January is BIRTHDAY month!

It is almost like a long drawnout Christimas around here during the month of January. Beginning on the 1st all the way until the 29, one week even has three birthdays! Elizabeth, John (son), John (husband), Bobby, my Dad, Emily, Ariel, David, Alan, Joan. A month long celebtation and by the end of the month...I've had my fill of birthday cake. (and still have not gotten rid of that extra 5 pounds!) We had Emily's last week...after the party we went to the pet store and brought home two new gerbils.

I have been having a good time learning to use my new camera.


Last week, on my walk, I took a picture of the most beautiful sky over Mt. Hood. It was so pretty how the clouds were just below the mountain and the sky color was gorgeous! I was so excited to get home to see on my computer how it turned out . I was so disappointed to see that there were two spots of dust on the finished picture. The camera has a dust removal system, so I took care of that problem, but it didn't help with the ruined picture. Yesterday the sky was pretty again, so I tried to recapture it. It is nice, but not as pretty as the first day. (p.s. I was able to remove the spots in my photoshop.)Here are a few other shots that I took. It is still cold, you can see the ice coming out of the ground and on the puddles and there is a pile of snow left over beside the road. The apples are still there, the birds like that. Down the road, I noticed some signs on a driveway...I guess they don't want us to enter, huh? A tree fell on a fence and was all the way across the road. The pond at the end was overflowing a couple of days ago, but has come down a bit. NOBODY is out there on the fitness trail, what happened to all those New Year's resolutions? And just HOW did a golf ball get in the field by my house?I'm having fun taking the camera on my walks, but it is not helping much with the 5 pounds I need to lose. Pretty hard to get your heart rate up when you keep stopping to take pictures.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

The snow is gone, Jessi made it back to the Dominican Republic, John and Rachel and the kids are safe in Salem, the decorations are all put away and the only remainder left over from all of it is the 5 pounds I gained! Time to work on getting rid of that and get ready for Jessi's wedding on Valentine's Day in the DR.

December 29
Jessi and I were able to get to Salem and see John and Rachel and Emily and Joshua. We had lunch at their place, John's special recipe of tacos.

December 28

We drove into visit John's parents. While we were there, his sister Sandy and her husband Jack stopped in.

December 25

It was STILL snowing! Since we could not drive out of the driveway yet, plans were made for Lindy to come and get us in her truck. We loaded up our gifts into bags and headed down the hill to be picked up. She and Dad left at 1:00 to pick us up...normally it would take about 10 minutes...not this time, it took them 1 1/2 hours to get over to our place! Good thing we waited inside and warm for a call that they were getting close. Then she got stuck at the bottom of the hill! John and Dad helped maneuver the truck around and we headed out...arriving back at their place at 4:00...THREE HOURS round trip! John and Rachel happened to meet us in Sandy on their way back from her parents' place and Lindy blazed the trail to get us all there.

Check out the last photo...hard to remember it being hot enough to swim in that pool!

December 24

Jessi and Joshua made a snowman and a snow angel and then us girls decided to try to shovel out the driveway so that maybe we could get a car in or out if one of us was lucky and brave enough to try to make the hill. It took us almost all afternoon, but we didn't get it all done before it got dark. It was hard work with snow piled up on top of a sheet of ice.


We quit and came inside and made chicken and home made noodle soup for our Christmas Eve dinner

December 23

After 3 days of being housebound, Jessi and I struck out on foot to Gresham. Our neighbor came by just as we were leaving the driveway and drove us in. He dropped us off on Powell and from there we went to pick up a few things from WINCO for Christmas dinner and then over to Fred Meyer for some last minute things and of course we had to have lunch while we were in town. It was a fun day. The walk home (almost 2 hours) took us about twice as long as it normally would with stops to take pictures and adjust the backpack Jessi was carrying. (no, Jessi...we still have not used the 10 pounds of potatoes I thought we had to have)

John and Rachel decided to take advantage of the break in weather on Tuesday afternoon and drive on up a day early. The snow on the Interstate had piled up and made tracks so deep that the cars were high centering. The highway had to be closed on one side at a time to de-ice and had backed traffic up from Portland all the way to Salem. Instead of having dinner with us, they pulled over in Woodburn and ate and put on chains and then took Hwy 99 on up instead. Their drive ended up taking them 6 hours instead of the usual 1 hour!!! They could not make it up our hill into our drive so we walked to the bottom and helped them carry their things up.

It is still snowing! The first day, I made sure and took pictures of the snow before it went away because that is what usually happens, snow, then quick melt. But each day since, it has kept snowing and I have taken a couple more shots as an update thinking it is as high as it will go. I am pretty sure that this is the most snow we have gotten at this house in the almost 20 years we have lived here. They said on the news that this is second only to the snow we had in 1968. Not only is it snow...there is ice. The first day we got snow, the second day there was freezing rain, so there is a layer of about 1/2 to 1 inch of ice, then on top of that, another layer of snow. My estimate from a rough measuring is 22". And guess what? I forgot to say that JESSI MADE IT HOME FOR CHRISTMAS! She got here last Tuesday night at midnight. We had a couple days of shopping and lunches out and meeting up with Grandma and Grandpa McCool and met up with Aunt Cyndi at the print shop to get her wedding invitations ordered. But then it has kept on snowing and snowing and now she has been housebound for THREE WHOLE DAYS now! She came a long way just to spend the whole time inside with ME! We are now in the 'what if' stage of plans for what to do about Christmas. John and Rachel and Emily and Joshua are still hoping to get up here on Christmas Eve, but there is a chance that it might not happen. We may have to hold her here a week or two longer and have a late Christmas when it all melts.

No bird bathing...

Nobody has made it to the front door.

The rose was still blooming when it all began...

I don't think the kids will be swinging for a while...

The trash man didn't make it out on Tuesday...and the mail and paper box got hit and knocked over by a van on Wed...I dug down and found them today...

No snow plows yet...would you drive up this? Or down?

John made it out to the wood pile today, and has a toasty fire going in the stove...hopefully we won't have to resort to that as our only source of heat if the power goes out.

The Canadian Geese took flight today...trouble is, they are headed north, not south...

It hasn't stopped snowing all day! Last night it was huge flakes that pile up fast, but today, it is colder and the flakes are smaller, but they have been non-stop, so it is piling up. It is only 20°.

The neighbor kids are enjoying the road since there is no traffic today.

This is my Christmas stocking. My Grandma Harman made one for all of us grandkids as each of us were born. It is made from flannel and she wrote my name on the cuff. Then she put two tiny bells on the edge. She said the bells were to alert us when they rang as Santa was filling them up. My two sisters each have one exactly like it, except she put the bells in different places. I don’t remember ever really believing in Santa, I probably did, but I do remember that every Christmas morning, the socks were full. We used to hang them on the mantel when we lived in the house that had a fireplace, but when we moved, we didn’t have a fireplace for Santa to come down, so we just left them by the tree. Our socks were always what we looked at first. We were busy emptying them while Mom and Dad were getting up and about, getting out the camera and all that, not really sure, since I was too busy looking at what was inside my stocking. It was always so much fun to discover what was inside. We got all kinds of little treasures. A ball and jacks, tiny games, little books, colors, water paints, jewelry, chocolate wrapped in foil to look like money, lots of little things. The toe always held a can of play dough or an orange. Isn’t it strange, how I can remember all those little sock fillers, but the ‘real’ presents I got don’t just come to mind (well, except for my Barbie dolls and all those clothes my Mom made for them). It kinda makes you evaluate the whole gift giving thing doesn’t it?

I woke up thinking it was Thursday. I had tons to do! While making my latte, I realized it was only Wednesday. There was NOTHING on the calendar for Wednesday. I had just been given an extra day! I sat down to admire my Christmas tree and count my blessings. The phone rang interrupting my prayers. I saw on the ID that it was the Red Cross. For a fleeting ½ second, I contemplated not answering, just let them leave a message. But I couldn't do it. I answered, sure enough, there was a fire. And it was not a close-by fire, it was almost an hour away. Reluctantly I said I’d go…but what about all those extra things I was going to do? Should I take time to wash my hair and put on some make-up? I was still in my pjs, so I got dressed, decided to just put on a stocking hat and packed my gear into the car and left. My ½ full latte getting cold as it waited by the tree. As usual, once I’m on the road, I’m in a whole new frame of mind and feeling guilty for the selfish hesitation to answer the call. Now I’m ready. My hair looks bad, no make-up…but one look at the soot covered woman adjusts all those vain thoughts. I’m no longer feeling bad about losing that ‘found’ extra day…these people just lost all their possessions, they got out with the clothes they were sleeping in, they no longer have a Christmas tree to sit beside and admire, the gifts they had under the tree are destroyed. Two little kids stand there with a stuffed Red Cross animal I had just handed them…and for the moment, it is their only toy, but they are pleased to have it. Another Red Cross volunteer and I assist them with a place to stay for a day or two, give them some assistance for food and a set of clothes until their insurance can take over. They are still shaken up, but feeling better when we drive off. I return to my warm home 3 hours later…there sits my cold latte, in a minute it is warmed and I am once again sitting admiring my tree and thanking God for all my blessings and thanking Him that I had been given that extra day to have been able to say YES to the phone call to go help.

MY ORNAMENTS

A Hallmark commercial came on while I was decorating the Christmas tree. It showed two little girls looking at their ornaments and remembering stories behind them. I thought at the time that it would be nice if my ornaments had a little story behind them, and then as I put them on the tree, I realized, THEY DO!

My most treasured ornament is the 'Humdinger'. It came from my Grandma Harman. Every year my Grandma would hang it at the top of her tree and when we went to visit she would lift me up to ring it, each time she would say " It's a HUMMMMM DINGER". Mom had it on her tree for years after and carried on the tradition of lifting my kids up to ring it, but they didn't do the HUMMMM anything like Grandma used to. Quite a few years back Mom passed it on to me and now each year my own grandkids get a chance to ring it. I don't know if they even know what it is called. I've told them, but they don't seem as excited about it as I remember being when I got to ring it.

Mom painted soldiers and little dolls out of clothes pins...with every detail, check out the buttons on the shoes! Every year Mom paints us some kind of place marker for the Christmas dinner table. Usually it is a tree ornament, so I have quite a collection of 'John and Vicki' ornaments. The oldest ornaments on my tree are from John's mom Cleo, they were on her tree when she was growing up. I'm not quite sure what they are supposed to be except a decoration. (bottom row, center)

I have a plastic white reindeer and a red elf. Kinda funny looking, but we always had them on the tree when I was little. One year, before the days when Mom had a real tree flocker, my Dad sprayed white 'snow' all over the tree when we were done decorating to give it the 'just snowed' look. My littlest sister, Cyndi, got so upset because he got snow on the faces of the elves and ran for a cloth to wash it off them. There is a cute little horse that my aunt made, kinda clever how you insert a candy cane in it.

I have an ornament from Dennis and Abby of the US Capitol from when they lived in Baltimore and one from my friends Ron and Ann to remember when they took me to visit the White House (we even got to see President Bush!) I have two tiny bells that are made into snowmen with Emily and Joshua's names on them. And then there is the GREEN M&M. One of the ornaments depicts the nativity scene, another a snowball. I really like snowmen, so I have plenty of snowmen on the tree.

I have a tiny motorcycle to mark that Little John loved them, a skier turned into a snowball with skis that really rolls around because Dennis was into skiing, and a little ballerina mouse because Jessi was my ballerina. There is a sand dollar that I found on the beach, my sister-in-law Terri and I would walk the beach while the guys were fishing on the jetty and one time we found buckets of sand dollars. Once we got them all home, we had no idea what to do with them, so we painted some of them to look like poinsettias. There are other ornaments I made...a hazelnut angel, a walnut manger for baby Jesus, a noodle angle and a mouse made from a thistle, a wreath I wove from wheat and a reindeer from clothes pins. The first year Johnjohn was born, I started making hand prints from dough. I made them every year from all three kids and painted the year on them. I stopped doing them when my whole tree was covered with hand prints and realized it didn't look so good after all. Eventually most of them have broken, some of them molded in storage and have been tossed out, but I still have the first year's hand print from each kid. The first year I was married, I made ornaments from egg shells that I had blown the eggs out of. We had a lot of scrambled eggs that first year. I painted them all up and was pretty proud of them. The last few years, they have remained in the egg carton. Somehow, their time has past, kinda like the tree full of hand prints and mice made from thistles.

IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME!

We went Christmas tree hunting this morning.

There are so many choices...this year I decided not to have a flocked one...look at all the choices in color.Once I decided between white or natural...then I had to decide which kind of tree I wanted...noble, grand, fir, spruce...nobles have plenty of spaces to hang the ornaments, but grands smell so nice...

I decided on a noble...because I have TONS of ornaments.....now it REALLY feels like Christmas.

Bazzel can't believe we actually brought a tree inside for him.This is where he has been since we put the tree up.