Zachary turned 3 on April 28, and this is the first chance I’ve had to write. We had his birthday party the weekend before. He wanted a Mickey Mouse party, and his cake was my first attempt at using fondant.
Bubbles were a big hit with all of the kids at the party.
Zachary had his checkup on his birthday, so I took the day off to spend with him. He weighs 35 pounds and is now 39 3/4 inches tall. After his appointment, he wanted to go to “the petting store”, but it wasn’t open, yet, so we went by my office and visited a few people. Then, we went to two pet stores, looked at all of the animals, and petted all of the cats up for adoption. He wanted to go to McDonald’s for lunch, so we went, and he played. He was having so much fun, I had to carry him, screaming, out of McDonald’s.
In the March issue, Texas Monthly published their list of 63 things all Texans should do before they die. I decided to see how many of them I have already done.
#5 – See the world in San Antonio (Tower of the Americas). I have eaten lunch in the restaurant at the top of the Tower of the Americas during a Spanish Club trip my sophomore year of high school. And, apparently, I was involved in a hair-pulling incident in the elevator there at a very young age.
#10 – Sip a Dublin Dr Pepper. Growing up in De Leon, this one is pretty much a given. A Dublin Dr Pepper is the only soft drink I will drink other than Coke.
#25 – Learn the two-step. Yes, but not very well. Thank you, College Station.
#28 – Order a Brown Derby at Dairy Queen.
#35 – Memorize the Texas Pledge of Allegiance. Sadly, this one is only in the last year and only because of PTA meetings.
#37 – Ride the Ferry Between Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula. I did this one on the last day I worked in Galveston. It was rainy and dreary.
#49 – Drive the Freeways at Night in Houston. I did this one quite a few times.
#50 – Attend a Classic High School Football Game. There were so many… Go Bearcats! One of my favorites was the 1990 2A State Semifinal game between De Leon and Pilot Point. De Leon won 9 to 7. What a game!
Only 55 more to go.
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
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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
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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.
