Winter Wonderland

Don't ask me why he's not wearing a coat...

The Last Leaf. On the Japanese Maple in our front yard, my favorite tree.

The havoc that a snow-plow can cause!

The mountain of snow in the front of our house.

My official measurement.

Yes, that's 12 inches.

Snowy Stairs

We have a family tradition of going to Mukilteo Beach on Christmas afternoon, after all the presents are opened and people are starting to want a change of scenery. We started doing it the first Christmas we moved to Washington, five years ago. We were living in Mukilteo at the time. Since we have no family around to go visit after opening presents, we thought, "Let's go to the beach."

We're from Idaho, I must remind you. It is a very novel thing to go to the beach. On CHRISTMAS!

So, the tradition started. It has been fun to see our pictures from the annual escapade. You can tell exactly what the weather was like every year. One year, we just wore light jackets. One was a downpour of rain. Last year was bitterly cold, so we were all bundled up and pink-cheeked.

Alas, the weather became an obvious factor this year, as well. No trip to the beach.

We have been assaulted with a severe snow-storm, as you locals know quite well. We currently have about a foot of snow around our house. The transportation department is seriously lacking in preparation for this kind of assault, so we have been quite house-bound. My van pretty much can't function. The snow has been so deep in our neighborhood I haven't wanted to risk getting stuck. The kids got out of school three days early. I missed three days of work. The entire area is at a stand-still.

We simply couldn't make it down to the beach, the roads are too treacherous.

So, this year we will be visiting Mukilteo Beach on New Years. Close enough, right?

The kids have been loving playing in the snow. They've been outside everyday, building snow furniture and forts, and shoveling mountains of it around our culdesac to create "paths" for their bikes. (Yeah, I bet our neighbors loved that!) Unfortunately, every time I get myself ready to get some pictures of them in their glory, it is starting to get dark and I think, "I'll just do it tomorrow."

Wouldn't you know it, today they didn't want anything to do with the snow!! I couldn't bribe them to go outside, even for a photo op! Eric, however, happily complied. So we played in the snow for about an hour. I explored all over the yard, seeing everything with new eyes, since everything looks different when it's covered by 12 inches of snow!

A snow plow actually made it into our culdesac this afternoon and left a mountain of snow in front of our driveway. So Eric spent some time shoveling a way through that. The kids have become very experienced shovelers-of-snow this past week as they spent hours working on their project. That is fun! But to shovel the driveway, what could we possibly be thinking?! That is work!

So, Eric did it himself. And the kids missed out on being part of the pictures.