I can't believe how fast the time until their wedding is going to go by. When I think about how fast the 4 months that we have been here has gone by and it's really only a little over 3 months until they get married on April 3, 2009.
WOW!
Here it is the family portrait. I love it when we can all be together. We planned to take this picture right after Christmas because Chris would be here. I think that they turned out great!
Here are all of the kids together. I love the green and pink together. I just think that these pictures turned out great.
Here are all of the guys together. I think that they all look great together, I especially like the handsome guy in the middle.
Here are the girls together. Me and the Heathers'. I feel so lucky to be a part of this family. I am surrounded by truly exceptional people and we even have fun together.
Here are the scrapbook pages that I have
been working on for the past few days. I didn't want to post until they were all done.
Bob got me some digital scrapbooking downloads for my software, so I have just been in heaven and having so much fun putting these pages together.
We really had a very merry Christmas. It felt very different for me because I wasn't able to see my side of the family, but happily I made it though my first Christmas away.
This is the street that I grew up on. The first mailbox is my parents box and I can't remember there ever being this much snow there. People would get snow all around us and I always thought of our little part of Milwaukie as "the banana belt" because we never got that much snow.
You can't even see the curb and street. It looks like everything is one great big white blanket.
No wonder my packages have not been delivered. Hopefully they will get there by the New Year. This will be a Christmas to remember!
Here is Heather shoveling the snow for the second time today. We have had to pile it up three feet high to the side of the driveway. I hope that it doesn't kill the plants that are buried underneath it. I think that there is at least two feet piles up all around the perimeter from our shoveling it from the driveway or sidewalk.
Our neighbor said that it hasn't snowed like this here in about three years. 
I'm glad that we are done going places for the day and can just stay inside and drink hot chocolate and eat peppermint ice cream.
Well it's been quite a day today. When Bob left for work he said that a 
storm was coming in this afternoon so if I needed to run errands I should go early. I got up at 8:30 and it had already started snowing. I thought "Oh no!" I really needed to finish up my shopping so I knew that I couldn't let a little snow hold me back. This snow was different today, mostly we have had these little tiny snow flakes that have been pretty think but it hasn't been that bad. Today they were fat wet snowflakes. I was determined to go, but I didn't want to go out there by myself, so I woke up Heather and she came out with me. We brushed off the van and we were off. We managed to make it around to all of the places we needed to go.
When we got back to our little street the snow was a foot deep on the street and I got stuck trying to park my van by our curb. Luckily our neighbors the Balsers were out and they came over to help push us out. Mrs Balser is Heather's adviser in young womens and she suggested that I clear a spot to park in and then clear a pathe for me to drive into it from the center of the road where it was packed down and driven on. We did this and Heather and everyone pushed and I was able to drive into the spot...well kind of, I was three feet from the curb 
After we unloaded the van Heather and I shoveled the drive way and sidewalk, this is very hard and tiring work. We had to borrow another shovel so that we could both work on it together. Then I had to clear around the van and make a spot for Bob's parents to park their van. So we shoveled snow from the street to our cleared sidewalk and then we cleared the sidewalk again.
The snow is so high that you can't even see the sheep anymore. Baby Jesus is almost entirely covered. One of our candy canes became a casualty... Bob thinks 
that he tossed a chuck of ice at it too hard.
Heather stood in the back yard to show how high the snow is there. You can also see it on the platform to the slide (that was empty of snow when I went to bed last night)
Hey everybody, Heather got one of her Christmas presents early. Grandma Walker paid for Heather to get a haircut and perm. I think that she looks very cute. This is an easy gel it up or mousse it up hair style. You can tell by her smile that she is really lovin' it.
She wanted to have it done before we have our family pictures taken the day after Christmas. All of her friends at church really liked it.
News of a different kind, our son Chris went to the Portland airport even though they closed it because of the weather (we weren't sure he'd be able to fly out as scheduled today), we just got awesome news, he's getting on a plane right now to fly out here. Hooray, Chris will make it here for Christmas!
Today we were rescued from our home bound state by Heather Wallace (Brian's fiance). They have a truck with 4 wheel drive so she was able to pick us up so we could go to the mall. We are going to have our family picture taken the day after Christmas so we needed to get both of the Heathers something pink to wear. We found these cute pink cable knit sweaters and bright pink cami's to go under them. I found a pink top that matches their cami's to go under my cable knit brown sweater.
She also measured the snow in our front yard. We have 5 inches so far with more expected tonight. We'll keep you posted on our added accumulation.
This is a picture that Heather took of me watching her take pictures. She thinks that she is pretty smart, she is a teenager after all.
This picture was taken last night right after the lights came on outside. Heather wanted to show how the snow is getting so close to the tops of the white twinkle lights. (Tonight they are almost totally covered.)
Here you can see that the spotlights are barely visible. (Tonight they were totally covered)
I think that catches things up with what Heather wanted me to post on the blog. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings.
Its still snowing! One of the sheep has lost its head in the snow. The drifts are getting as high as Baby Jesus' head. It doesn't appear to be wanting to stop at all today.
The snow is creeping up the length of the candy canes and its almost covered the lighted trim along the front of the yard. The spotlights that shine on the nativity are almost entirely covered.
Bob's dad just came to pick up the packages, I asked if it was alright for me to drive them down there, he didn't look like he could read my handwriting for the addresses very well, but he said that it is still too bad for me to try. I told him to please call if there were any questions about my sketchy writing.
Here are my packages all ready to go. I worked so hard yesterday (my day off) to get them ready but I ran out of time to get them to UPS. You see Bob had purchased tickets to see Glenn Becks The Christmas Sweater and I needed to go to that at 5pm. I finished wrapping the last box at 4:50 and had only enough time to change my shirt before leaving to the theater.
No problem I thought I will do it in the morning. I knew that a storm was coming, in fact two storms were coming one from the south and one from the north, but I thought that they would hold off till after noon. Boy was I wrong.
And since I thought that I was going to take the packages last night I left the van on the driveway after running errands. I had this glimmer of a thought when I got home from the show that I should move the van to the carport. Nahh I thought, it's not going to snow until the afternoon. You can see how much it isn't snowing.
I have been advised by Bobs dad that I shouldn't try to drive in it, there are a bunch of people who are slipping and sliding all over the place out there. He says that he will take the packages for me, I said but I need to go to Macey's and get a few things. He said that he will come back to get me and take me when he takes Bob's mom.
Today was my baking day and Ashton was being such a big helper. I couldn't convince him that it would be more fun to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or anything.
He has his own silverware putting away style. He had to be careful to not hit his head on the drawer.
I had to do a little adjusting in the drawer after he was done. He started out matching forks to forks and spoons to spoons, then he got in a hurry to wash off the counter and ended up just putting them anywhere.
Little arms sometimes have a hard time reaching...
So he just crawled on the counter to reach.
He wanted to be sure that there was room in the cookie jar for any cookies that we baked.
He did a very nice job setting out the cooling racks for the cookies.
Here he is making faces in the shiny mixing bowl, he is also licking the edge of the counter. I had to ask him to stop doing that.
I don't have any pictures of the end results. I was trying to make a fancy cookie from a Martha Stewart magazine. I don't know why I try, I'm sure that my eggs were not room temp and I probably whipped the eggs too long (I whipped them for as long as the recipe said to). Needless to say my end result did not look like the magazine and I will probably not be sending them out to anyone. I have two more cookies from that magazine that I want to try, I'll let you know how it goes.
This is my new friend snow shovel. I am not very happy with our new relationship as it involves sweating in the snow in a coat and hat with gloves that slide on the handle. Bob told me that I would need to take a turn shoveling and I am okay with that...really. He didn't tell me the game plan for where to put the snow...it has to go somewhere and I didn't think that shoving to the end of the driveway would be a very good idea.
To me this is an exercise in futility. I wanted to wait until the snow finished falling before going out to attempt to clear it away. Bobs mom said that the longer I waited the heavier the snow would be to move. She also said that it would be hard to get it off after people walked on it.
If it's hard to get it off after a human person of average size walks on it...how hard is it after say something larger like a mini-van drives in it?
You can still see the tire tracks and the footprints down the drive. I was still in a quandary on where to put the snow, thank heavens for neighbors...a couple of them came out to shovel their driveways and I was able to copy a few of their techniques. I ended up throwing a lot of it in the yard and over on the small shrubs and ground cover to the side.
I am making a note for next year that having Christmas lights on the border of the yard looks really good but it adds extra aggravation when you have to toss the heavy shovel full of snow over them.
Thankfully my brother in law Ben came over to drop Ashton off and he finished off the bottom of the driveway and the sidewalk. After an hour I was getting pretty tired of shoveling.
I am also glad that I took Bobs dads advice and moved the minivan to the carport while Bob is out of town. Now if I need to go somewhere I will not have to clear snow off of the windows.
The last time I looked the sun was out and sparkling on the snow. Very pretty. I also saw something that I hadn't seen in Vancouver...it was a snow plow and it came down our street with sand. We don't even live on a busy street.
Last night when we went to bed it wasn't snowing and the only snow on the ground was the left overs from Sunday. I woke up at 5:30 to get a drink of water and when I looked out the window what did I see? You guessed it there was snow covering the ground. I managed to go back to sleep and at 6:45 Heather took this picture and woke me up to come and see the snow. It was falling pretty hard. I think that I watched mesmerized for about 10 minutes then I went back to bed.
Hey, I just noticed that the video that I put on You Tube of the awesome Christmas light display can be viewed now. The website said that it failed to upload and Bob didn't have a chance to look at it. But it is there, you've got to check it out. (if you just view my post through your e-mail you won't be able to see it, you need to go to http://danio-walkerfamily.blogspot.com then scroll down and look for the video bar on the side)
(Bob is okay that isn't his car.) Bob had only been in California on his first business trip for his new company when he came upon a roll over accident. The Garmin was having a hard time giving directions due to all of the construction around the San Jose airport. It directed him to take an off ramp and turn around.
The red car is Bob's rental and the truck is the first car on the scene. Bob said that he help to direct traffic around the accident until the professionals arrived. I think that I would like for Bob to have a little less excitement for the rest of his trip. Bob said that they had to pull the guy out of the windshield (after they removed it), he had a broken collarbone and they put him on one of those boards to keep his spine straight.
