was at the bottom and we were at the top) mostly to see if 2 of the stock rigs we were with could make it down. We quickly figured out that those 2 rigs would NEVER make it down but Jack thought "The Beast" could and that his buddy John could make it down in his Toyota. So they took a shot at it. I opted to be the vidoegrapher for this run. I think I would have wet my pants if I had been in the truck!!! It scared me just to watch. Maybe next time I will be brave enough to ride along. Jack of course had a BLAST!!!


Waterfall Part 1




Waterfall Part 2

We ended the day with lots of mud on The Beast and a couple new dents...can you see the new ones? It was a good day!

Jack's Mosaic

I decided Jack needed a mosaic also. Same questions...some different answers, a couple the same. Can you guess which ones?

Melanie's Mosaic

My creation
Originally uploaded by blazer713

I saw this Mosaic idea on another blog. I thought it was fun so I did one for myself.

Each box answers a question about myself. Do you know the answer?

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you attend?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favorite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favorite desert?

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. One word to descibe you?

12. Your flickr name?

Milo has always had this thing for flying bugs. When he is outside he loves to chase them and catch them in his mouth. The problem w/ this is he doesn't know that some bugs "bit" back. He has gotten stung on a few occasions. We like to tease him when he is in the house and ask him where the bug is. He always searchs for it flying above his head and gets frustrated when he can't find it..thus the whining. He is a funny dog!

My lastest project

So I spent all summer doing crafts to sell at the local farmers market. Now that I am done w/ that I decided I wanted to do something for myself. I bought material almost a year ago to make a new scripture bag so I decided that it was about time I got it done. I spent the last 3 evenings cutting, pinning, and sewing it together. When I haven't sewn for a long time, I forget how much I enjoy it. And I am sure I would be much better at it if I did it more often. Anyway, I think my bag turned out pretty cute. I can't wait to take it to church tomorrow!!

well vacation wasn't a total bust

We were all excited to going to Moab for the Blazer Bash but the new old car aka "The Beast" had different plans. We got to mom & dad's and discovered transmission fluid all over the back of our car due to a leak. One night at mom & dads turned into 3 nights...thanks for letting us stay longer then planned. Four days & $600 later we headed back home. We weren't going to chance getting stuck in the middle of nowhere on the way to Utah, as much as Keith wanted us to still come down, we just couldn't do it. There will be other Blazer Bashes.

So we adjusted our vacation plans. We spent a few days at home staying up late & sleeping in.

Then we went to the beach for a couple of days. It ended up being beautiful in Lincoln City...it was sunny, a little windy with just a bit of a chill in the air. We took a walk on the beach and then watched the sun set from the balcony of our room. While the sun was setting we watched a kid surfing...you don't see much of that in Oregon!!

I took this picture on my morning walk on the beach. It was another beatiful day and since it is now off season there weren't too many people around.

On our way home from the beach, we stopped at the oldest covered bridge in Oregon. It is located on private property but the owners welcome people to see it. The owners saved the bridge from be destroyed by the county. The county gave them the disassembled bridge and then they rebuilt it on an exsisting concrete bridge that crossed a creek on their property. It was a beatiful piece of Oregon history.

After the beach, Jack spent a couple of days working on the beast so that we could take it out 4-wheeling. We went out to Browns Camp which in the coastal range on the way to Tillamonk. We got lucky with the weather again and had another beautiful day in Oregon. It was sunny and warm!! And with the beautiful weather we got breathtaking views of the mountains. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful state and live so close to the mountains and the beach. We had a GREAT time!!! I can't wait to go again.We totally didn't fit under this tree, lucky for us there was a alternate trail that took us around the fall tree, although that wasn't always the case.

As you can see here, we added a few new scraps to the truck...you can almost see the orignal red paint... and even brought some tree along w/ us.

We got the truck in couple of really tight spots. There were a couple of times that I really thought that we were not going to get through the maze of trees. At one point Jack told me to get out and guide him through a tough spot on the trail. I was really bad at it. I couldn't see anyway of getting the truck past these 2 trees. Thank goodness we had a couple of guys w/ us that knew how to get big trucks out of tight spots.

We decided that our vacation started out bad but it ended with a great time together with friends out in the wilderness of the beautiful state that we live in. It was all GOOD!!

4wheeling

I went 4-wheeling...made Melanie go to work. (hehe).

This was actually work for me, I wasnt playing around...It was the official test run for the truck...everything went great...didnt get stuck and nothing broke..I repeat...it was not any fun

more pics...check out the mad flex

here's a vid of how I roll

Today pickin's

This is what I got out of the garden today. Not nearly as impressive as Paige's picture of her veggies but I say it isn't too bad for an experiment in a couple of 1/2 wine barrels. The tomatoes are really starting to come on now and we will soon have TONS of carrots. The one lone strawberry is a second crop for the year...i have a few more that still need to ripen. We should have a good crop of strawberries next season. We also planted yellow peppers & cucumbers. We have one cucumber plant that is barely holding on. The other cucumber and the yellow pepper plant were destroyed early on by Allie. I was working out in the yard one day and I apparently wasn't paying enough attention to her so she started eating my plants. I hear this tearing noise and when I turn around I see her shredding one of the leaves to the pepper plant and all that was left of the plant was one lone stem sticking out of th dirt. I hoped it would recover but it didn't. She did the same thing on a different day to the cucumber plant. Gotta watch her like a hawk. Last night both Milo and Allie were trying to eat the green tomatoes that were growing over the fence. I had to scold them both several times and then I finally just moved the braches so that they were out of their reach.

The Princess and the Pea...the dog version.

When Allie was a puppy she slept on the bed with us everynight. It started from the first night we got her. It was the only way to keep her from whining all night long for the first few nights and it just became how it was. It was Allie's favorite place to be.

We tried to put a stop to Allie sleeping on the bed. One thing we tried was moving the dog kennel into the room. We made Allie start out in the kennel but she always ended up on the bed sometime in the night. Then it got to the point that she figured out she had to start out in the kennel but we would let her finish the night off on the bed. Well, she would very obediently get in the kennel at bed time but even before we had the light out she would try to get on the bed. Smart little bugger!! Well then Milo came along and Allie was bigger. The bed got a little crowded and we knew that would only get worse since we knew Milo would be big guy. So we tried to put a stop to dogs sleeping on the bed. We did pretty good. Milo didn't care whether he was on the bed or not. The kennel was fine for him...although he looks pretty "comfy" in this picture. But it was still Allie's favorite place to be.

I took these pictures of Allie a few weeks ago...After all of these years and all of our attempts to break the habit...Allie's favorite place to be is still on the bed.

And you see no Milo...he still could give of take the bed. These days he likes to sleep on one of several dog beds we have around the house.

The new toy

So here it is...the new toy...which I will be calling "The Beast" It is pretty rough on the outside..the only part of the body that doesn't have a dent in it is the hood and isn't the paint job attractive? I guess it will make for easy repairs to the paint job...just grab some spray paint. One really cool thing about it is the top. The back part is a soft top and it comes off but it has a bikini top underneath so you get the effects of a covertible but can still be out of the sun. Fun!!! I am sure there are other really cools things about it but I don't have any idea about that stuff. Jack will have to do a follow up post to explain all of the in's and out's. But apparently it has tons of great 4-wheeling parts. The people we bought it from built it from a stock GMC Jimmy. They showed us pictures of its transition and told us lots of stories of the great times they had in it. I felt like we were taking a member of their family from them.



Jack is currently trying to plan a time with friends to go out & test it out on some serious off road trails. If it is passes (which am sure it will...you should have seen the pictures of some of the places this thing has been...amazing!!)and it continues to do well as a daily driver for Jack, we will be taking it to Moab for the "Blazer Bash"...that is Blazer as in the truck not the name. Can't wait to go. Jack's brother went last year and had a great time so we are looking forward to the trip.

An afternoon of fishing

We have tried to get out fishing some this summer...it is hard sometimes to get away w/ work schedules, weird weather, and projects around the house. A few weeks ago we took a drive up to Lake Harriet which is a small lake in the Mt Hood National forest.

We picked an excellent day to go. It was a hot & dry in the city and it was cool & quiet in the mountains. Since it was a weekday afternoon we had the run of the lake for quit a few hours.

Jack, being the master fisherman that he is caught TONS of fish. He even caught a couple using a spinner...the lake is stocked several times a year by the Oregon Dept of Wildlife w/ farm raised fish so they tend to be lazy and only like eggs. I, on the other hand, fed the fish a lot of eggs and ended up only catching one...but I swear it was the biggest of them all!!!

Really, the fish was "this" big!!

Dog play

So tonight when I went out to feed the dogs, Milo was all about playing fetch...which is very unlike him. Allie is usually the one that is right there at your feet w/ whatever toy, no matter the condition, she has found. I had left the slider open. Allie grabbed her chewed up frisbee & headed straight through the slider & up the stairs. And there she stayed while I threw the frisbee for Milo. It was the strangest thing. Milo was very funny about playing fetch. The sunporch has three sliders and all three were open...it has been really hot here...for better air circulation, so Milo would come running full speed through one slider w/ his frisbee, of course, run across the sun-porch, still at full speed w/ frisbee in his mouth and then out the other side. He would quickly turn the corner so he didn't bust through the fence into the neighbors yard then circle around the outside of the sun-porch and back in through the third door. Again all at full speed. It was a little nuts. He is nuts! Just the other night he came running in from his 2 a.m. potty break and ran right into the closed slider. I heard the crash clear on the other side of the house. I thought for sure that either Milo or the slider was broken but both were fine. Apparently, he thought Jack had left the slider open even though Jack never leaves it open. Crazy dog!!

And here he is all settled down chewing on his frisbee after his play session. Finally, all calmed down.

New Roof

So we recently had our roof redone. Exciting stuff!!! I had never seen it done so I was very fascinated by the "process". First they scraped off all of the old shingles into this big truck they brought. Lots of pounding & scraping noises came along w/ this. Some of the pounding even knocked loose one of my light covers...luckily it landed on carpet & not on the hard wood floors so it didn't break.

This is the truck when they first got started. I think it was pretty full by the end.

These are the singles! The picture below was the workers unloading the shingles from the truck onto the roof.

Once they got the old singles off they started putting on the new ones.

They worked long & hard the first day & got the main part of the roof completely done, including rebuilding the frame for the sky light that is in living room so that it won't leak this winter...that was one of the main reasons we had to have this done. They came back bright & early the next day & did the roof on the sunporch & a little section of the back garage. All done in 2 days! It was great. Thanks to our neighbor Steve for getting the job done for us!

The first entry

So we have finally done it...created a blog. I have been following my sisters & their friends blogs for a few weeks now. I have loved seeing all of the pictures & being able to keep up w/ what it going on with everyone. It is nice to see lots pictures of my neices & nephews since they don't live close. We have had lots going on here so I will have some stuff to post and hopefully will be diligent about keeping up w/ it. Wish me luck!