Let it snow, let it snow…

Growing up in Colorado, snow was just part of winter.  In Oregon, it’s a rarity and it’s like a panic sets in.  We started getting the lovely white stuff over the weekend.

That’s when plans started changing for everyone.  Sunday I had to cancel our family pictures.  The Colorado girl in me was saying “get out there and drive silly” but the mom in me is sitting there watching the news with people playing bumper cars with one another and thinking “don’t take your kids out in that.”  So, I didn’t drag the family off and instead sat bummed that we had to put off our pictures.  We’ve had them booked for a while now and have talked for almost a year about how we would get them done for the holiday season as part of our family presents.  Well, I’ve rescheduled that for this Saturday, the only day with possible sun shining but we’ll still have plenty of that lovely white stuff on the roads.

We did still make the drive into town, visiting the in-laws, getting our coffees and a few other random errands along the way.  As the snow kept coming Sunday, it was pretty obvious that schools were going to get cancelled come Monday.  Sure enough, I had an email from my work stating that campus was closed on Monday…YAY!  I called my daycare up Monday morning to see what her plans were for the kids, take them or not.  Take in mind, my daycare is in a home in our neighborhood just 2 blocks away really…up a hill, yes, but very close all the same!  See, with my daycare, I pay whether I send the kids or not unless it’s a day she cancels or schedules off.  So, my thought was, YAY a day with my husband to relax and get some stuff done without the kids around.  We drove in for a coffee with his parents and I got some presents wrapping done.  We had to make a dreaded Walmart run for more paper though.

It seems my terrible toddler Braysen likes to unwrap paper across the upstairs and see how many rooms he can drag it into and start jumping on it, followed by shredding it into tiny pieces.  Two rolls of paper were victims of Braysen over the weekend…two BRAND NEW rolls might I add.  He has yet to unwrap the presents under the tree if you can believe it!  I’m shocked myself that there are all still intact and wrapped nicely!  It’s the tree that seems to suffer the most casualties from both of the boys though.

So, Monday night rolls around and another email from work.  This time stating delayed opening so I make my way in for a 9am opening of the campus.  Roads were slick in residential of course but not horrible.  By the time I got out of work, the sun was shining and some roads were even melting .  The weather men, who are used to predicting various forms of rain (ranging from showers, to down pours, to heavy rain, to spitting…and a wide array of colorful terms they use for the rain we get here…to me it’s just rain or rain but not to the weather people) predicting another “arctic storm” coming through starting Wednesday  morning.

Eagerly awaiting an email from my work regarding campus closure or delay resulted this time in “campus opened as normal.”  I get the boys off to daycare and she looks at me then says “what are you doing heather?”  I proceed to tell her I’m off to work, that campus is open (we have finals starting today if that helps explain why!) and away I go.  Roads are yucky, it’s starting to snow heavier but I’m here.  We’ll see what it’s like as I drive home today…slowly, I’m sure!

The weather people are calling for a storm to roll in today and hit us the rest of the week.  Come Saturday we are supposed to see the sun again.  Our appt. is at 1:30 so hopefully by then we aren’t dreading the drive as much and can get this whole picture fiasco done with!  (or Christmas presents will definitely be more delayed than they are!!).

Saturday night we have a holiday party at our neighbors and I need to pick up a white elephant exchange present but that’s easy enough to do.  Patrick already bought his for it.  (there is a first for everything right? jk!)

~~~~ to think I was going to write about something else entirely and just briefly talk about the weather…it seems to have taken over this post

No, i’m not talking about a woman’s chest! you pervs! I’m talking about Christmas tress. The real vs. fake tree debate is one that goes on every year in my house. That could be because Patrick threw out a brand new 8ft. prelit tree on accident during the great move to Oregon. I’ve really never let him live that down to be honest and someday he will replace it BUT I quickly learned that here in Oregon, a lot of people really get into the real tree thing. It could be because of the little fact that Oregon is one of the nations largest distributors for Christmas Trees and we have farms everywhere to go pick your own. Some say walking around in the cold and mud looking for that “perfect” tree is the starting off point to the Christmas holiday decorating.
Personally, I’d take my prelit fake tree and some nice smelling candles to get me that tree smell but we have decided that while the kids are young to do some of this tromping through the woods, pick your own madness.

Luckily for us this year, the weather was about as perfect as winter Oregon tree picking weather can be! Two years ago we had little 7 1/2 month old Braysen out on a side of a mountain (well, hill imo but they call them mountains here sometimes…silly Oregonians!) with rain coming down sideways and just overall freezing to find “the” tree. This time, I even had to strip off my jacket because I was…dare I say hot? The views were stunning and it was a lot of fun. We could see Rainier, Mt. Hood, St. Helens and Jefferson all from the “West Christmas Tree Farm”. This is the same place Patrick went to as a kid so it’s pretty cool that we are taking our kids there now too.

Overall, it was a good day and a fun tradition I think to keep up with the kids but I still hate going out in the pouring rain to do it when I could be sitting at home just putting up a no-fuss fake prelit!

A few pics of our day out hunting for the perfect tree…(as usual, all images can be enlarged by clicking!)

Foggy valley below

Price list with different types of trees

Hank measuring up a tree…too tall!

“the” tree - almost 8 ft. beautiful Noble Fir

Preparing to chop it down ~ all the boys were checking it out

Down goes the tree

Now to carry it to the road to get picked up by the 4 wheelers..what would we do without our trusty men?

Four-wheeler to the rescue…

Lots more pics can be seen at my flickr by clicking the side bar flickr link.

and a million and 1 things to do in those 22 days….

Sometimes I think time flies faster when you have kids.  It’s like one minute you are pregnant and the next they are running around getting into everything.   Some days you feel young and lively with lots of energy, other days you don’t know how you get out of bed!

During the holiday season, everything moves at a whirlwind pace though.  There is just this air of hustle and bustle around you, even if you yourself are moving at a snail pace.  I looked at the calendar today and went into a state of panic for a moment.   I immediately started making my “list” of things to do in the next few weeks before Christmas is actually here.  I swear my calendar/planner looks like sticking notes threw up all over it.  I’ve got them all over it with various lists from Christmas presents, my “to-do” lists, appointments that I have, appointments to make and grocery items I need.  Add on top random little websites I must remember, recipe cards various people have given me and it’s a wonder how I keep things straight sometimes.  My “organization” is clearly disorganized!

In the midst of the holiday season we are trying to squeeze in a family picture session as part of our presents to family.  We haven’t done the whole family professional thing yet with all 4 of us.  I justify it sometimes to others with the fact that we take a million pictures.  I’m just not one of those mom’s that feels the need to take the kids into the studios for pictures of them every month or every 2 months even..heck not even every 6 months.  I think most would be surprised how many pictures I take.  I use my camera probably daily with the kids, recording movies and taking pictures.  But for the holidays and at the request of some family members we are going to get them done.  December 14th is picture day.  We’ll have an hour with the photographer, she’ll take anywhere from 100-250 pics and I also get the cd with reprint rights.  I wish we would have done them sooner, say in the fall and done outside shots but I’m excited about these.  I should have enough time to get them done by the printer and mailed off for the holidays, if I don’t procrastinate! hehe

With doing the whole family portrait thing there’s always the issue of, what to wear.  On my last outlet shopping trip I found a top that could be suitable for me to wear .  While checking out the newly renovated LARGE Children’s Place Outlet I found some cute polo type shirts that happened to have the same color in them as my top.  I even asked the sales lady to check for a size for me in the back because they were perfect!  So, next is getting Patrick a new shirt to go with but luckily for him, that should be easier then the boys and I!  I do have a change of outfits for the boys that I’d like to get pics of them with the “big brother” and “little brother” shirts.  We’ll see how they cooperate for an outfit change though!

Another issue of the whole portrait experience are the haircuts.  I got Braysen finally in a week 2 weeks ago and even Merrick got a little trim job.  Yes, I already had to cut my little man’s hair! *cries*  Braysen’s hair was recovering from a horrible cut.  We were letting it grow out a bit to see if it could get to a length where we could “fix” it  a bit.  I had our neighbor down the street, who owns a salon nearby, schedule us in.  She did a wonderful job with him and boy did she have patience with a terrible toddler that didn’t want anything to do with the haircut!!  She trimmed up Merrick’s front a bit so it didn’t hang into his eyes anymore but that’s all she touched.  We like his little rocker/skater/emo or whatever baby look he has!    Lastly, I got myself into her yesterday afternoon for mine.  She’s done my hair a few times and does my highlights.  Normally at Christmas I redo my highlights but with the $ crunch, we are saving that money (for pictures as Patrick tells me).  I went in there with the dilemma of “do I cut it off or do I keep letting it go longer.”  I came home with it chopped off just about my shoulders from ½ way down my back.  I love how easy it is to do and it’s cute, Patrick approves…but there’s of course a part of me wondering if I should have left it longer for the pictures.  Oh well, what’s done is done and no I don’t cry over haircuts!  My hair grows so fast that I regularly do this whole “let it grow out, chop it off” routine.

So now the photographer is scheduled, the outfits are picked out and the haircuts are done.  Hopefully we are all healthy, happy and cooperative come that Sunday morning.

Oh what fun the holiday season brings…..a family portrait session.

(I’m probably going to spam my blog a few posts here over the next few days to play catch up!  Plus, I feel the need to write since I’ve been so lacking.)