Here Comes 2016 All Dressed in White

We are now just a over a week into 2016 and so far the highlight (there have been a lot of lowlights with the stomach flu and sleepless nights) has been our time spent in the snow.  Everyone had been dreaming of a white Christmas and when it didn't happen we were all anxious for a trip to the snow.  New Year's Day seemed like just the time for such a trip so we bundled up and headed out.  We typically go to Mt. Hood for these types of snow adventures, but a friend of ours had told us that they had been to Larch Mountain and it had lots of snow and was about 1.5 hours closer so we decided to give it a try.

Larch Mountain was a mixed bag.  It was certainly closer, only about 45 mins away, and it had plenty of snow, 2-3 feet deep in places.  The problem is that is was too densely forested to sled and the places they had cleared, they left stumps.  Sledding was pretty much off the table.  In fact, Jeremy tried to sled in one spot and it turns out there was a hidden stump underneath and he cracked our sled.  It was alright though, Carrigan would not have sled anyway and the kids just really enjoyed tromping through, laying in, and throwing around the snow.  The added bonus of staying so close to home is that when the kids decided 45 mins into it that they were done and ready to go home, I didn't feel so bad.  If only we had been able to sled it would have been perfect.  At that point we had no idea that our sledding dream would come true just two days later.

Sunday morning Jeremy and I were sleeping when Merrick came running in and said that he had looked outside and everything was white.  I had given up my vigilant watching of the weather forecast and I figured maybe a few flakes had fallen during the night, but it was not enough to motivate me to get out of bed that early on a Sunday morning.  Merrick went on his merry way and I drifted back to sleep for a little while.  When I actually did get up, I was completely shocked by what I saw.  The entire neighborhood was blanketed in white.

Once everyone was awake we decided this was too good of an opportunity to pass up and once again we all bundled up and headed out.  Our driveway is the perfect sledding hill.  Unfortunately, it needed just a bit more snow and our sled was broken from our Larch Mt. trip.  We decided that we had to figure out a way to make it work so we shoveled the snow from the driveway into one spot to make a track and got out the duck tape to repair the sled.  Thankfully, after our first run with the taped up sled our neighbors, Merrick's good friend Finely, showed up with a two man sled and saved the day.  They had a blast!

A short time later we got word that they had canceled church due to worsening roads and we were able to have to whole day home together and playing in the snow.  The snow/ice lingered for a few more days with Jeremy working from home on Monday, Merrick's first day back (Tuesday) getting delayed by two hours, and my preschool day getting canceled.  By Wednesday everyone's schedules went back to normal and so did life.  We are still early on in winter though so who knows, maybe we haven't seen the last of our snow in 2016.