Snow Day #4

There's still snow and ice on the ground, and we're starting to go a little crazy. Nicholas hasn't gone to work all week, and I only made it in for a few hours yesterday. We're really missing our old neighborhood - we never would have been trapped like this!

It started raining this afternoon, so the snow got wet enough to actually make a snowman. Ellen still didn't like being outside and was crying by the time we were done with the snowman. Here's to hoping the weather gets better and we can all get out again!

Snow part 2

Snow in Portland is so fun! People were sledding down the hills in our neighborhood. I wish Ellen were big enough to do that - it looked so fun! After we put her to bed, Nick and I went out to build a snowman. The snow is too dry to make into anything, so we settled for just playing in it.

Nicholas drew this in the snow on our car:

I took this to try to show how deep the snow got here. It's crazy! The streets are already an ice-rinks. Nick's school is closed, and there's no way I'm driving, so it looks like we'll be home again tomorrow. Cabin fever will be setting in soon at this rate...

I can't put my arms down!

Those of you who are in places where it snows regularly are going to think we're crazy, but... It's snowing!!!!

When we woke up this morning it looked like it had rained all night, but by about 10:00 we had around 3 inches of snow! Since we knew we couldn't leave the house all day, we decided to make the most of it. We watched Christmas Story, drank hot chocolate, baked, watched the "breaking news" obsessivley to see the highway looking like bumper cars, and played outside. Ellen wasn't too into the snow. She didn't like the cold/wet on her face, so we didn't make her stay out there long. She did laugh at our snow-ball fight, though!

We don't have any snow clothes for Ellen, so we just wrapped her in as many layers as we could and put ziploc baggies on her feet to keep them dry. If we had a smaller scarf, I'd wrap her up like Randy so only her eyes would show, but we don't... I'm sure she was warm enough anyway.

Yes, those are Superman mittens...

Here's our house. Besides the snow, also note that you can actually see the front door now because we got rid of that dumb bush that blocked the whole porch! I think it looks so much better! We're up to about 5 inches of snow now, and it's not supposed to melt tonight, so we'll take some more pictures tomorrow when it's light again.

Activities and stuff

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great Thanksgiving. We spent the morning with my parents and then went to Jess's grandma's house for dinner. Ellen was in a great mood the whole day, we had fun with all our family, and of course, ate plenty of good food. I forgot my camera like always, otherwise I'd post pictures of Ellen playing the piano! There was a piano at Jess's grandma's house, and Ellen went crazy playing it. It combines two of her favorite things - pushing buttons and music.

Friday was Todd and Jessica's wedding. I was too busy during the cermony trying to keep Ellen from screaming and/or crawling down the aisle toward her daddy to pay much attention, but everyone said it was a lovely ceremony. We had a lot of fun at the reception, we're so happy for Todd, and we're so excited to have Jessica be a part of our family now! Congrats you two! I wish I had take more pictures, but here are a couple.




















You can't tell what Ellen is doing, but I thought this was a cute picture. She's actually wearing Jessica's shoes, and was having lots of fun in them! What a little girly-girl.






































Doesn't Jessica look amazing? This isn't the best picture, but she was just beautiful. Not long after this, a miracle occured! Ellen fell asleep in her stroller! We were happy because it allowed us to stay awhile longer and have some fun.

Saturday, we went to the Dutch store with Oma and Aunt Marty to see Sinter Klaas. Ellen was afraid of them (that's my girl!), so we took pictures next to him rather than on his lap. And of course we bought her some Dutch chocolate.




















After this, we watched the Ducks win Civil War! I'm always proud to be a Duck, but this game made it easy to be a fan. GO DUCKS!

We also had some time to play with daddy's glasses...




















And today we put up our Christmas decorations. Ellen wanted to help put the lights on the tree, but couldn't quite figure out how.

Now we're all sad the long weekend is over....

The candid moments

Mmmmmm... meatball!

I like looking at the blog and seeing all of the amazingly cute pictures that we take of our Ellen. But, I think half the fun of having Ellen in our life is the not so pretty moments. Here's a view of the pictures in between the moments that we post to the blog. Enjoy!

But, for every moment like this:

We get a picture like this:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

(PS- Can you tell I wanted to post something but couldn't think of anything worth while?)

First Haircut

Before...

After....

She wouldn't tolerate pig tails and the hair in her face was driving me crazy. I was really sad to cut her hair, but it had to be done. I waited until she was asleep because I was so worried I'd poke an eye out!

I think she looks like Haley Mills:

and Nicholas thinks she looks like He-Man:

What do you think?

Happy Halloween!

Last week, Ellen and I enjoyed one last day of sunshine outside. She loves the leaves.

Last week, we took Ellen to the Halloween party at her daycare. This is pretty much how she looked through the whole thing. She was totally overwhelmed by all the activity and older kids.




















I was really disappointed with how her Care Bear costume turned out, so for the actual Halloween, we decided to do something more creative.
























Oma came down and we all took Ellen trick-or-treating at Bridgeport village. Here's a picture of the three of us.



















Here's Ellen showing off two of the suckers she got



















And here she is eating one of those suckers

After the trick-or-treating we all went out to dinner. I think we all had fun!