It Snowed Again.

We decided to try and escape today. Dad and I went out at about 10 and started shoveling. And shoveling... and shoveling. I finished a bit from the garage to the front door only to turn around and see two fresh inches of snow covering up everything I'd just done. I cleared out part of the driveway before Dad got the tractor out. The tractor, unfortunately, had water in the bucket before the snow and now it had a block of concrete from somewhere, some rocks AND ice all piled up.After hacking at it for a while everything came out and some of the snow could be pushed around.

Enough to let us get some chains on the subaru and make it out to Sandy for more food. The crazy part is that when we went to get into the subaru we had to push almost two feet of snow off of everything and then up to two inches of ice off of all the important bits, like doors. Dad and I went to the store and after a crazy bit we got back in one piece.

(I found this wine at the store and I thought it was pretty funny. Funny enough to take a picture and then spend some time posting it. So there.)Sandy was a mess, there was about 8 inches of packed snow on the plowed roads and for a while we had to snow plow our way out of our road. Jessie spent some time sleeping, and playing tetris, and watching tv. Mom shoveled snow off of the back deck TWICE today (there was about a foot of snow on it the first time and about four or five the second time). Now, after spending a good chunk of the day shoveling things here and there I'm making some of this pretty bread and Jessie's making some sugar cookies. I've been baking and baking and baking some more!

The Evidence

Why are we still trapped in this house? This is why.

I think there were some cars under that snow. Anyway, last night we were eating dinner and trying to invent some things we could make with what food we have (we're down to two eggs and 1/4 gallon milk so I've been making this AMAZING vegan cookies and everyone's stayed happy... so far) when mom started trying to figure out when we last left the house. "Tuesday," I said, because that's the day I tried to go to Twelve Mile Market and it was closed. "Nooo... I think it was Wednesday, because that's the day I went to the store. I think. Maybe," Mom thought. We all thought about this for a while and then decided that it's been too long if you can't remember the last time you left.

It's been 6 days since I've left the house for sure. SIX DAYS. I've got plenty of yarn and fabric to mess about with but Jessie is going mad. After spending the last couple of days on the couch playing Tetris she surfaced upstairs lastnight at 8 and wanted to build a snow fort. Since she couldn't hang out with her friends in Gresham they wanted to try to do the exact same thing at the same time. That thing: build a snow fort. I'm always game for things like that so we got into our snow pants and dug a pit in the snow. Not so much a fort as it is an ice crater because when we tried to get to a good place to build it we had to punch our way through 6 inches of snow, down to a thick layer of ice and past it to another foot of snow with each step. It was a lot of effort, in the dark, in the snow, in 21 degrees. Plus the snow was all loose and powdery and no amount of hitting it could make it stick together. So, we have an ice crater in our yard.

It's Getting Deeper and Cuter

Now, the snow is taller than Monty. Can you guess what I did?

Yep, I tossed him right out into the middle and watched him schoon around.

Walkies

We all went for a walk this afternoon to see how the road looked. Turns out it's pretty icy/snowy. Just in our yard the snow is almost up to our knees in places.

Willow keeps darting through the deep snow (it's up to her chest) and then coming back all bleedy. She's fine, it just looks terrible. I think she's hitting some sticks at supersonic dog speed and getting a little banged up. It's not stopping her at all.

The Only Thing Cuter than Regular Monty

A snow-covered Monty!The snow turned into these BB gun pellets the second I decided to take himself out for a walk. Right now we've got about four inches of snow and it's still snowing pretty steadily. Monty's shortness was having trouble negotiating the deeper pockets.

Monty, on high alert.

I thought he looked awfully cute dipped in snow with his little rugged shoulders, as mummy likes to describe them.

Snow Does Funny Things

It's snowing here... again. It all melted yesterday so I thought I was safe when I told Star and Ben I could come meet them downtown for some shoppin' today. WRONG. I woke up this morning and it was snowing and had been snowing for a while. "Awww... I'm still good!" I thought. DOUBLE wrong. I got in the shower and by the time I got out it had gone to full scale blizzard. Still thinking I could manage, I got all bundled up and headed out the front door. It wasn't until I listened to my tires spinning uselessly in the snow that I realized I was trapped. I tried to back out three different ways, Dad tried to back it out, and all we were left with was my car blocking the Subaru, the only useful car in snow. I called Star and Ben to tell them I couldn't come and then waited while Dad tried to rearrange my car so that it wasn't such a problem. While I waited, this happened:

Ohhhh Jessie, in your shorts, in the snow. Of course I'm going to throw snowballs at your naked legs. Duh! Sucka...

Even the tree is wearing more clothes than Jessie. Sheesh.

All snowed in!

After it stopped snowing I decided to clear off the driveway to see if that helped with the cars. Who would use a shovel to clear a driveway when you can make a perfectly AWESOME snowman? Mr. Snowman can watch you all of the time, he has eyes on both sides of his head. Creepy thing.
If you were of a mind, you could probably find more pictures of snow and housy things here, at Dad's blog.

Buns in the Snow

I had a sneaking suspicion that Monty would love snow. I don't think we really had any last year so I didn't get to test my theory out. This year is a different story. I took Monty out this morning and away he went!

When he hops around his ears fly up, he's just coming down from an especially good hop in this picture. I wish he could yell "Huzzah!" when he does that, instead all he does is a little "montmontmontmont" motoring sound.

Monty rumpling through the snow.

The frozen bits didn't stop him from digging around in his usual spots either.

Apparently the snow turns him into survival bunny. Usually he won't eat anything outside but today he was eating every dried up bit of leaf he could find, some of them he carried to a corner of the house and stashed, probably for later. Silly guy.

And, video evidence of his eatery abilities.

Huzzah!

And then Willow decided to stand at the door waiting for Mom and Jessie to let her back in. Soooo pitiful.

Ohhhh That Was a Mistake

Ok, so I've been looking forward to Winter Wonderland, which is etsy.com's yearly winter sale, for months. It just so happens that it was today and today was also the day that it decided to snow and snow and SNOW! We planned on going to the sale today and then I was supposed to make my way up to Olympia to visit Star and Ben for a couple of days. The weather wasn't looking good and I don't have chains or snow tires AND it didn't look like it was going to warm up any time within the next couple of days so there was a potential for things to keep getting worse and worse. We decided to look up the weather between here and Olympia and that just looked super ugly. It was unanimous: there would be no Olympia trip. However, if we could make it to the max station in Gresham we could maybe make it to the Etsy sale. Mom, Dad and I decided to give it a try. We left at 10:30 and made it with a minimum of slipping and sliding to the max station at the little outlet mall nearby. We hopped on the max and went to the Convention Center just outside of Portland by 11:30. Last year the show was at the Norse Hall, it was tiny but amazing. This year, because of last year's crowds, they moved to the much larger Convention Center.

OldSchoolStationers' booth at the sale. Mom got a few cards, and I really loved this print.

Now, this is a lamp made from slides. The cool thing about this one is that it reminded me of Star. Why, you ask? Because it's an LOL Cats themed lamp! I knew you'd love it Star! I just wish I could have gotten it for you...

These were some sweet sock monkeys, but I didn't catch the seller's name.

I wound up buying the Sloth and Bunny print from berkleyillustration (I'm going to frame them and hang 'em up!). I loved all the ones he had, but I had to pick just two and these were my favorite. I would have loved to get the lady-bunny version and some others but I know where I can get them later!
The real adventure began when we decided to head home. We hopped on the max but then decided to get off again at Grand Central Bakery a few stops away. It was soooo cold outside! We hustled over and got there three minutes before they closed early and then hustled back the max tracks. Unfortunately, we probably should have stayed on that first max. We were waiting at the stop for a little while before we realized that the red line that was sitting in the station wasn't going to go anywhere. The switches at Gateway had frozen so everything was backed up. We got on the red line just to keep warm and sat there for at least 40 minutes. The conductor or whatever got on the intercom and announced that they were going to pull out, but that there was a blue line (which is what we really wanted) coming right behind it. We got off only to realize that the next train was, in fact, another red line. We hovered outside for about 15 minutes until we gave in, got on that train which was also sitting in the station for a long time like the last one, and rode that to Gateway. THAT process took well over an hour. It was freezing and crowded and boring. We had to sit at each stop for about 15 minutes because everything was backed up to infinity. We finally got to Gateway, sat there forever, then the red line we rode in on changed to blue and we thought "YES! We can just stay here! You suckas who thought you were going to the airport gotta get OFF! Hah!" Fifteen more minutes later the conductor got back on the PA and announced that he was changing BACK to a red line and everyone who wanted to be riding on a blue max had to get off and wait for the train that was "right behind" him. LIES! We huddled in the cold, windy arctic tundra that is Gresham for 15 minutes. 15 MINUTES! At that point I hadn't felt my feet for about two hours and things were going from bad to worse. My chilblains (ok, I included a link but there are pictures. I do have these, but not THIS bad, still...) were practically moving in to stay. Sigh... We'd left Grand Central Bakery at 2:30 and we finally got home at about 5:30... that's practically 3 hours of cold hell.
Now, we're home, in one piece. There's no WAY I'd be able to brave the weather to get to Olympia at this point. I think knowing what I do now, I wouldn't have even gone to the sale! But really, I love supporting local artists, and etsy, and seeing crafty things. But I'm not ready to sacrifice my toes to do it!

It was all Majestic and Stuff....

Dharyll came up this weekend and we decided that since the whole weekend was tremendously sunny we should do outdoor things. Like hiking. So we took off north on 101 and went to Mt. Ellinor. It was a really pretty drive, we circled around Lake Cushman and then drove up and up and UP some mountain-ish sides when all of the sudden BAM, there was snow. It got to be about two feet deep and we were on this dirt/gravel track halfway up the side of this mountain so we parked, I pulled on my handy-dandy hiking boots and we squelched around in the snow for a while. It was 90 degrees out and sunny while we were tromping around on snow so there were some crazy hot/cold spots in the air. There were snowballs thrown, holes in the snow to get your leg stuck in, and some pretty views.

Pretty pretty.

Snow in Oly

I forgot that I took these pictures last week. I rediscovered them like the Spaniards "found" the Americas. I thought I'd post them as proof of the snow we get in Oly.

Tadah!