Zoo Lights!

Today was the first day we were able to take off our chains and drive around like normal since Dec. 14! It felt GREAT to get out. We went to see the Zoo Lights with Kellie and Jon, and had lots of fun. Ellen is big enough to actually see the animals now and called everything "dog! dog!"

Ellen having fun with her aunt and uncle.

We warmed up in the gift shop and Ellen liked these shades

I tried to take a cute Christmas picture of the family.... this is pretty much how well that went

Dreaming of a Green Christmas

I think there's about a 0% chance of a green Christmas this year, but a girl can dream. At least we got no new snow today. Nicholas borrowed a snow shovel from a neighbor and dug our car out. We made it to Jenny and Josh's to see Emily. It was so good to hold Emily - what a little cutie! She looks just like Josh. And it was really good to hug Jenny and know she's okay. I missed her!

And because I'm obsessed with our snowfall - here are a couple pictures from this morning.

Jenny reminded me today that I never posted the fact that Ellen is walking! It took her awhile to figure it out, but she's really taken off! It's hard to show in pictures, and I couldn't get a video to post. She's our big girl now! And most of the time she's too busy to let me take pictures anyway...

New Neice and Snow Day #8!

Our neice Noelle was born today!! 8 lbs, 13 ounces and a full head of hair. Mom and baby are both doing well. We're sad to not be with her, but she's in Germany so at least this one isn't weather related. We're really hoping to get to Germany to see her soon. It'll kill us to only see pictures...

They're now calling our snow storm "unprecedented weather conditions", and as far as I can remember that's definitely true. I could post about a thousand - it's just so amazing to see Portland like this! We're up to about 2 feet of snow with an inch of ice from the freezing rain. And it's still snowing out!

Our icicles:

On our deck with one of the icicles. I know I'm short, but still...the snow is to my knees!

Our car in our driveway. Don't think we're leaving anytime soon! Maybe if we had a shovel we could consider leaving the house.

I took a walk this morning to our second car (I got stuck coming up our hill last week and Nicholas had to get me out and just parked at the bottom of the hill and around the corner). I needed to get into the truck to get the Christmas presents I had there, and had a few more problems getting to them than I expected....

I'm a little worried about this tree breaking off on top of our car.

I'm standing near the bottom of our hill looking toward our house.

We were supposed to have garbage service Friday, but they couldn't make it up our hill. Haha - don't know when they'll be able to make it, but I don't think any of us will be moving our cans anytime soon.

Baby! And Snow Day #7

Jenny had Emily Erin early yesterday morning. 8 lbs, 20 inches long. Jenny had a long labor that ended in c-section, but mom and baby are both healthy and well. I'd post pictures of the baby, but.... We woke up to snow yesterday morning. It's hard to tell how much more snow we got because the wind was blowing so hard, but I'd say we got about 10"-12". We didn't get out yesterday because of all that snow, and this morning we woke up to about 1/2" of ice on top of all that snow because of freezing rain. I can't put into words how disappointed I am to not see Jenny and Emily.

Even though I'd rather be at the hospital right now, this weather is absolutely beautiful. The trees look so amazing! It's so still and calm out because no one is leaving their houses. And we feel blessed right now because we still have power. Here's the view from our house.

The snow falling last night:

Our backyard this morning - the tree we just had trimmed

Nicholas showing off a piece of ice. The SUV behind him had chains on and had a lot of problems getting up our hill. There's no way we're leaving today.

Here's our street.

The ice on our bushes

Here's a sheet of ice - you can sort of tell how thick it is

And the view from inside the house. She thought it was pretty cool to sit inside the toy box.

Snow Day #4

There's still snow and ice on the ground, and we're starting to go a little crazy. Nicholas hasn't gone to work all week, and I only made it in for a few hours yesterday. We're really missing our old neighborhood - we never would have been trapped like this!

It started raining this afternoon, so the snow got wet enough to actually make a snowman. Ellen still didn't like being outside and was crying by the time we were done with the snowman. Here's to hoping the weather gets better and we can all get out again!

Snow part 2

Snow in Portland is so fun! People were sledding down the hills in our neighborhood. I wish Ellen were big enough to do that - it looked so fun! After we put her to bed, Nick and I went out to build a snowman. The snow is too dry to make into anything, so we settled for just playing in it.

Nicholas drew this in the snow on our car:

I took this to try to show how deep the snow got here. It's crazy! The streets are already an ice-rinks. Nick's school is closed, and there's no way I'm driving, so it looks like we'll be home again tomorrow. Cabin fever will be setting in soon at this rate...

I can't put my arms down!

Those of you who are in places where it snows regularly are going to think we're crazy, but... It's snowing!!!!

When we woke up this morning it looked like it had rained all night, but by about 10:00 we had around 3 inches of snow! Since we knew we couldn't leave the house all day, we decided to make the most of it. We watched Christmas Story, drank hot chocolate, baked, watched the "breaking news" obsessivley to see the highway looking like bumper cars, and played outside. Ellen wasn't too into the snow. She didn't like the cold/wet on her face, so we didn't make her stay out there long. She did laugh at our snow-ball fight, though!

We don't have any snow clothes for Ellen, so we just wrapped her in as many layers as we could and put ziploc baggies on her feet to keep them dry. If we had a smaller scarf, I'd wrap her up like Randy so only her eyes would show, but we don't... I'm sure she was warm enough anyway.

Yes, those are Superman mittens...

Here's our house. Besides the snow, also note that you can actually see the front door now because we got rid of that dumb bush that blocked the whole porch! I think it looks so much better! We're up to about 5 inches of snow now, and it's not supposed to melt tonight, so we'll take some more pictures tomorrow when it's light again.

Activities and stuff

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great Thanksgiving. We spent the morning with my parents and then went to Jess's grandma's house for dinner. Ellen was in a great mood the whole day, we had fun with all our family, and of course, ate plenty of good food. I forgot my camera like always, otherwise I'd post pictures of Ellen playing the piano! There was a piano at Jess's grandma's house, and Ellen went crazy playing it. It combines two of her favorite things - pushing buttons and music.

Friday was Todd and Jessica's wedding. I was too busy during the cermony trying to keep Ellen from screaming and/or crawling down the aisle toward her daddy to pay much attention, but everyone said it was a lovely ceremony. We had a lot of fun at the reception, we're so happy for Todd, and we're so excited to have Jessica be a part of our family now! Congrats you two! I wish I had take more pictures, but here are a couple.




















You can't tell what Ellen is doing, but I thought this was a cute picture. She's actually wearing Jessica's shoes, and was having lots of fun in them! What a little girly-girl.






































Doesn't Jessica look amazing? This isn't the best picture, but she was just beautiful. Not long after this, a miracle occured! Ellen fell asleep in her stroller! We were happy because it allowed us to stay awhile longer and have some fun.

Saturday, we went to the Dutch store with Oma and Aunt Marty to see Sinter Klaas. Ellen was afraid of them (that's my girl!), so we took pictures next to him rather than on his lap. And of course we bought her some Dutch chocolate.




















After this, we watched the Ducks win Civil War! I'm always proud to be a Duck, but this game made it easy to be a fan. GO DUCKS!

We also had some time to play with daddy's glasses...




















And today we put up our Christmas decorations. Ellen wanted to help put the lights on the tree, but couldn't quite figure out how.

Now we're all sad the long weekend is over....

The candid moments

Mmmmmm... meatball!

I like looking at the blog and seeing all of the amazingly cute pictures that we take of our Ellen. But, I think half the fun of having Ellen in our life is the not so pretty moments. Here's a view of the pictures in between the moments that we post to the blog. Enjoy!

But, for every moment like this:

We get a picture like this:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

(PS- Can you tell I wanted to post something but couldn't think of anything worth while?)

First Haircut

Before...

After....

She wouldn't tolerate pig tails and the hair in her face was driving me crazy. I was really sad to cut her hair, but it had to be done. I waited until she was asleep because I was so worried I'd poke an eye out!

I think she looks like Haley Mills:

and Nicholas thinks she looks like He-Man:

What do you think?

Happy Halloween!

Last week, Ellen and I enjoyed one last day of sunshine outside. She loves the leaves.

Last week, we took Ellen to the Halloween party at her daycare. This is pretty much how she looked through the whole thing. She was totally overwhelmed by all the activity and older kids.




















I was really disappointed with how her Care Bear costume turned out, so for the actual Halloween, we decided to do something more creative.
























Oma came down and we all took Ellen trick-or-treating at Bridgeport village. Here's a picture of the three of us.



















Here's Ellen showing off two of the suckers she got



















And here she is eating one of those suckers

After the trick-or-treating we all went out to dinner. I think we all had fun!