Snowed in!

At the beginning of January we had a huge snow storm. Portland hasn't seen a storm like this since 2008 which is the same time Max was trying to drive back from Utah to propose to me, and he was the last car to get on the freeway before they closed it. Anyway, the snow started coming down on a Tuesday night. It ended up being a great night where our house was already clean so once the kids were in bed we made hot cocoa and cuddled on the couch watching a movie. This isn't that rare of a date, but it seemed extra cozy being in our warm house with the snow coming down. About 1am our power went out, I was still awake and just plugged in my phone thinking "I hope this gets charged in case the power goes out." Within 2 minutes the power went out! Ugh. I didn't sleep much being paranoid about all the things that could go wrong. I was recovering from the flu and super pregnant (still am, thanks for wondering) Our house gets really cold since our furnace needs electricity to turn on and run the fan and we don't have a fireplace. I was worried about us being too cold and worrying that it would take forever to get the power to get back on since we live in a little strange pocket of Portland and there was so much snow that the tree limbs were falling all over, knocking down power lines. When we all got up in the morning the power was still out and our house was cold! We ate some cold cereal for breakfast then bundled up as much as possible. We stayed inside and played games and Max had a big long wrestling match with the boys to keep warm. I sat in my many layers and moped about the cold. We didn't want to take them out to play in the snow because it would have been too hard to warm up. Apparently the wrestling wore Miles out because he just fell asleep in Max's arms, he rarely naps anymore so this was surprising.

I had this awful trapped feeling the whole time. We were prepared with food, but I didn't like being cold, and being super pregnant with the flu made it seem pretty difficult to try walking to the nearest grocery store (or anywhere warm) in a foot of snow. I think I was getting anxiety over the whole situation. Charlie and I prepared a picnic that we could go eat in the car where we had a heater and a way to charge our phones. It took awhile to prepare and Max cleared a path for us to walk to the car. Throughout the morning Max had been calling some of the neighbors to make sure they were alright and had everything they needed. (all while I was having my own pity party, haha) Sometime in that process he was talking to one of our tenants who said they hadn't lost power at all. At first we thought that was really weird so Max got the idea of checking our electrical panel in the garage. The next thing I knew, the power was back on. When he came back in the house he said he hadn't even gotten to the panel, he was just reaching to open it when the power went back on. Weird, then we remembered that our neighbors electric wires went underground and ours didn't, but still super weird! Once our picnic was prepared, the power was back on so we decided to have a living room picnic while Miles continued to sleep on the couch. The power had only been out for about 12 hours but we were so so so Happy that it was back on! Miles woke up sweating as he was really bundled and I had cranked the heat up. Later in the afternoon, we decided to go play in the snow as it was more snow than the boys had ever seen. 

We could only find a clear ruler but the snow was right around 11 inches.

He was sure excited!

Our own little winter wonderland. Since this was day 1, and we now had power and heat, it was more enjoyable. (I wasn't thinking the same thing a week later)

The boys got to "work" shaking the heavy snow of the arborvitae trees.

And making some pretty great snow angels.

And they made a slide!

We didn't play much in the snow the following days. Charlie's school was canceled for over a week. Max worked a lot from home and I wasn't going to attempt to play in the snow without Max's help. haha! But we did make it out again after we found our inner-tubes, and we made snow cones! We had some great icicles. some got much bigger than this but this is the only photo I took.

Our little snow cone restaurant.

Collecting the clean snow for snow cones.

They couldn't decide if they liked them or not...yet they kept eating them.

Off to find a good tubing hill!

We went over to the church near our house and found a hill and the "sledding" was much better this time.

This is an evil smile while he holds a snow ball behind his back waiting for his brother and daddy.

"Penguin-ing"

And there is nothing like knocking your children down with an inner-tube...Charlie seemed to love it!

He thought it was hilarious...so Max kept knocking him down in the snow.

Miles would fall down and act all helpless...it was kinda cute...kinda!

Sometimes I think it is so funny to see the similarities between Max and myself and our children. We noticed this a lot more during this snowstorm. Charlie is so much like Max where he is happy doing whatever he is doing, for example, playing in the snow. He would have been happy out there for hours and hours. Miles is more like me in that he decides he's done and then gets grumpy. haha! Miles came inside with me while Max and Charlie continued to play. There are a lot of other similarities but we'll save them for another day. Anyway, we had a whole lot of indoor activities too...Here's a glimpse..

This is how Miles flicks marbles and I love it.

There were a couple times we put chains on the car and ventured out because we couldn't handle the "stuck at home" life. The most dangerous part of our drive was the road/hill leading up to our house. We made it to costco and the library as well as home depot, target, and visited the properties we are working on. Exciting right? haha. Charlie was so excited to finally go back to school and we were so excited to not feel so stuck after a week.