Here is my favorite Christmas photo for this year. Christmas night, over at my parent's place, Jessi wanted us to get on Skype for a little chat. We have done Skype before, but never in a group on a holiday before. From now on, whenever one of my kids is unable to make it home when all the rest are there, we are going to do this again. It was second best to actually having her home, she and Ariel got to talk with everyone there and we all got to see each other. It is the closest my boys have come to meeting their new brother-in-law. I can't believe such an amazing program is free and we were able to talk endlessly and do silly things, like take a family photo, hold up the gifts we sent each other and all kinds of things to make it seem like we were really all together for Christmas. Hopefully NEXT year we really will be!!!

Emily and Joshua are here! I get to have them for three days while John and Rachel are at the beach to celebrate their anniversary.

Last night we went to see Christmas lights. Emily has her own camera and so she and I were taking pictures of everything, then Joshua wanted to try taking a few. I thought it was more fun watching him take pictures than it was to take them myself. It was even MORE fun when I got home and put them on the computer to see what they ended up with. This way I got to see it through their eyes. I love those blurry pictures too!


Emily has been giving us all daily email updates on how many days left until Christmas. So she was pretty excited to get the picture of the snowman with the countdown going.


It was such a fun night driving around, singing all the Christmas songs we knew, walking around and taking pictures. We came home and warmed up with hot chocolate.


Joshua's pictures are the top collage, the bottom one are Emily's.

Last week, we had a really cold spell. Because there was no snow or ice to deal with, it was the prefect chance for me to go to Multnomah Falls to get some pictures of the frozen water. I have always wanted to do that, but usually the road conditions make it impossible to get up there. I called Mom and Dad to go along with me and we took the old hwy up there, stopping along the way to get some shots of the other falls too. It was so worth the drive up there, I could not believe how beautiful they were in real life. And of course, we had to take time for lunch while we were there. It was a great day!
This one was taken at the bridge, looking straight down as the water fell over. From the bottom, it looked like a volcano crater, from the top, the color of the water was so blue.

BRRRRR!!!! It's been cold here! Wood stoves are going and everyone is doing all they can to stay warm. The other morning, it was only 7 degrees when we woke up. It has been sunny and clear skies. This morning we woke up to a thin layer of ice over everything. My sister was trying to get to work this morning, and rolled her truck, totalling it out. We are very thankful that she was given an 'all's well' when she was checked at the hospital. Two days after Thanksgiving, I woke up to phone call at 3 am, from the Red Cross. I headed out and was shocked to discover upon arrival to the scene, that it was one of my good friends! None of the classes I have taken or teach say anything about how to handle things when that happens. Normally we get the client into a hotel and help with some temporary food and clothing. Well, there was no way I was going to send her all alone to a hotel in the middle of the night. I told her that if she wanted, I would prefer to take her home with me. We gave her the Red Cross options and the neighbors were all inviting her to stay with them. I was soooo happy when she took me up on the offer. She is thankful that her house and keepsakes were saved, even though she will have to live elsewhere for a few months while the insurance repairs the damages.

In case you are wondering, I have had a ton of trouble getting onto Blogger to post anything, so that is why I have not updated much in the past couple of weeks. I am trying to work it out, right now it is just a bandaid to get on, gotta figure out what is really wrong.