15" of snow, 3 missed Blazer games, 2 Christmas celebrations, and a Turkey in a Pear Tree

All that snow I mentioned in last week's blog...it didn't go anywhere. For a long time. In fact, more snow accumulated onto it. By Monday, the city of Portland had achieved the most snow in December in 40 years.

As is typically the case in Portland during periods of snow, the town was paralyzed and shut down. I didn't even try to go into work Monday - Wednesday, not after it took me 2o minutes to drive a half mile to Safeway. Nope, sticking close to home and working from the confines of my laptop seemed a good idea indeed.

On Tuesday, however, my week of work productivity from home came to a screeching halt. The power went off. We had already endured no cable, mail pick-up, or garbabe pick-up (in 2 weeks). Power is another thing indeed. We packed up the family, lunched at El Tapatio, and retreated to the in-laws. Course, Luis got stuck outside their house trying to pull a U-ie to park.

The power that was restored Tuesday evening went off again for another 4 hours Wednesday afternoon. This time we made due on our own. We busted out board games for the kids (Siena is quite adept at Memory) and the kids played in the snow. Mason LOVES playing in the snow, even if it does go up to his thighs. We even made our first fire in the fireplace.

YaYa was bound and determined not to miss Christmas eve at our house so she and Papa Ron got in their Acura sled and skated down to our place.

YaYa came with gifts and cookies in tow, much to Mason's delight. And clearly the three of them coordinated their outfits beforehand.

Luis has become a master brewer of gluhwein over these holidays. For those unfamiliar with gluhwein, it is essentially red wine with holiday spieces heated in, such as lemon, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Good stuff.

Mason of course assisted in the Christmas eve food preparation while his little sister antisocially played GameBoy in the living room.

Aaahhhh yes. The staple of the Cruz family holiday decore...the "Fragile" lamp...luckily Mason hasn't yet started stroking it affectionately...

I'm sure if you were to ask these two what the best part of Christmas is, they'd say the presents. We haven't yet successfully instilled the whole "giving is better than receiving" and "the holidays are about celebrating the birth of Christ" thing. We're working on it but kids will be kids.

Mason LOVES his new tool box and tools. He took them to bed with him Christmas eve and has been fixing things around the house ever since.

So, Luis made his gluhwein. After the wine has successfully stewed and all of the spices have been taken into the wine, the next step is to strain out the orange and other thicker flavorings. Luis though, apparently thinking he was straining pasta, strained his wine over the kitchen sink with no receptical to catch the cleanly strained wine. After a shout of "WHAT AM I DOING?!?", all that was left of his blessed gluhwein was one small juice glass that the four adults had to share. Well, nothing like watching YaYa try to figure out how a toy helicopter works...she even had to put on her glasses.

This is our second fire of the day...and our second fire EVER! This fire place thing isn't too bad. Too bad our fireplace is butt-ugly!

The new toys...this is Mason's car-making kit.

Christmas morning.

Santa Clause brought Siena a new art table that both kids like playing with. Mom likes having all of the coloring books and art supplies in one place.

Siena also LOVED the Brio train tracks that auntie Lou gave the kids. Now we can make some cool track configurations.

I baked my first turkey ever, due to Fred Meyer not having the pre-made kind. This is our 19lb monstrosity. I managed to get the neck out...but didn't know where to find the giblets. It was like dissection in high school biology. This raw food prep isn't exactly my thing...

The Cruz clan came over Christmas day. Here's Luis and the girls playing with Siena's new dress-up dolls...

We took this picture out of utter amazement that all 5 kids were sitting at the table and eating together...

Out of all the new toys that Mason, Siena, and Andre had, what do they bust out but Mason's 2 year old race track...go figure.

Back to important things, like my turkey! Somehow I ended up with carving duties too. The dissection continues...

Yesterday (aka Saturday), I took the kids to visit my friend Laura, in town from California staying with her parents. She and her husband Aaron have an 8 month old baby boy, Evan, who I got to meet for the first time. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures but he's a cutie!

We also went over to Jose and Gloria's last night to celebrate my sister-in-law Sara's birthday.

They brought their new toy, the Wii, which is a BLAST! Here's Siena boxing (with Daddy providing proper punching instructions)...I'm not sure that a boxing Siena is a good thing but whatever...

The group last night at the b-day party, minus Joel who was taking the picture.

And Sara's new DISCO jacket!!! Stayin' alive...Stayin' alive...ah ha ha ha Stayin' alive...

There was also a rip-roaring dominoes game going on last night, where Jr and I almost mounted a come back of amazing proportions. Alas, we came up just short...

And for those (cousin Craig) commenting that video is needed on the blog...here you go! Here's Mason competing in his first ever Wii boxing match! Muhammed Ali, watch out!

Bobo - I don't think we're in Oregon anymore...

We got 6 inches of snow yesterday. 6 inches! It didn't stop all day! I'm sure to many, that is a miniscule amount, certainly nothing to blog about. However, to us Oregonians that rarely see more than an inch or two in any given year, its as though we were all swept up in a cataclysmic tornado and transplanted in northern Minnesota.

And no, we haven't left the house this weekend aside from a trip to Fred Meyer and Safeway - with chains.

If you read the previous blog, and who didn't since we were all snowed in, I'm sure you saw that we had snow last weekend as well. A whole week of this stuff is very un-Oregon like. I had the good fortune of being able to transplant myself to San Francisco Monday - Wednesday for CPE so as to avoid some of the weather woes for at least a few days.

Mentor was kind enough to put us up at the hotel of our conference - the Ritz Carlton. There were many highlights:

-The iPod dock/alarm clock

-Chocolate on the turned-down bed every night.

-The Robe. Oh yes, the OFFICIAL Ritz Carlton Robe!

-Chinatown within walking distance, and the very tasty Chinese food that went with it.

And a few lowlights:

-Luis having me paged in front of the whole seminar as he received a mysterious call from my cellphone and thought it was stolen.

-Having to stay up late working on Irish financial statements.

-Wondering if we were going to make it home Wednesday with the dire weather predictions (which did not come to fruition).

Luis was busy too. In his time at home, he's taken to various home improvement projects, two of which are pictorally depicted below:

So, we're holed up at home, like most people in the area. We have no idea what we're going to eat for dinner but do know that we're tired of watching both Wall-e and Storm Tracker 2. Unfortunately, there is no sign of this stuff going anywhere until at least Tuesday. Guess its back to Facebook for me!

From the Station that Brought You WINTER STORM 2008...

I was skeptical. Very skeptical. 96.4%* of the time, when weathermen predict snow in the Portland metro area, particularly on the valley floor, there is nothing. This percentage was even higher when I was in school wanting nothing more than a school closure to get me out of a biology test.

I'm woman enough to admit when I'm wrong...as I was this time. My snow skepticism will still remain but for now, we've got a snow spectacle outside.
On a Sunday, this is not so bad. We simply bundled up and went out to play.
Sadly, this is only the second time the kids have been able to wear their snow suits. The only other time was a trip we made up to Snow Bunny last spring, when it was about 70 degrees and the thick snow suits weren't even really needed.

We didn't really have much accumulation of snow last year so its been a good two years since the kids have really been outside to play in snow. Obviously they have very little recollection of the last time. I showed them how to make snow angels and we attempted a snow man but alas, the snow was too powdery.

There's my trio walking in the snow. We were looking for a good sledding hill, of which there's several in our neighborhood. Cars had carved up most of the good ones and the snow was too thick (I can't believe I'm saying that) on a few others for much fast action.

We learned that Mason is our fair-weather friend. He didn't like it snowing in his face and wanted to "go home". Siena was completely unphased by any of it and enjoyed every minute. Course, that hasn't stopped Mason from begging to go back out this afternoon.

We were supposed to go up to YaYa and Papa Ron's today to watch our favorite Christmas movie, "Christmas Vacation" and decorating cookies. Obviously that didn't happen. Hopefully next weekend.

Luis was employed for 2 days this week, serving as a medical guinea pig for my Uncle Bruce and his new cardiac ultrasound machine.

Supposidly I'm to go to San Francisco tomorrow for CPE. Looks to be an intersting commute tomorrow morning...

Pizza.

The irony about this being a total pizza weekend - Papa Ron doesn't really like pizza.

It all started Friday evening. We usually don't cook on Friday nights. It had been a couple of months since we had had pizza so Schmitza seemed like a good idea.

Saturday morning, we went to my niece Kendra's dance recital at the Convention Center. As it took us a while to find the right place within the large Convention Center, we missed Kendra's performance. Since there was no point in sticking around, we thought we'd at least see Santa since the recital was at the Festival of Trees and Santa Clause was there. Well, Siena was tired and standing in line wasn't working well, so we decided to go home. The outing was a bust.

On the way home, we passed Pietro's Pizza and Mason mentioned that it had been a while since we went there and that he liked that place. We knew the next few weekends would be busy and that if we were going to take them, it would have to be that night.

In the meantime, Luis and the kids put up the outdoor Christmas lights...
Then we hit Pietro's. Unbelieveably, the pizza is quite good. The kids like the games. And of course, the Batmobile.
We also discovered how much Mason, the boy that only eats 3 foods, likes spaghetti.

Mason hit the Jackpot on 3 different games that spit out tickets. As we were leaving, Luis and I were trying to figure out a way to smuggle that kid into Vegas...and they of course got some toys with their 416 tickets.

Fast-forward to Sunday. We went to the DeCicco's to decorate Christmas cookies and watch the Blazers narrowly beat Toronto by a point. It should be noted that the winning basket by the Blazers generated enough enthusiasm in the room for Siena's pants to fall off.

For lunch - PIZZA!

Here's Chris with Miss Giada.

Apparently we failed to mention to Mason and Siena that the decorating process wasn't purely for their own cookie-eating enjoyment. One cookie decorated was one cookie in the mouth...

Speaking of the mouth...

And Siena's decorating abilities...

And we finally were able to visit Santa. Today he was at Pioneer Place!

Mason told Santa that he wanted a "Hummer Car" for Christmas. Siena was mostly silent but smiley.

After Santa and cookies was Ryder's birthday party.

Here's the party-kids eating their dinner! And for dinner...PIZZA!!!

Siena is on the left, behind her hat.

Some friends brought over their new little puppy. He was a hit!

I couldn't resist the picture of Mason under the coffee table...

Daddy. Nannies... the party Cruzes. Or maybe they're just pondering the odds that there would be pizza a 4th time this weekend!

When we got home, the kids checked out their party favors. I think Mason was pleased with his stickers.

What a busy weekend but it was all so much fun. And the kids are sure sleeping good tonight!