After the 3 or so inches of snow we got Christmas eve, I figured we wouldn’t see much more snow this winter. Boy was I wrong. February 11, we had a forecast snowfall of 1 to 3 inches for the day. The beginning of the storm was predicted to be a mix of rain and snow, so when I woke up Thursday morning and hadn’t heard any rain, I figured we hadn’t gotten any precipitation. I looked out the window and saw a blanket of white. This is a picture of our street just before I left for work that morning.
The temperature stayed above freezing all day, so I wasn’t too worried about the roads. All day at work, I watched the snow continue to fall. They finally adjusted the forecast to 6 inches, but some of the cars were driving around at noon with about 6 inches of snow already on top of them. We began to get worried about the state of the roads, so both Bill and I left work at 3:00. I picked up the kids at daycare, and thought I was going to get stuck in the snow in the parking lot. We made it out of the parking lot and into the garage. We had a snowball fight
and built a snowman.
Zachary wasn’t too thrilled about getting out in the snow.
The snow covered our satellite dish, so we had to sweep it off to get reception. As the evening and night went on, I watched in disbelief as the snow kept coming down. We got the announcement that Hannah’s school was going to be closed on Friday. The snow finally stopped sometime after midnight. The next morning, we woke up to a record snowfall for DFW, officially over a foot at the airport, and I’m pretty sure we got that much or more.
The snowman collected a lot more snow on his hat overnight, but temperatures didn’t stay below freezing for long, so he started leaning.
Our next door neighbor’s tree had a lot of extra weight.
The lump in this picture is my raised garden.
The snow melted throughout the day, but we still had plenty on Saturday afternoon to make two more snowpeople.
After this, we have the second snowiest winter on record for DFW, and we need less than 2 inches to break that record.
February 26th, 2010 in
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My first white Christmas! Unfortunately, it created some travel problems, and the kids did not get to see what Santa brought them until this afternoon. Yesterday was the closest to blizzard conditions that I have ever seen. The cows looked miserable soon after we got to De Leon.
Later, it got even worse.
And, it was snowing sideways.
The kids and I were supposed to drive back to Fort Worth last night, but the roads were too icy. After sitting on the highway for over an hour, we decided to turn and go back to De Leon for the night. I’m so glad we did. It was nerve-wracking to drive on that ice. We still had drifts in our yard late this afternoon, so the kids got to play in the snow after opening presents.
December 25th, 2009 in
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On the last full day of our trip, we drove to the coast. It was pretty chilly when we first got to Ecola State Park; it was only in the high 50s, and we had worn shorts and t-shirts. At the parking area, there is a really nice overlook, but the low clouds kept us from seeing very far. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a clear view of Haystack Rock because of the clouds.
We decided to hike the 1.5 miles to Indian Beach. Along the way, we had a lot of great views.
Here is Tillamook Rock Lighthouse from Indian Beach; the lighthouse is a little over a mile offshore and is no longer used.
After our hike, it was still cool, but we had warmed up quite a bit. It was about lunchtime, so we were going to stop in Cannon Beach for lunch, but Bill didn’t want to deal with the crowds. Cannon Beach had tons of shops, and I think I could easily spend an afternoon there looking at everything. Unfortunately, there are not many places to eat between the beach and Portland, so we stopped at a Dairy Queen. I was looking forward to drinking a nice big Coca-Cola, so I was sorely disappointed to find that this Dairy Queen served Pepsi instead. At least they served Dr. Pepper.
September 10th, 2009 in
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During the second day of our trip, we visited the Columbia River Gorge and drove the Mount Hood loop. The Columbia River Gorge was my favorite part of the trip. It was beautiful. We followed the historic Columbia River highway east of Portland. Our first stop was the Women’s Forum State Scenic Viewpoint. Bill was wearing a Texas A&M t-shirt, so we met a couple of Red Raiders from Lubbock at this stop.
Next, we stopped at Vista House. At this point, I wish we would have turned around and driven the extra 17 miles to Larch Mountain, but we decided to go on to the waterfalls. I was afraid it would be too hazy to see the five mountains (Ranier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood, and Jefferson) from Larch Mountain. So, we continued down the historic Columbia River Highway.
The first waterfall we visited was Latourell Falls. It was only a short hike down to the waterfall.
Next, we stopped at Bridal Veil Falls. Here, we had to hike a little to see the falls.
We also took another short hike to a view point overlooking the gorge.
Our next stop was Wahkeena Falls. I loved these falls. It had started to warm up a little bit by the time we got here, but we got a nice cool spray standing on the bridge in front of the falls.
We decided to hike a little ways up the Wahkeena trail. There were a lot of smaller falls and nice views of the gorge along the trail. This is one of the falls.
We decided not to go the full 3 miles of the trail, since we hadn’t brought water and wished we had better shoes for hiking, so we turned around after a mile and a half.
Our next stop was the big waterfall – Multnomah Falls. These falls are right off of the interstate, so they get crowded.
Our final stop in the gorge was Horsetail falls.
After this stop, we drove across the Bridge of the Gods to Washington and had lunch at Skamania Lodge. After lunch, we drove to Hood River and then to Mount Hood. Here is a view of Mount Hood from Hood River.
Our final stop of the day before heading back to Portland was Timberline Lodge on the south side of Mount Hood. We got a close-up view of Mount Hood.
We were also able to see Mount Jefferson to the south.
September 7th, 2009 in
oregon |
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During the first full day of our trip last week, we drove to Mount St. Helens. It was amazing to see the effects of the devastation 29 years after the eruption. We visited the north side of the mountain, starting at Castle Rock, WA. Our first stop was the visitor center at Silver Lake. It was still pretty chilly when we stopped there. We stopped at several other viewpoints and visitor centers on the way to Johnston Ridge Observatory. This is one of my favorite photos along the way. Mount St. Helens is on the right, and Mount Adams is visible on the left.
This picture was taken near the Johnston Ridge Observatory looking northward. All of the white lines you see are trees that were knocked down in 1980. Most of the slopes facing Mount St. Helens looked similar to this.
The flies were horrible! They got progressively worse as we got closer to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, and there, they swarmed the signs and people, so our stay there was a little shorter than we had planned.
This chipmunk was trying to steal food from some people that were eating lunch.
This is a photo of the crater from Johnston Ridge Observatory.
A few facts about Mount St. Helens from the visitor’s guide:
- The eruption leveled 230 square miles of forest in less than 10 minutes.
- The mountain lost 1300 feet of height.
- The eruption began with a landslide that buried 14 miles of river valley to an average depth of 150 feet.
After a late lunch in Castle Rock, we drove back to Portland to the International Rose Test Garden. I mainly wanted to visit to get a picture of downtown Portland with Mount Hood in the background and I had read that this was a good place for that. But, I was surprised by the number of rose bushes. My photos don’t do justice to the size of the gardens.
This is one of the best photos of downtown and Mount Hood. I actually got to this viewpoint by walking between some of the tennis courts by the garden.
August 25th, 2009 in
oregon |
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I graduated with my MS in Information Systems last Saturday. I also got a certificate for completing my degree with a 4.0 GPA. On Sunday, Bill and I flew to Portland on vacation. After we landed, we visited the Portland Saturday Market, which was very interesting. There were all kinds of things for sale. We also briefly visited Powell’s Books, which is a 3-story book store taking up an entire city block. I learned some interesting things about Portland and Oregon during our trip. You are not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon, so gas is about 40 cents per gallon more expensive than in Texas. People ride bikes everywhere. Oregon has no sales tax, so a lot of people from Washington drive to Portland for shopping.
I have posted some of my pictures on flickr. And, I will post some pictures here later with each day of our trip.
I found the pictures and they are now showing up in the older posts.
In the process of upgrading WordPress, I seem to have lost my older pictures. I will be working on getting them back.
Hannah didn’t have school on Friday, so Bill and I took the day off and drove with the kids to Sugar Land. Friday was also our tenth wedding anniversary. We stayed with friends and had a great time. Saturday, the friends we were staying with had a huge birthday party for their boys. The kids had so much fun. They had rented a bounce house with a slide, and Zachary wasn’t scared of it at all. He was only interested in sliding, and he couldn’t climb up the slide himself, so Bill and I took turns helping him up. Later on, the older kids started playing with water balloons and, finally, the water hose in the bounce house, so they were all soaked. After the kids (ok, most of the kids) went to bed, the adults played Guitar Hero World Tour which was pretty fun just to watch. I got sleepy before the rest of them, so I went to bed before they were finished playing for the night.
On Sunday morning, we got up and had a breakfast of doughnuts and kolaches. Bill had to go back and buy more, and Hannah requested a “wienie dog”, which we decided was a sausage kolache. After breakfast, we packed up everything and drove to Galveston. Since I have only been there a few times since we moved away almost five years ago, I just can’t get used to all of the development through League City. None of that was there when we left. It was the first time we had been to Galveston since Ike hit last September. I can’t get used to the new causeway, either. There are still boats in odd places. We only drove up 61st street and the Seawall then to the Strand and back up Broadway, so we didn’t see a lot of the neighborhoods. Everything along the Seawall from 61st to 21st looks pretty good, except for everything that was out over the water and washed away. The 61st street fishing pier is gone. The Flagship hotel still has damage, and Hooter’s (which will probably always be The Ocean Grill to me) is gone.
They have started rebuilding Murdoch’s Bathhouse.
There is only a tiny bit of the entryway left of the Balinese Room.
It looked like most places downtown had reopened. The ANICO building still looks the same. Rudy and Paco’s looks very different from the outside. Driving down the Strand, we were able to see the rust on some of the buildings. And, I made Bill drive by Ashton Villa, where we were married. It had damage on the inside, but still looks good from the outside.
After Galveston, we headed back home. We drove through a horrible thunderstorm in Dickinson and League City. Hannah slept most of the way home, since she didn’t get much sleep while we were gone. Zachary got tired of riding about Ennis, so we had to listen to him complain the rest of the way home.
May 27th, 2009 in
galveston |
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I finally have a little time to write about Zachary. We had his birthday party on Saturday afternoon. Hannah had a soccer game at 11, and they were also having a kid’s fair at the soccer fields. Zachary got to see some horses, a Careflite helicopter take off just across the soccer field from us, and Sparky from TMS.
After the soccer game, we went out for lunch. Zachary drank all of his milk and tried to get the waitress to get him a refill. When she walked by, he looked at her, pointed at his cup, and said “More.” She didn’t realize he was talking to her, though. While we were eating, I recalled another time all of us had eaten at the same restaurant before one of Hannah’s birthday parties, when Zachary was 6 months old. He fell asleep in the highchair and when I picked him up, he had soaked through his pants. About the same time I was thinking about this, Uncle Alan decided to mess with Zachary, which caused Zachary and his booster seat to turn on their sides in the chair. I managed to catch him by his head, but I had trouble getting him right-side-up in the chair, so I picked him up. And, what do you know? He had soaked through his pants again. So, I took him to the restaurant to change him and realized I didn’t have a change of pants with me. So, Zachary left the restaurant in a shirt, diaper, socks, and shoes. Bill made the comment that he looked really classy.
After a short nap, we had cake and presents. I made a Cars cake.
Zachary didn’t seem too excited about his Cars cake, and even less excited when Hannah decided she needed to be in the picture with him.
Zachary got more Cars and some trains.
After he opened his presents, the kids played with the party favors.
Ignore the dead plants in the background.
On Wednesday, Zachary went for his two-year checkup. He is 36.75″ tall and weighs 31 pounds 10 ounces.
