Snowed In

When it snows in Portland the whole city shuts down. I have always loved this. I loved being able to stay home from school and play in the snow all day because it would only happen maybe one day a year before it melted. In high school Max and I lived within walking distance of each other and during my senior year we had a whole week off of school and it was the best! Anyway, I know what you may be thinking, Portlandians are wimps. They wont even try to venture into the snow! I have agreed with this as well, especially after living in Utah. But here's the thing. Because this snow is so rare in Portland, the city has not made the same investments in snow removal equipment as in cities that have regular snow. So the roads are extra slick and most community members aren't very confident or overly confident driving on them so it makes everything a big mess. We haven't had this much snow since 2008 when Max was driving home from BYU for Christmas and to propose to me. So my point is, maybe we are wimps, but I love it!

Here is Charlie last winter and this is all the snow we got then, I had melted by noon. 

Thursday morning Charlie and I go to Target and some dry snowflakes are falling. They were just blowing all over the road so it didn't look like much was going to happen with them. We then met Max for lunch at a job site. The roads were still clear. After about 40 minutes we left to take a 20 minute drive home. The snow had started to stick and made the ground more slick. The short drive ended up taking an hour with the backed up freeway and the slippery roads. I could even feel my car slipping a little. When we got to our road I had a hard time getting my car up the hill. I never even realized it was much of a hill but I would get up the hill a couple of feet then slip backward as I would try to accelerate more up the hill. It took us awhile but we made it up a little bit at a time. I'm glad we got home when we did because the snow started pouring and our car would have never made it up if we were any later. 

Charlie took a nap and slept until it was nearly dark so he didn't get much time to play in the snow. 

 He was pretty unsure about the snow and didn't last long before he wanted to go back inside.

Max worked a little late and had to go get snow tires on his truck before coming home. Even with that, he wasn't able to get up the hill in his truck and had to park out on the street. 

Friday:

Max didn't have to go to work! We were pretty excited about this. We enjoyed a warm cream of wheat breakfast and some family time. I took Charlie out in the snow and once again he was not that interested despite the way he constantly talks about snowmen. Max's boss and co-worker came to help get the truck off the street and up to our house. They were successful.  We then came in for lunch. Charlie took a nap and I just enjoyed every minute of Max being home with us. 

After nap time I worked on dinner while Max took Charlie out to play. Charlie seemed to have a much more enjoyable time when he was playing with his daddy. I guess he was just more fun. They built a little snowman, and threw snowballs, ate icicles, and cleared paths by the doorways. I'm glad Charlie has a high energy daddy because I got exhausted hearing about all of this. Bending over to pick up snow just didn't seem like it was worth the effort and I guess that explains why Charlie didn't have as much fun with me.   

This bulldozer was an excellent tool for clearing the snow.

Eating snow and icicles seemed to be Charlie's favorite. Luckily we live in a pretty secluded area so it was all pretty clean.

Charlie loved having snow thrown at him.

This snow was so powdery that it was pretty difficult to make a snowman but they did their best. 

Saturday:

It was snowing hard all day and didn't look like it was going away so we felt no pressure to go play in it. We decided to have a cleaning day. After breakfast, Max and Charlie cleaned up the living room while I did laundry and dishes.  Max had just finished vacuuming when our power went out. He was excited that he was able to get it done and even had the thought that he wanted to hurry and get it done in case the power went out...priorities! Sadly, the laundry and dishwasher had not finished before the power went out. The power was only out for an hour but in that hour we got all our candles ready, ate a cold lunch, and took steps to preserve the heat in our house.

Charlie took a shortish nap and then we cleaned the bathrooms. Charlie was able to help Max work on prepping our stairs to put carpet down. He was a great helper and Max was extremely patient with him which left me time to thoroughly clean our infant car seat and the pack 'n play in preparation for baby brother. I was also able to make chocolate chip cookies. 

Saturday was supposed to be a busy day with a cousin outing to the children's museum, a wonderful haircut I was looking forward to, a birthday party, a hot chocolate party, and the missionaries were going to come. Everything was canceled because of the weather. I'm serious when I say the city shuts down. 

Anyway, We had dinner and Charlie went to bed without leaving the house once. 

After putting Charlie down, Max and I went on a "romantic" hand in hand walk around the property in the snow. We ended up taking out the garbage and recycling which made it not as romantic. Also, the freezing rain had started earlier in the afternoon and made a layer of ice on the snow. Every foot step turned into a loud crackling crunch. Not so much the soft quiet snow that we were expecting. We laughed and it felt good to get some fresh air together. 

 Sunday:
Church was canceled. We got to sleep in a little bit. After breakfast and getting ready for the day we all went outside in hopes to have a little picnic at the playground near our house. We got outside and played in the snow for a bit, and took pictures of my 33 week belly.

Max started clearing the foot of snow and ice off of our car while Charlie munched down on some snow. The snow was pretty deep and Charlie wasn't a fan of walking in it. He kept asking us to help him or to hold him.

There were thick sheets of ice on top of the soft snow Max cleaned off the car. Charlie thought it was hilarious when Max threw these pieces and they shattered. 

Max's work truck

We read in a weather advisory that we should stay away from trees because branches could snap or trees could fall over at any time. It seemed like a pretty ridiculous request in our neighborhood. You can't get too far from any trees.

 That's a pretty big icicle.

 We never made it to the playground for our picnic even though it isn't that far, Charlie just did not want to walk in the snow and ice. We decided to go on our deck and eat some cheese and fruit snacks.

We then went inside and had Macaroni for lunch. Charlie was so tired that he was sleep eating. He loves some mac and cheese so he kept eating even though he was exhausted. 

We were all tired so we all took naps. The rest of the day was spent inside. The snow started to melt today but there is still a ton. Most of the schools are still closed tomorrow. Max plans on going to work so we hope that works, if not, we will just enjoy having him home for another day!