White Christmas

I always thought that a White Christmas would be great, but now experiencing it I think that it is totally overrated. For 10 days we have been pretty much trapped in and around the house due to snow and ice. The news reported that the last time there was 1 foot of snow on the ground here in Seattle on Christmas was in 1861! The snow started with a bit on Sunday the 14th, but every time we thought it would ease up, there was more to come. Gas stations have been running out of gas because the deliveries can't get through and even some grocery stores are running low on some things. Thank god for Trader Joe's. The major roads are open, but the side streets are difficult, a mix of compact snow, ice, or slush. In a true Seattle fashion the paper summed it up today; the problem is not the streets or the weather, the problem is Seattle itself, all the hills and steep streets.

School was cancelled the last 3 days before vacation started so we have been spending quality family time together. Things you do when you have time to burn: reading Christmas books (both German and English) with Omi, watching Christmas specials on TV including the new Heat Miser/Snow Miser special with the throwback puppets (awesome!), and we filled water balloons so that they could freeze in the high teens temperature (14 degrees a few mornings ago). This is the result of one of our balloon experiments...pretty cool.

We have been sledding at various places in the neighborhood including our backyard, at John Rogers, the beaver pond and even city streets! Our backyard is populated by hordes of snow people (2) and for the first time in history of our families, we built an igloo! We packed the snow into a small cooler (i.e., Igloo) and made snow bricks, dozens of them. I thought we would never finish the job, but fortunately Jay came home early from work and took over the job of ice brick forming. The girls love it. The parents love it. Even Omi loves it. Who would of thought that igloo making is in our DNA.

With all that we had two very special Christmas moments. On Saturday night, when it was snowing like crazy, all of a sudden we heart loud music. We thought a neighbour had a party. But when we went outside, we heart that it was Christmas music and that it was coming from further away. We walked around in the falling snow, accompanied by music. It was very cool. On Sunday, then, we had carollers come to our house. It was a group of parents friends from Marlene's school. I never had carollers before. I thought that only existed in Martha Stewart's mind/world. It was really great.