State of Emergency

Ice covered tree by the front window

I'm going to start at the end, then go back to the begining, like a good indie film.

These are pictures from this morning.

Ice covered trees and bushes with branches steadily breaking off, and snow and ice falling from the trees creating an eerie background noise since yesterday morning.

The roads are treacherous, and it's no fun to play outside because it is so icy, and a tree could fall on you.

The governor has declared a state of emergency, most places are shut down, and people are just not leaving their homes if they don't need to.

The kids have been out of school all week, because of road conditions and power outages.

Luckily we still have power. Cell service is in and out, so leave a message or text, because we are not getting many incoming calls.

Now...
Back to the beginning.
Before the snow, the weather was nice enough that the kids pulled out the bikes for the first time since AZ.
It was awesome. A nice preview of what's to come in the spring.

The kids started Han Mu Do, a martial arts that our neighbor teaches twice a week in a studio nearby.

And then our perfect 3 days of snow Monday through Wednesday with lots of sledding, snowmen, snow ball fights, etc.

Nathan

Phoenix coyotes hat :)

Our dog Sosuke is staring out the front window

 
And now, flash-forward back to present.

We are stuck inside, Nathan home from work, after 3 days of dangerous and time consuming commutes, and trying to deliver mail on icy roads. We are now just waiting for the rain and 40 degree temperatures to melt all the snow and ice so we can get back to daily routines.

Washington 2011

On the ferry fall 2011, kids + friend

2011 was a crazy year for our family. We moved from Mesa Arizona to Auburn Washington in August, then to Maple Valley Washington in December.
I am going to try my hand at blogging to keep our family updated on pictures and major events.

After a tumultuous 5 months in a rental in Auburn, we exercised our tenant rights and moved out. We chose Maple Valley as our new town due to the great schools, and relatively short commute for Nathan to work.

We moved in the week after Christmas.

New rental. Perfect garage for Nathan's bike collection.

Back of house. Love that it looks like Amtyville in this picture.

Front room

Dining room

Living room

Kitchen

Stairs & entryway

Before moving, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Sam & Marens. Super yummy.
And we decorated gingerbread houses at our place while AJ was in town.
Awful, I did not get a picture of Ammon's gingerbread house. But it was awesome, and delicious. 
It was guarded by lots of Cinnamon and gummy bears, and sharks.
Then we hosted Christmas dinner at our almost empty rental in Auburn.

Ethan's Gingerbread house

 

Catalina's gingerbread adobe.

Discovered Fat Burger. And that Catalina's temporary hair dye is more permanent than temporary.

Discovered Ammon can look like Beiber.

Christmas was larger than anticipated due to many gifts in the mail from grandparents and Aunts.

Christmas was in the old rental home. It was really weird to have just our little family unit for Christmas day, and no driving around town to visit family. We lost power for about 4 hours, just after we had opened all the gifts. It worked out well, because we just took a post-chaos nap. We then spent the rest of Christmas day with Sam and Maren.

I love the Queen of Clean!

Hat from Grandma Heather.

Hair flower from Grandma Heather.

 New Rental January 1st 2012!

Back porch of new house, off to walk the Cedar River Trail.

Back side of secret gate that leads from our back yard to...

...here.

...then to street, that leads to trail.

Cedar River trail, 1//4 mile from our home. And the kids looking very 21 Jump street on the bridge.

Different day, different place. But so pretty. Dash Point Park sunset in October. It was so nice to see the sun and sky.