February- A Song of Ice and More Ice

 Ok, so the title is a bit of an inside joke regarding the Game of Thrones series... one of the books in the series is called A Song of Ice and Fire but... here in February, there was only ice on top of ice. 

We started out nice and cozy.. such high hopes for the month of February!! Cubbie was very interested in giving me kisses one night. He is such a love of a pup. Either that or I smelled like pepperoni. :-)

See? Such a love.. he just melts on to his people. Owen.. he is still a bit unsure of. The kid likes to pack him around too much I think. But Austin he likes and will snuggle up on. 

We had the Smiths' over for Super Bowl. They were in our "quarentine bubble" so we got to see them occasionaly throughout the pandemic craziness. The kids were so cute sitting around the table having their own little discussion about things while eating dinner. I can't remember what they were talking about, but I'm sure it funny. 

A package arrived from Springfield full of little love goodies to help celebrate Valentines Day! They love getting mail and packages. I hope they will grow up appreciating the little things still. It doesn't matter what the surprise is.. it's fun to get surprised! Bonus points when the surprises are stuffies and chocolate though!

The boys tried out their kids' cook book they got for Christmas! They made the peanut butter energy balls and were so proud of themselves! 

The Melter... I worked from home on Friday when it started to get really icy and Cubbie didn't really want to leave my lap. My skills of typing around a pup laying on me have grown exponentially in the last few months. 

My own Sparky. :-) (if you've seen the National Lampoon movies, you get the reference). Neal got this jersey for Christmas because 1) he thought it was hilarious and 2) its a Chicago hockey team and you know Neal is a Chicago fan. He braved the impending ice to drive down to Salem on Friday 2/12 to get his 2nd Covid shot. He didn't want to skip his appointment so it was a stressful few hours as he drove slowly down there and slowly home. He was one of the first people I know to be fully vaccinated!! Thanks for being awesome, Neal!

And then the ice came... Saturday 2/13 we woke up to THICK ice all over everything. Our Coleman pop-up we were using as a temporary patio cover couldn't hack it. 

The ice was beautiful for sure, and the woods looked pretty magical. I tried walking out in our backyard and had to take a video because it was CREAKING with every step. The ice was at least 2-3 inches thick over a layer of snow dusting. I had never really seen anything like it before. 

The icicles... were... intense. And do you see the windows behind Owen? Everything had a sheet of ice over it. 

I was worried about Neal and how he would be feeling after vaccine #2, but he said he felt fine and was out using his pole saw to get branches off a tree. Sadly the cute little tree right on the other side of our fence fell in the night. It was part of a nice view of the woods from our bedroom and the squirrels loved to run around on it. I was really sad to see it fall over. Plus it took out a section of our fence. 

We managed just a few minutes outside because it was beyond cold, and it was impossible to walk because of how thick the ice was everywhere. The icicles were entertaining though. 

Cubbie and I sat upstairs in our bedroom and watching the woods creak and break. It sounded like gun shots out in the woods. Branches were popping and breaking every few minutes. Some big, some small... it was sad and definitely scary. There were a few pretty big trees close to our house. Poor Neal didn't sleep Saturday night at all because he was stressed out about the branches breaking. 

And then... around 3:30pm on Sunday 2/14 the power went out. We knew it was coming. Pretty much everyone we knew in Oregon City was already without power by the time ours went out. We waited an hour or two... just to see if it was a fluke and it would come back on. It didn't. So it was time to start Operation Eat The Things In the Fridge Because We Don't Know When the Power Will Be Back. Sandwiches loaded up with lunch meat was dinner. Austin is a total mood. That's exactly how I felt too. 

Man of the year (always....) making food by lantern light. Happy Valentines Day to us! In true recent fashion is was weird and a little disasterous and not at all what we thought it would be. Not that we had grand plans, but a dinner other than sandwiches was on the menu. We still had our Sweetheart Floats.. made a bit bigger than we usually would have made them since we knew we had to eat up the ice cream before it melted.

And then we tried to have some "fun" and play cards as a family by lantern and candle light and we had just settled in... when... CRASH. Holy mother of... what was that???? Oh, that was a tree. A very very big tree that was right on the other side of the hedge right by our house that finally couldn't handle the weight of 3 inches of ice coating every branch. And DOWN. IT. WENT. Right on to our front porch... very narrowly missing a few windows. 

Wonderful. Perfect. Just want we needed. Sigh. We called it a night after that and just headed to bed.

 

We all went to my office on Moday (the roads had cleared up some) to get internet and charge phones and iPads and such. On Tuesday my Dad and Ron came up to help Neal get the tree cleared from our front yard. Sadly we learned the tree was over 100 years old. I hate to see an old beautiful tree like that meeting it's end because of weird weather caused by global climate change. This tree has seen so much.. and it couldn't withstand humans and the change we're impacting on the world. :-(

Well, there goes the tree. We saved some of the rounds to maybe do something with but unfortunately they didn't last well so we don't have any momentos from our big lovely tree. Other than this very cute picture. 

Once Oregon thawed out, we held our annual February birthdays dinner with the cool people. :-) You know the ones that were born in February! I love the bottom picture, it captures the moment Aunti Lori had a sneaky little boy shoot her in the butt with a Nerf dart!

Cubbie. The Liquid Dog. He can contort into any position, especially if he's cuddling one of his favorites. 

And this is his very good boy look of "See, I am being good and laying next to little brother who I'm not sure about but I'm kinda comfy and I know he really loves me" :-) 

File this under "this is what our life looks like 90% of the time" Couch. Blanket. Dog. Cute kids. 

Owen got a wild hair one night and decided to put on ALL his shorts at the same time. He thought he was hilarious.. and he was. He couldn't walk around very well and then he started to do lunges and squats which just made everything that much funnier. 

And then it happened. February 27th 2021 came and I turned 40. Thankfully my awesome handsome man planned a trip to the beach! My Mom came up to stay with the boys and we got to escape for two nights. The weather was lovely!

We stayed at the Sylvia Beach Hotel which is all book-themed. We stayed there for our 5-year anniversary and loved it so Neal got us a room there again. This time we were in the Herman Melville room, so it was all whale themed and had awesome comfy chairs next to a table that was perfect for card games! The hotel always lists out the day's information (tides, etc) and Neal kept saying how cool the board was all day and that I should take a picture of it. 

On our way home from the coast, we stopped at a winery to "wine taste a bit" and low and behold.. a table for several people was set up. True Neal fashion.. he orchestrated a little day with my friends! I was surprised and so hubled with all the sweet cards and words from some of the people I love the most. It was a really nice way to start my 40th year!

All The Things We Do- January 2021

 Must. Keep. Plugging. Away. 

I really like having this blog to look back at, I really do... but sometimes it feels like such a chore to keep up with it and write about what we've been up to. I always tell myself "I'm going to make time to do this, and I'm going to blog once a month and not get behind..." yet here I am, in mid-July... writing about January. 

Sigh. Such as life I guess. 

My year started off with some beauty!!!! 

The boys decided they wanted to play "salon" (not sure how they came up with that) but it was super cute. They dressed in all black/hipster-type outfits, and put a sign up for me to see when I got home that directed me upstairs. They put pounds of lotion on my face, brushed my hair, and then did my makeup!

 

Along with a beauty salon, our house was home to Ghostbusters Central Office as well. I'm going to be sad when the imagination part of childhood is over. As much as it slightly drives Neal and I crazy (the house gets WRECKED and stuff ends up all OVER the place) in retrospect, it's really cute. They decided to put up signs on our office for their Ghost-busting services. $30 seems like a good deal.... $300 might be a bit steep. LOL.

Wintertime is definitely "Imagination Time"... the costumes get a lot of use. Austin has such a strong desire to protect. He's always dressing up as a guard of some kind. Protecting me, or the dogs, or his stuffies that he's set up. This was his soldier outfit one night and it looked a bit like a SWAT uniform or something. 

Call me crazy but I love winter. I really do. Life is slower paced (even with the holidays in there)... the fire is always going, the pups are sleepy and snuggly, and we hang out at home a lot as a family. It's kind of (in a way) my favorite. 

Winter also makes me want to bake all the time... maybe another reason why I like winter so much. Baking is so cozy, and the boys love helping. I got a wild hair one day to make a chocolate cake completely from scratch! It turned out surprisingly awesome.. but was a lot of work. Which means Austin promptly asked for one for his birthday. Of course. 

We have an owl that lives in our woods! Some nights he (or she) is very vocal so I went and got Austin out of bed to come listen to it. 

I taught the boys how to play Solitaire... they don't really "get" it completely, but they try. Owen really got into and actually did fairly well with it! Winter means a lot of card games on our cozy nights. 

Aunti Lori got the boys a ping pong set for Christmas so the island became a ping pong table! I'll give you three guesses as to where the majority of of the balls went... 1) all over the place 2) all over the kitchen 3) everywhere but the ping pong area. 

Owen made a To Do list for us on a Sunday. He decided what we were going to do, I wrote it down, and he checked them off! He made a pretty compelling list and it was a really awesome Sunday. He was most excited to wrap presents for Austin's birthday. 

Whoever weilds a blanket... wields the puppy charm. :-) Or in other words "if you lay down with a blanket.. they will come" 

When you are an adult.. you get really excited about lame things. Like InstaPots and Air Fryers!!! Thanks to a Government stimulus check.. we decided to get a new toy! Look at this bad boy!

The boys school had a virtual Book Character day. Austin dressed up as Calvin because of his recent obsession with Calvin & Hobbes comics, and Owen at the last minute decide to be the Orange Crayon from The Day The Crayons Quit and they both were so dang cute!!! Neal did such a good job helping them get their costumes together!

In the blink of an eye... 9 years went by and this little babe turned into a big kid. I was good on my promise and made another from-scratch chocolate cake (that is totally lopsided) and we celebrated with just family. 

He got a Harry Potter chess set and we spent a lot of the afternoon playing. Austin is good too... he hadn't played chess in awhile but still remembered all the different ways the pieces can move, and different strategies to do with them. Smarty pants. 

We decideed to get Austin his own catcher's gear for his birthday, since that was one position in baseball he really enjoys playing. If you can't tell by the big jump-hug he gave Daddy... he was JUSSTTTTT a little bit happy about it!

It wouldn't be January without a little bit of snow! We got our usual dusting that lasted no more than an afternoon. Little did we know that it was just a precursor for what was to come, and this would be the last picture of our beautiful woods. 

Our teachers are heroes!!!! Oregon opened up Covid vacinnations for teachers in early January and Neal was one of the first to get his jab! He didn't have any side effects either, and was happy to get on the road to vacinnated! (Love Owen's little face right here too... he's just such a happy kid)

Nothing is more fun than a big box. Especially a big box that turns into a bed. 

Night night little ones! Sleep tight. Don't let the box bugs bite!

The best part of Mom baking a lot in the Winter is getting to lick the spoon. Especially when you get to sneak up on the counter in your undies and lick the spoon in (what you think) is incognito. 

The boys put a stop-motion app on Neal's old phone and got really into making a stop-motion video with their Legos. They spent DAYS on this, and the final product turned out really good and funny. They even added in sound effects. Future filmmakers??

And this sums up my life. A glass of wine to relax... amongst all the Legos and little bits of childhood. 

Well, that was January!!!