This last month has been a crazy time for me and my family. Katrina has been sick (you know in the "morning"), a snow storm almost prevented us from getting to Grandma and Grandpa Jensen's house for Christmas morning, our DVD player broke and we have to mail the TV away to get it fixed (the DVD player is part of the TV), and most crazy was me trying to get work done, take care of Katrina (the first couple months seem to be really hard on her), Lizzy, the dishes, the cleaning. I realize now how hard it is to keep this place clean. I thought I had the harder of the two adult roles in the family... not even close.
Anyway, if you didn't know, Oregon got hit by a major snow storm about two weeks before Christmas. We had snow on the ground in Corvallis for a whole week. I even got to have a snow ball fight with some of the kids in our complex. We stayed home most of the week and only went out twice, the first time because Katrina and I didn't realize how bad the roads were and the second time because Lizzy had a doctor's appointment. As far as I can tell Corvallis does not have any snowplows, so they put down some dirt and called it good. I consider myself a good driver, even in snow, but when you have major roads with lots of cars and lots of snow... I was OK staying in as well.
So the snow melted in Corvallis and the rain started again. All the while up in Hillsboro (by Portland), where Katrina's parents live, it kept snowing and snowing and snowing and snowing...
In fact the county that Katrina's parents live in started to require that all vehicles wear snow chains. Which I wasn't really worried about, I really am good in snow (just ask my mom and Eliza about driving in a blizzard when Eliza moved to Colorado, on second thought, don't ask my mom), what I was worried about was that our car can't take snow tires. That's right, the wheel wells are too small. So we watched the weather and the county website to see if they would stop requiring chains. Days ticked by and it was Christmas eve and I was doing some work in the morning at the EPA and I checked the traffic reports for the Portland area-everything reported inches of ICE on the FREEWAYS leading into Portland. All of a sudden I was having doubts about getting my family to Grandma and Grandpa's house in our mid-size sedan. I swallowed my pride and called a friend of ours from church that had a truck and I hoped would be staying home on Christmas day and not need their truck. They didn't and Christmas was saved... really Lizzy wouldn't have gotten her presents from her Grandma and Grandpa Jensen, her aunts Corrie, Amy, Sarah, Cheryl, Anne, Helen, and Julie, or her uncles Chris and Brian if we didn't have their truck. Thank you Brother and Sister Allen, thank you.
I may need to devote another post to that story, it really was Christmas movie quality material. People say I look like Tom Hanks or the drummer from
That Thing You Do, I wonder if either of them are available???
Next december story... hmm maybe I should wait... Katrina may want to do some of these stories herself... OK, I will wait a little to see what Katrina will write about then I will finish up anything (or correct anything) that she didn't cover. Hope you all had a very merry Christmas, cause we sure did.
Our first family walk, with our new (read really old, second hand) stroller we got from friends in our ward. 
Random picture of a giant bee, that is my thumb, that was on our sunflowers. Bees just love them.
