Be mine, Valentine

Odin made his own valentines again this year. This project is one my sister found last year. It was pretty easy to do and a big hit at school.

We started with this picture.

Odin wrote on it with a sharpie, then we had 40 printed.

Cut two small slits for the lollipop, and personalize with a paint marker.

The Valentines used up most of my crafty... But I did make and frost some cookies.

Ski Buddies

It is amazing to me that for the past few days it has been in the 50's. Such a contrast from two weeks ago here. Maybe it is time to read the writing on the wall and stop debating who or what is causing our planet to heat us and just start addressing how to cool it back down.

Sunrise, Mt. Rainer

 We took advantage of the Sunshine and went skiing with friends over the weekend. We all had a blast. It was spring skiing in February! That never happened in Minnesota. We had a group of 5 adults and three kiddos. And for a while another dad and son joined us. It was a lovely day, and we all skied hard. The kids of course had limitless energy even after the lifts closed.

 

 

 

Snow week, details.

We did pretty well logistics wise surviving an unexpected week with no power.
For cooking we used a camp stove. At first I used it outside, but after ski camping in the RV I brought it in the house. It didn't seem much different than the RV stove.

  We entertained ourselves by working outside, shoveling, clearing channels for water to flow to storm drains and talking with neighbors. Inside we had ipod speakers for music.

For lighting we used headlamps and candles. Heat was a gas stove.

 

 

 We no longer think it is excessive to have three coolers, as we used all of them. The big one was our fridge and we added ice a few times. Our freezer was emptied on day two of no power and buried in a snow pile. When we opened it up the other night and it was great. There was snow frozen on the outside, a very good sign.  The meat was still 100% frozen, a few things had thawed a bit but nothing was ruined.

Our raft cooler held the entire contents of the fridge.

The 'freezer' when we left to go skiing.

The 'freezer' a few hours before we opened it up.

Last week in Pictures

It started as snow.

Then turned to freezing rain.

Beautiful at first.

 

 

But destructive.

We lost power, so we went skiing.

In the RV.

It snowed a ton there too. (Johno helping O down a very windy section).

Neighbor's basketball hoop.

Snow week

Our last week has been an interesting adventure. Odin had snow days on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  The weather here was pretty wild. We had snow, more snow (the total was 11"), then freezing rain, then just rain. The freezing rain made us loose power on Thursday. It finally came back on tonight. A full week later.  John went to work as usual just had more fun on the commute! Most main roads were plowed on Wednesday morning, residential roads were another story.   On Friday his office finally lost power and closed around lunch time.


We made the best of it. After not having power for 24 hours I wanted a change of pace, and since it was snowing. . .  We packed up the RV on Friday and went skiing. The snow was fantastic, family powder day x2! We came home hopeful for power. Driving to our street we noticed many other people with lights on, but not ours. . .  Each day we were more and more hopeful.

Finally today a neighbor went down to the local power company office and talked to a person. He gave me her number, so I called too. So did two other neighbors. Ta-da! Power was on just before dinner time tonight.

Good Morning

Our neighbor measured this morning and we had 9" on the ground, but it hasn't stopped snowing. John went to work just for the sport of getting there. Odin has a snow day for the 2nd day in a row. The forecast calls for possibly another 6" during the day.

Snow Day!

Here is a headline from our newspaper:

Let it snow! Olympia could get 14 inches

Forecast: Expect 1-3 inches today, then 6-14 inches Wednesday before rain washes it away over several days

This morning I got the call that every child hopes for, "school is cancelled".  It has been snowing since Saturday and is hovering right around the freezing mark. So it gets melty and turns to slush, then freezes overnight. Makes for tricky driving in a town that is not set up to handle snowfall and does not have a team of dedicated plows and drivers.
John had some things that needed to be done today at work and went in. He said his office was a ghost town.
We might go searching for a sledding hill later. It is supposed to be warmer and rain on Thursday.

he's half in the orange sled.

 

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2012/01/17/1951872/let-it-snow-olympia-could-get.html#storylink=omni_popular#storylink=cpy