Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Years Eve.

We had Mom, Dad, Jenni, and Becki over for dinner last night. We played games (anyone looking for a good preschooler game should get The Cat In the Hat I Can Do That game. Its pretty fun even for adults!) and celebrated the East Coast New Year. I liked that. Not being a night person at all, being able to be in bed by 10:30 was nice. We were woken up at midnight though by a surprisingly loud display of fireworks and people yelling and banging pots and pans.

Last week, the kids spent two nights at my parents house (Christmas Day and the next day). We went out on Saturday to pick them up and had a heck of a time. The snow had melted enough to be extremely slippery and soggy and we had a pretty scary slide on the road to their house and we got stuck over and over on their long gravel driveway (its about 1/2 mile long I think). We decided to chain up the second time we got stuck but discovered that one chain didn't fit for some reason. We were able to get the second chain on though, and even just with one tire chained we got enough traction to get unstuck and make progress. Unfortunately, just a few feet up we heard a banging sound and sure enough, the chain had broken! UGH! I had many curses running through my head. We shoveled and worked and finally got to the base of the last part of the driveway. We had to shovel again and I opened the door to get out and the snow is to my thighs. Its almost impossible to shovel out a car when you're in that deep. But we were able to move forward a bit more, and my Dad came down to help too. I shot this video then.
Getting through the mess


After we got stuck at the top of the crest, Aaron showed up and we were able to shovel a good enough track for Jason to get up to the house. It took us FOREVER to get in and we were quite seriously considering that we may not be able to get back out.

However, Dad dug out some chains that belonged to my Grandpa's Suburban. Old school chains. However, they worked and we were able to get out with no problems at all.

This winter season has been chock full of adventure, I tell ya.

We have decided to postpone our winter trip to Spokane, as conditions on the pass and in Spokane itself are not good. Its a very challenging trip with three children under normal conditions. Under conditions where we might need to drive slower and more carefully, its not something we want to do at present. Hopefully the snow will lay off for a bit so things can be cleared up and we can make it over there in time. The kids are sooooooo disappointed. They ask us every day if we are going to Spokane now. They want to see Grandma and their cousins and stay in a hotel!

We are all ready to get back to our regular routines. Jason wants to go to work, the kids want to go to school and I'm looking forward to some predictability!

We've signed the kids up for soccer through the City of Everett. We were going to do Ethan in soccer and Gwen in dance of some kind, but we figured that we should start them out together and see how we do with activities during a weeknight. We are not used to do things in the evenings, and we want to make sure that we don't break up our family time too much. For all its trouble at times, we do enjoy our relative peace in the evenings and we want to protect that and not be overly busy. So we're starting off slow and seeing how it goes.

Well I have starving kids and a crying baby so I must cut this short.