Our Winter Goings On

We've had a fairly eventful Winter.  By eventful, for me, I mean stressful.  The kids have had a great time.  While I've been rushing around trying to get all the paper work in to finalize the adoption process and begin the long wait, I've also been rushing the kids to and from everywhere you could possibly imagine (including Maple Valley and I hate Maple Valley, sorry to all my MV friends).  Older kids=mom changes from caregiver to chauffeur...not a fan, NOT a fan.  Martin has also been busier at work (if possible) than I've ever seen him.  He's really trying to climb that managerial ladder!

Alex finished Drivers Ed. right before Christmas break which is a huge blessing because that was getting severely old.  He's a good driver, cautious, courteous, watchful..... FAST.   He is his Dad's son.  He aced his written test and now we just have to wait until a little past his birthday until he can go get legal.  Can I just tell you how nice it will be to have someone else drive to the store or drop off his siblings somewhere?

We had an ice storm which rendered the city and surrounding areas without power for anywhere from 2 to 10 days.  It reminds me of the week we were out of power in 2007, but I digress.  We've never had ice like this.  The roads were seriously scary, not just, "Ha-ha, Seattle drivers are so weird about driving in the snow," (although there is always an element of that), but more like, "Holy  #@*%  Babe, you seriously can't drive down the hill this fast!"  But we had our trusty all-wheel drive and were able to go to McDonald's in Eastgate to have a break and power up our electronic devices.  Our kids liked being out of power after the initial shock wore off.  Alex made some sort of mention that he would rather die than live without his iPod, tablet, Xbox, TV and computer.  He denies it now, but anyone who knows Alex knows I'm not kidding.

Side note:  I never do this, but the day before the blackout I cooked for 4 hours straight making 7 meals for the fam because I've been teaching so much I haven't had a minute to make dinners and I was getting nervous about all the McDonald's being consumed.  Yeah, well, then the power went out and I was afraid my food was all going to waste in the freezer, so Alex made me a freezer out in the snow!

Frozen grass growing out of our retaining wall

A little tree with each branch encased in ice

The morning after the ice snow I trekked outside to make sure we didn't have any loose branches attempting to fall on the house.  I was hearing all kinds of cracking and falling items in the woods in front of our house.  There are some pretty big evergreens out there.  I couldn't believe that there was a thick layer of snow (thick for Seattle that is),  a 1 inch slab of ice and then a skiff of snow on top.  Whenever I walked, it would crunch down and break into large pieces of ice.

Crystal reading Harrry Potter to Isaac in our dark house

Alex and Adam making me a freezer

We layed low for the next day, had the missionaries over because they were cold and starving and hung out.  Our great friends, the Zurligen's invited us to escape with them to Lake Chelan, where their parents had a time share with power.  How could we turn that down?  We decided to wait until the snow had pretty much stopped to head up the pass, and were pleasantly surprised to see the going was pretty easy.

Lake Chelan was beautiful (first timer here) and we loved spending time with our dear friends and just hanging out.  We got to swim, sled, snowmobile and watch movies and talk.  It was so fun, and something the kids will remember for a long time.  Something I will remember is renting snowmobiles and going for a short ride.  It reminded me of growing up.  However, two of our machines got stuck and these were 800 pound machines, so they were not easy to get "un-stuck."  It took everyone hefting and Adam's know-how in getting them out.  Then we lost Martin who incidentally had my baby on back of his snowmobile.  Me and Alex, and Crystal and Adam didn't know what to do because our time was up and we needed to get back or be charged an exorbitant late fee.  So we decided Alex and I would go back to the beginning, let the renter dude know what was going on and Crystal and Adam would see if they could find Martin.  Long story short, Martin had taken a wrong turn and got stuck and had to move his machine 180 degrees (with Isaac's help) to head back in the other direction.  In these huge snowmobiles there is no "off-trailing."  So, in the end we paid for an extra hour but we had a good story to tell and my boys were safe.

My bestie

My other bestie

Isaac gearing up

After we got home and things settled down we have been still as busy as ever.  Martin is working late a lot and I'm teaching a lot, trying to get hours in to practice for my AEA (Aquatic Exercise Association) certification exam.  I'm really stressed but I'm reading and learning a lot and feel in two weeks that test will be a breeze (fingers crossed).