Oregon Winter

Well it have been snowing off and on here for the last week. The kids missed all last week because of the snow. When it snows alot here we get ice. Yesterday it snowed all day. And then overnigh it rained. So this is what we woke up to. This normally happens about every 5 years or so. There is about 1/2 to 1 inch of ice on everything. They don't salt so the roads have a very thick layer of ice. They usually plow the roads just enough to leave the ice. And people here don't know how to drive in snow and ice. Hence why the state closes when it snows. Hopefully the roads will be open for us to drive back to Utah next week. At this point we may not be able to make it. They are saying it is going to warm up by christmas and melt it. I pray for snow every year and the one year I did not want snow it snows. Praying for warmer weather. I have my fingers crossed.

This is the backyard. There is about 2 inches of ice on top of the snow

These trees are across the street. The branches are so heavy

with ice that they are bent over touching the ground. I really hope

they don't break

This is the tree in my front yard.

Gery's car. You can't really tell in the picture but it is cover

with a 1 inch layer of ice. Good we are off work til Jan.

Needing some Christmas cheer

I have been finding it hard to get into the christmas spirit this year. This is normally my favorite time of the year. We did get some snow. Which is very unusually for us, So the kids have been out of school for the last 3 days. Snow here normally turns to ice. The roads are to icy to go anywhere without a 4 wheel drive. I wish they would put down salt instead of the pea gravel they put down. I have currently off work until Jan 4. Gery's last work day is today until Jan 4 so he has the truck. It just hasn't seem much like christmas this year. We have yet to get our tree up. The kids don't seem to care. We are going to put it up tomorrow. Having 5 cats and 3 dogs in the house makes it hard to keep them out of the tree. We are planning a trip back to Utah on the 26th. Hopefully it warms up a bit the route we normally take is currently closed. If anything we can go through California. Just makes the trip a little longer of a drive. Both of our jobs have announced that we will be doing shut downs every quarter. My company will be doing a 3 week shut down and Gery's will be 1 week. At least we can claim unemployment. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas.

Busy

I have not posted in a while. It has been so busy since the kids started school. To recap what has been going with us. Stephanie turned 15 on the 10th of Sept. She's on the dance team and also plays with the band so just about every friday she is performing with one or the other. Cody and Kaitlyn are busy with homework and playing with their friends. We are hoping to get into some sort of routine soon. Right now it seems like we are always on the go.

Bandon Animal Safari

We decided to take the family on one last trip before the summer was over. We went down to Bandon Animal safari. It is about 5 hours away quite a drive but well worth it. We had such a good time playing with animals we would normally never get to touch. We got to play with a 9 week lion cub, a 10 week black leapard cub and a 4 week siberian lynx. We got to hold /play with a few other you can see from the pictures.

Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

For the past 2 1/2 weeks I have been a coupon clipper. I have never really go out of my way to clip coupons, but with our grocery bill of $350 every 2 weeks it was getting out of control. I found this site www.thegrocerygame.com and have started stockpiling a 3 month supply of food. There is a fee but it has paid for itself already. We almost have our stockpile good for 3 months. My freezer if full which it has never been. The kids are doing cold lunch this year. So with all the sales on snacks, juice boxes, peanut butter I am stocked up for almost the whole school year. My goal is to get our grocery bill down to $70-80 dollars a week. Boy I wish I had found this site years ago. Check it out you migh find it useful too.

Silver Falls State Park hike

Today we decided to go for hike at Silver Falls State park. It is a 7 mile hike with 25 waterfalls along the path. When we got there it was slightly misting, typical day in Oregon. We started out our hike. By the time we hit the 1st mile into it, it was raining quite hard. We all looked like drowned rats. It took us a hour to hit the first mile mark, we made stops along the way to look at the waterfalls and take pictures. We were so wet that we decided to call it a day. Unfortunetly we had to hike back. I got a few good pictures. Will definetly have to go back on a dry day and finish the whole hike. I could have spent hours there taking pictures.

South Falls

It was raining so hard by the time we got to the North Falls

that it looked like it was foggy.

Lower south falls

School clothes shopping

My least favorite chore of the year is done. Me, Kaitlyn and Stephanie went and did school clothes and supply shopping today. 6 hours worth. Cody hates to go clothes shopping so he told me to buy what ever. We got all the school clothes for $601 and $80 dollars for supplies. Not to bad when I had budgeted $3oo per kid. Our school used to have us pay $30 dollars per child and they would purchase the supplies. But this year they did not offer it because to many parents would say they would buy then not pay for them. It was so much easier when all I had to do was pay $30. But at least it is done.

Camping trip

We went on our first camping trip of the summer. We left after work on wed. Got to camp around 9:30pm. I forgot how unforgiving the hard gound is. And how even the smallest rock can feel like a big boulder in your back. We went on a little hike and walked through the forest. Around noon we decided to set up to have a little target practice. While we were setting up Kaitlyn picked up a metal pipe that someone had used to shoot at and split open the meaty spot below her thumb. It looked like it needed a few stitches. So we tightly bandaged it, packed up camp and headed down the mountain. By the time we got to urgent care it had closed on its own and they just use super clue to close it. The kids were bummed that we had to cut our trip short so we are planning on heading back up on wed. afternoon. By friday we had to doctor up her cut as it split through the super glue. But we had fun for the most part. I forgot how peaceful being up in the mountains is. Here are some pics of our trip. I love taking nature photos.

Cody, Kaitlyn, Stephanie

Kaitlyn's cut after we re-bandaged it

dragonfly

dragonfly

local wild life

view of the camp site

dead stump

forest

view from our tent door

wild daisy

4th of July celebrations

We had a pretty good 4th of july. The weather was colder then normal. It was only 70 and was a little windy. My Mother in Law has a park behind her house. So we got out our lawn chairs and watched the other people in the neighborhood light off illegal fireworks. By the time they were done the kids were only slightly interested it lighting off the fireworks that we had. Each year their interest gets less and less. But overall I think everyone had a good time.

I tried to get some pictures of the fireworks, these were the

best I could get.

Kaitlyn, trying to jump on the pogo stick,

she just couldn't quite get the hang of it

Cody up in the pine tree, I knew he was part monkey

My nephew Steven standing in the middle of a pine tree.