Let it snow...

Wow, we have our first snow already. After snowing off and on most of the day yesterday we thought it wouldn't end up sticking at all as we had no accumulation. But when we got home from Nick's party last night we had a bit on the ground and it continued to snow all evening until we had a couple of inches. But it's already warmed up a bit and is starting to melt and we've had some rain and snow showers mixing together with some wind too. Could be an interesting day weather-wise. Pretty much the whole western part of the state is on flood watch because with the snow and rising temps and a big rainmaker storm on the way it's pretty likely our rivers will flood. We aren't near a river, thankfully.

Our side yard



Out in front of the house looking toward the road and the lake





And out back



Brrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!

Nick's 4th birthday

First of all, I can't believe Nick is four already. But it is great to be here to celebrate his birthday with him! The bad news is he was feeling funky all day long and ended the day by throwing up. Poor guy. But he had a pretty good time up to then! Darane' had set up the downstairs rec room like a carnival. There was a duck pond, ring toss, ball toss and bowling. As the guests played they won tickets that they could later use to "purchase" items in the carnival shops upstairs. There was a tattoo booth, a candy booth, lizards and a variety of novelties. The kids all had a blast!

The various carnival booths, before the majority of the guests arrived.









And the kids playing for tickets to spend








A special clown cake made for Nick by his great grandma Iva (Mema!)



Blowing out the candles



Opening the presents!

Yep, we are thankful

We have so much to be thankful for this year. Being back home in Washington, having a great house to live in and having a job! But we are most thankful that we are close to family and friends again. God is so good!

Here are some of the highlights of Thanksgiving with the kids:

The main attraction at dinner, the turkey!



Savannah's idea of preparing the turkey (from a class project):



Greg and the kids whiling away the time until dinner, while Darane' cooks!



Savannah sneaking a sample. She and Grandpa Ralph managed quality control while Grandpa Gene carved.



And last but not least, the gingerbread house. They construct one every year on the evening of Thanksgiving.

Okay, I start work December 3rd!!

After months of searching, applying and interviewing for what seemed like a zillion different jobs I begin a new one on December 3rd and I am one happy camper!

I think its going to be a great one too with interesting work and the folks I've met so far seem great. Really looking forward to working again. And it was pretty interesting in that this is a job that I came in second for several weeks ago. I was really disappointed because I had really wanted the job. Then it turns out one of the staff has been on maternity leave and decided she wanted to stay home with her new little one. When they called to see if I was still available I was thrilled to be able to tell them yes. This worked out so that it was good for her and good for me. I'm feeling really blessed!!

God is good and I am thankful!!

Blessed by friends

We have been blessed with some great additional furnishings for our house via our friends Art and MerrieLynn and Art's sister Ellen. Seems Ellen is downsizing and clearing out her house so Art and ML asked if there were still things we could use for the house. They then proceeded to bring us a dining table and chairs, a wonderful storage cabinet for our office and two great lamps for the living room!! Wonderful stuff and even delivery no less!! We are so thankful to have these nice additions to the house and the cabinet allowed us to empty our last moving bin and get it out to the garage. Awesome. Thanks guys!!

The storms of autumn

We've had a couple of pretty big wind and rain storms since we've been back in the northwest. One last month and one yesterday. Both were very powerful with wind gusts between 60 - 100 mph. Lots of downed trees, damaged roofs and cars and tens of thousands of folks without power. Not pretty, but pretty typical for fall in the great northwest.

All in all we've faired pretty well. We had a brief, nanoseconds really, power outage with the first storm and none at all yesterday so that made it nice for us even while many of those around us were without power for a time. All should be back on tonight thankfully.

We did have a whole weekend without heat though. Couple of weeks back our furnace up and quit and by the time we left a message for the landlords and they got back to us it was too late to get anyone to come out. Naturally, this happened on a Friday afternoon so the whole weekend we had no furnace. Not a problem in Mexico, neither of our houses there even had furnaces and they aren't needed in that climate. Needless to say, even with the landlords coming by with a little space heater it was one CHILLY weekend!! But bright and early Monday morning the repair guy came out and the culprit was a small chip on the motherboard of the furnace...it just up and died. The landlords were not thrilled because their five year warranty on the furnace expired in July so they had to pay for the repair. But were were happy and toasty in no time!! We are thankful it was something simple and that they had the parts on hand. It may not be winter here yet but man it can get cold in the house with no heat!!

Autumn in Washington

Grocery shopping the other day I noticed an advertisement in the store for Alaska Airlines. It was titled "The Seasons of Washington". Under that it said "Winter and August". Pretty true. This is a rainy, gray spot on the planet, but when the sun does come out, man, oh man! Is it ever a gorgeous place to be.

After weeks and weeks of pretty much non-stop clouds, wind and rain we've been blessed with about a week and a half of relatively dry, even sunny weather. Still chilly mind you, but lots and lots of sunbreaks. I'm thankful because I'm a girl who loves her sunshine and I've been missing it a lot. This coming week looks like it will hold a few more days with many chances for sunshine and I want to take advantage of every one of them.



Autumn colors here seem to be more vibrant than I remember too with lots more variety in the color of the leaves. Seems to me there used to be mostly gold and brown with a little red of the vine maples thrown in. Now there is a lot more brilliant yellow and orange in the mix and add a little sunshine to those gorgeous colors and it's really beautiful. For the first time in many years I'm actually enjoying Autumn. Who would have thought it?????