The white stuff and Santa make an appearance

There are two things that I thought we were saying goodbye to when we left the DC area: The first was good restaurants and the second was seeing snow fall at our house. (Actually, I think there are more than two but these are the two that come to mind right now.)

Well, I was most certainly wrong about the restaurant thing given that there are many great eateries here that more than rival the best restaurants in DC. And as we go through our third winter now, it also appears that I was mistaken about that whole no snow thing as well. In general, it does tend to get colder here in the wintertime than I thought it would. I mean, it's definitely not typically that biting cold like you get back east but we still have our share of quite chilly days. More often than not, the most extreme weather issue we deal with is ice. But at least once over the past three winters we've also seen a bit of snow. Last winter we barely had any, but what did come was on Christmas day which was kind of cool.

So around last Thursday the weather people started making a fuss that we had a big storm approaching shore that would bring a lot of wind and rain (shocking, I know!) on Friday and Saturday. Then by Sunday (as in, today) temperatures would plummet to highs in the 20s in Portland and the rain would turn to possibly significant snowfall. Of course for the ski resorts who have been tapping their watches since before Thanksgiving waiting on Mother Nature to do her thing, this storm was music to their ears. But for those of us down on the "valley floor" as it's called - well, we were skeptical about the wet stuff actually turning into white stuff.

In general, the whole Friday and Saturday thing was kind of a bust. I mean, yeah sure, there was definitely some wind and rain - but nothing earth shattering, especially for December in Portland. Saturday evening we went to Jeff's holiday party at an art gallery in the Pearl District downtown and had a very nice evening. By the time we exited around 11 p.m. to make our way home, there was definitely a good bite in the air. And by around 8 a.m. this morning some white stuff started coming out of the sky somewhat fiercely and as of this writing has yet to stop. Our high was about 32 degrees this morning and it's been going in the wrong direction ever since. It's been very windy too, which makes for nice blowing snow dramatics as well as fun wind chill factors. And the awesome (and unusual) thing is that these 20ish degree temps are expected to stick around most of the week giving us the coldest weather here in about 10 years (at least according to the weather people and everyone knows that weather people are always right). Brrr! And to think that when we moved here I thought the coldest it would get was maybe in the 40s. Apparently I needed to beef up on my Portland weather history a bit more.

So, of course we had to take this opportunity to head outside this morning and do a little snowball action with Ian and let him enjoy his first real snow experience (that he recognizes and will remember, at least). There were also a couple of snow angels involved at one point which we caught on video. So all in all, it's been a wintery but fun Sunday here.

And in other weekend news - I think I've mentioned that this is the first year that Ian is really starting to get the whole Christmas concept. Of course for him this means a tree, presents and Santa Claus. He's been especially intrigued by Santa Claus so we decided to break Vow #683 on the "things I will never do when I become a parent" list and took him to see a mall Santa yesterday. The line sucked but at least there was some entertainment involved in watching all the parents shove their screaming babies in Santa's lap in hopes of getting the perfect shot. We offered Ian the option of backing out several times while we were in line but no such luck. He was very excited to get on Santa's lap. I said, "You know, Santa will probably ask you what you want for Christmas - so what will you tell him?" And he threw up his hands and said, "A tostada!" Awesome. I think we can handle that one. While we weren't really interested in taking out a second loan on our house to pay for one of the "professional" photo packages they offered us, we did manage to snap our own shot:

Oh, and then just to cap off the weekend extravaganza - I'm extra excited to report that less than a week after finally recovering from the effects of my last cold, I came down with a new one yesterday. Frustration and disbelief are the two words I'll throw out and leave it at that. (Ian came down with his latest around Wednesday and already appears to be on the mend, by the way.)

Last, I'll leave you with some food for thought: If you were awakened in the middle of the night fearing your house was on fire - do you have an evacuation plan? Because we don't. And I realized this at about 4:30 a.m. this morning when for some unknown reason multiple smoke alarms - including the one in our bedroom - starting going off in our house. Let me just say I didn't know I could move that fast. All I remember is jumping out of bed and racing toward Ian's room when the alarms just stopped after about 10 seconds and everything seemed to check out fine. I don't think my heart stopped racing until about midday today, though.

Until I write again.

LATE BREAKING NEWS: We just heard on the news that basically every school district in the region is closed tomorrow which means no preschool for Ian. Our first school closing experience. Bummer.