A Construction Descruction

The little graham cracker houses did not last long!

Lon is having fun with his mini construction vehicles making the graham cracker houses into graham cracker dust!

Lon gets very serious with his work

Christmas!!

Christmas Eve, Miss Sarah came over with presents for Lon, Mark and I. Miss Sarah gave Lon the book, Olive the Other Reindeer, Pop-Up, Scratch and Sniff deluxe version! How cool is that? Mark and I now are the proud owners of a Mickey Mouse shaped wreath! It is very cute! We will find a good place to hang it up next year.

Later on, Christmas Eve, after Santa's arrival!

Since Lon is just now starting to learn that ALL presents are not for him (though most are) we still put all the presents out Christmas Eve. This year, Lon helped Daddy wrap the presents for Mommy and we put them directly under the tree. It was tough but he did not open them! Next year we might be able to put out all but Santa's presents as they arrive!

One last look before we went up to bed!

Christmas Morning! Mommy, I got the kitchen with the phone just like I wanted! Oh Santa!! I love you!

All the other presents had to wait till the kitchen was played with for a while. It is a very fun present! Lon is making me lots of good things to eat!

Lon is getting ready for Christmas dinner reading his new Italian cookbook.

Chong, Michelle, Brian and Kayla braved the icy nasty roads to help us celebrate Christmas! Chong thinks we feast every night, but it is just when his family joins us we truly feast!

Chong, the well-fed!

Michelle took this photo of the rest of us!

Lon is trying to open his Pez

My beautiful boy

Brian LOVED the new train table. He wanted to do nothing more than play with the trains.

We all had a great time at our Christmas dinner. The roast beast turned out well, the company was wonderful and we all got what we wanted for gifts! Lon was very happy with all his presents! He understands this whole Santa business now! It was wonderful watching him. Mark took lots and lots of movies!

Christmas Presents from Uncle Vasu and Auntie Harshita!

Uncle Vasu and Auntie Harshi are going to Las Vegas on Christmas Eve. They brought over Lon's gift this afternoon.

Uncle Vasu got him a cool transformer type van. It is very cool.

Next was the gift that Auntie Harshi picked out.

A Radio Control Truck!

Lon controls the car very well. He is having lots of fun with his truck

The boys tried to see if the truck worked in snow. Not so good. Lon loves his truck, he wanted to sleep with his truck. I took it out of the bed after he fell asleep. --Vasu, he does love the transformer van too. He played with that all evening.

Starting Lon Early!

Daddy brought Lon out in the snow to help dig a path.

Lon had a good time outside. Shoveling snow is fun when it can be a game.

Disaster in GingerTown!

Things started off well. Lon and I went to Costco awhile ago and got our gingerbread house kit. The last two years those have been PERFECT.

Lon wanted to build it since last week. Today I brought it out. The excitement is starting to build!

It looks so beautiful!

Unwrapping the candies

Lon gets to do some frosting work on the little trees

Now on to decorating. Lon is doing great work!

THEN DISASTER STRUCK!

The roof started caving in! This had not ever happened with the previous kits!

WHAT? Can you fix it???

I am not sure if I can fix it...

NO!NO! NO! FIX IT MOMMY! MOMMY CAN FIX ANYTHING!

I took Mark's car and braved the icy roads looking for a new kit. No luck. I got some graham crackers and white chocolate, and we used some of the left over candies from the other kit and made these. One box of graham crackers makes 3 houses.

Mommy got the brilliant idea of using hot glue. Since it was a smashing house anyway, what the heck. Hot glue fixes everything!

Deep Snow!

It is so pretty outside!

The snow kept coming down.

I woke up and looked at the snow, thinking this is nice, but it will all melt off soon. Which led me to think it would get heavier. Which led to my deck is not so great, perhaps I should get some of this weight off my deck now before the snow gets heavy.

After getting Lon some breakfast, and turning on the Wiggles, I did just that. It was not super clear, but the deck would be in less danger of collapse.

Icicles on the car!

Pretty

We were not going anywhere soon...

I know I promised Lots of pictures of Lon and they are coming, but here is a quick pic..

The luminarios buried in the snow.

More Snow!

This is very unusual for the Seattle area. I do not remember ever seeing this much snow for this long. People are talking about a storm in '56. The '96 storm and the '90 storm did not last this long. They are talking that the snow will be here at least till after Christmas. I am going to call everyone we invited to dinner and cancel. We will have another party later. Even if for some reason it warms up and the snow starts to melt away, there is just too much of it for it all to go away.
Mark shoveling off our walk. It was a noble effort, but it was not destined to stay clear for long. If anyone saw the Seahawks game, yes, it really was snowing that much here. On our side of the lake it just kept snowing and so far, has not stopped. It is still snowing right now at 11:30pm




My little snow covered bear!



I made Lon fun pancakes and bacon for breakfast.

Even though the snow kept us inside most of today, we did do some fun things. We made chex mix, LOTS of chex mix. HEAVY on the peanuts and the Worcestershire sauce. Yummy!

We put together neighbor trays of cookies. We delivered to all the neighbors we can walk to. The neighbors I have to drive to will be delivered as soon as I can drive!

I will post a close up of our tray with the list of cookies on it, so I can remember what I did this year for next year.

The measure stick at noon.

The measure stick at 11 pm. I could not get it all the way down to the table! It is close though.

Our deck chairs.

The new LED lights are not warm enough to melt the snow. It is a pretty effect!

Tonight's view of the luminarios. Almost all under snow! Tomorrow they will probably be all under the snow.

Someone was asking me why people are so freaked out by the snow here. Yep, people are weirded out by this much snow. There is no preparations for this much snow, this long. When I lived in Alaska, I put snow tires on my car in November (or earlier). I had chains in the trunk, along with bags of sand. There were people in my neighborhood who had personal snow plows that kept the side street/driveways clear. I do not have snow tires for my car. I no longer own chains as I loaned them to someone and they never came back. No great loss, until this storm. I do not know a soul in my neighborhood who owns a snowplow. The news was making a big deal of the wind that never came. They told everyone to prepare for massive power outages, I am prepared as I can be for that, but it did scare some people I know. This is why it is different here. There is no need for the city to own snow plows for an event like this. If this happens once every 50 years or so, people will cope as best they can. If this happens next year too, then we should start looking into getting the city better equipped. Our neighborhood will not get plowed out. We have compact snow and ice on the street. It is not safe for me to drive on. Lon is staying home. Tomorrow, I promise LOTS of pictures of Lon!