Playing in the Snow on Aaron's Birthday

We were hyping Adele up for our move to Oregon by telling her about the snow. Every time she saw a movie, read a book, or even looked at Christmas decorations, she would tell us how much she wished she could see the snow. Her only two experiences had been: 1) As a baby, touching the little bit of snow we saw at Crater Lake. 2) Last May, we saw patches of snow and played in them at Burney Falls. Little, tiny patches of dirty snow, and she LOVED it.

As we drove into Oregon, there was snow! But by the time we got to our destination, a little lower, there was none again.

So Adele was very disappointed, and constantly asking why there was no snow. We decided we had better take her to see snow our very first weekend here. On Saturday we woke up to a lot of fog and inversion. We thought "oh no, we're fogged in, we won't be able to see snow!" But luckily, it was only hanging around White City.

We took a drive down 140 East towards Lake of The Woods. After about a half hour we started seeing a tiny bit of snow. Boy was she excited. Then we started see a lot of snow on the ground. She said (and you have to imagine the excitement in her voice): "I cannot believe there is snow everywhere!!" And then it was constantly "Mommy, Daddy, did you see the snow?!" Well soon we found a sno-park just before Fish Lake. Sno parks are these turn offs in the road where you can park and play in the snow. In Oregon, you have to pay a permit to park on the side of the road in these Sno Parks. We'd driven to Medford just before heading out to get one of these permits (after calling a half dozen retailers, we finally found one store that sold these).

We pulled off on a snow shoe and snowmobile trail. Since we had no sleds, it didn't matter. And we didn't have snow gear either. I am glad I bought Adele snow boots just before we left for Oregon. We couldn't sit in the snow, but luckily she had mittens that we said were okay to get wet. She was just happy to walk in it. We tromped through the woods, and she loved climbing the "mountains" which were little hills formed by snow covered, bent little pine trees. The snow was icy and crunchy, and Aaron especially and sometimes I would fall through the snow. Aaron had wet feet. Adele was light enough to stay on top and never fall through.

When we first arrived, Heather called to wish Aaron a Happy Birthday.

Samuel now has 6 teeth, sort of. The upper two on the side are just coming in.

Adele calls this her "snow jacket."
(I had Macy's credit and wanted to use it after Christmas when I could get a good sale deal. But Macy's in CA after Christmas sales had NO snow jackets, not even jackets, really. This was the only warm jacket I could find -a boy's leather jacket. Good thing she doesn't know or care that it is for boys. It even came with a good looking boy's dress shirt - we'll save that one for Samuel).

Adele and Mommy on a "mountain."

Adele "mountain climbing."

I made Aaron healthy, whole wheat carrot cake with no oil(used applesauce) and no eggs(used flaxseed mixed with water into a paste) for his birthday. (That is a glimpse into his eating personality. He said it was the best cake he'd ever had!) Personally, I would prefer a chocolate or angel food cake and didn't even like this one very much. But I am sure glad he did!
There are blue sprinkles on the cake, because Adele insisted on buying them. She almost picked out green sprinkles (her favorite color) but put them back and exchanged them for "blue is my Daddy's favorite color." We put a blue candle in Aaron's cake, and Adele just had to have a green one in hers.

Here's a video of Adele when she just got out of the car.

Here are some pictures of where we live:

The view out front of highway 62, Crater Lake Highway.
Mount McLoughlin in the background.
(There is actually a road that we park on out front, and then this grassy area.
It's nice because we are far enough from the highway that we don't hear the cars).

Our apartment. Our bed in the lower right. Kitchen table/living area.
Kitchen in the background.
Hallway leads to a bathroom (across from kitchen) and bedroom at the end.

close up of kitchen. Looking through from the dining area.

close up of our "bedroom"area, or living room.

This is what you see when you step in from the front door. You can see a corner of our bed on the right.

No pictures of the bedroom yet, since Adele and Samuel are asleep in there. It's pretty big, but not so helpful to have that be the biggest room. There is one little hallway closet for coats. We try to keep some of our clothes in there. There are lots of closets in the bedroom.