First Ski trip '12

We've been off school and work for nearly two weeks now.  Partially due to a blizzard dumping 2 feet of snow on us and we FINALLY made it skiing today!  Acacia out grew her boots and so did Chris.  Luckily, Chris could wear Acacia's old ones, but this left Acacia bootless.  We went anyway.  I have come to the realization that owning your own skies is not only a money savers but it saves you a significant amount of hassle in completing the necessary paper work and fighting with other beginner skiers, with no space what so ever to find what you need, bring it to the correct line for proper height, weight and skill level adjustments and get out of there and onto the slopes .... all without sweating your bootie off.  She will have new boots before the next ski trip ... no matter what the cost.

It was just the four of us and it was a beautiful day.  We were on the slopes by 10:30/45a, there were no lines and the weather was perfect.

 We did need to leave a bit early to get Randy to the lab by a specific time and this proved to be a good thing as the lines after lunch were CRAZY!!  They do move pretty fast with the high speed lift they have but they were so long the kids would start to get squirrelly waiting and we would end up picking them up off the ground before someone would ski over their hand or something.  All is all, it was a good day.  Can't wait to go again!

Christmas '12

Christmas '12.  I don't really know where to start. 

A few weeks ago, I got a kind of frantic call at work from Acacia.  But, the phone kept cutting out.  Finally she resorted to a text.  It read .. "the tree fell over".  I got home in about 30 minutes and sure enough ... it's laying on it's side.

She was sure that someone had broken into the house, crashing through the window.  So, she did what any mature 11 year old, home alone would do when they were sure someone just came crashing through the window ... she grabbed a chair and in killer lion tamer fashion went into the room to see who was causing such a ruckus!!

No amount of Baileys or mango rum made un decorating and then redecorating the tree fun for me.

Acacia was scheduled to volunteer at church on Sunday we went to Christmas Eve service on Sunday.  This service was a little different as we were given a quiz!  Sadly, most of us actually got some questions wrong but it was done in fun and even Chris had a good time.

After church we spent some pathetic hours watching the Steelers loss ... again.  Then Monday Acacia and I cooked ALL day!  We made a quiche, spinach and tortilla soup, scalloped potatoes, green bean casserole, chocolate cup cakes, homemade peanut butter frosting and sugar cookies.  And then I wrapped ....

 

 Over all it was pretty casual and low key this year.  With the snow days tacked on to the beginning of break we managed to get stuff done.  One thing we did not do was our annual family Christmas card.  I am still working on finding the perfect family photo and at this point you'll end up with a New Years card or perhaps even a MLK Jr Day card at the rate I am going .

But, after watching A Christmas Story we prepped for Santa and everyone headed for bed!

T'was the night before Christmas and Chris asked ... "How is Santa going to get down the chimney if we have all this stuff in it to start a fire?"

 Satisfied with the answer Acacia gave him (dah ... magic.) everyone went to bed.

All ready for tomorrow.  AND we are going to bed BEFORE midnight!!

Starting the fire, Christmas morning.

The first gifts ....

Boom box from Auntie Valerie!!  SCORE!!!
Just like the one I had so I know how to work it!!

VERY cool soccer clock!!

Acacia's basket of pamper me goodies!

New bathrobes for everyone.
No more Hugh Hefner look from Chris.

All done!!  Time to cook!

Click here to see all the pictures from Christmas '12.

Snow '12

Our first snow fall of the season proved pretty painless.  

 Enough to go sledding and made a snowman ... 

......and snow dog.

 The next snow fall proved to be CRAZY!!  The schools were closed before it even started to snow.

It started to come down around 7p Wednesday night.  I woke up to this.  Not too bad.

 But, I could not see out of my window as the snow had blown against the screen and stayed there.  These shots are of my bedroom window.  It it completely covered in snow.

The snow continued to fall throughout the day and again into the night.  Around 3p it was announced ... no school again tomorrow.  Christmas break started two day earlier than planned.

  This the our back yard.  I love when the snow lays on the tree branches.

Here we are in front of the house.  Just behind me to the left is a bush that we put Christmas lights in, but now it is covered with snow.  It does look cool at night when it's light up.

The snow plow makes a rather large snow pile in the cul du sac
 and the kids get pretty creative  with it.  This is Acacia and Caitlyn
 in one of the tunnels.

This is the back of the snow pile.  You can see some more of the tunnels.

Chris, Dad and I went sledding.  We spent a lot of time building this ramp you can barely see.  The snow was pretty fluffy so when we hit the jump, we just poofed right through it.  Then Randy started bringing down large snow chunks from the top of the hill.  We managed to make a reasonable jump but then had a terrible time actually hitting the jump.  I have about 5 shots of Chris slicing or dog legging the thing until he finally nailed it!!  Totally air born as you can see here.

The back of the house.

Chris' snow angel ... Although, I think I see a tail ...

These are some of our neighbors tress with the lights under the snow.  I just love how this looks.

Click here to see all our snow pictures!

Our Tree '12

This year, with no snow yet, we headed out to find the perfect tree.  We have this great place to get them right here in Oregon.  Santa and Mrs. Clause are there for photos!  There is a shop where you can watch them make wreaths or buy all kinds of ornaments.  We got hot apple cider and pop corn and watched this man make bowls from wood (stuff Uncle Billy would totally get into)!  

Well, then it started to rain.  :(  But, what the heck.  I had not showered yet.  What's a little rain?  It took us FOR EVER to decide on a tree.  At first everyone was really looking for a good one but then it turned into - just pick one already and let's get out of the rain!!!  We finally found the perfect tree.  Dad cut it down with barely any assistance from Chris and we dragged it through the mud to pay for it.

 The stick is from last years tree.  This way we know how tall the tree can be!

Chris is keeping Dad dry while he cuts the tree down.

Now Chris is playing with the umbrella...

Now Chris is playing with the camera ...

We paid for the tree and got it home.  We set it up in the garage and a couple hours later went to bring it into the house.  The tree stand was totally filled with water that had run off the tree!

The kids and I decorated the tree on Monday and on Thursday ... it fell over.  Yep.  Just fell right over.  Acacia was home alone and heard this HUGE crashing sound and glass breaking and was sure that someone  broke into the house.  So, logically she grabbed the chair she was sitting in and went to defend the house!

I had to un-decorate and re-decorate the tree Friday night.  It's not as much fun the second time around.  No matter how much eggnog, coffee and Baileys, or Mango run smoothie you drink ... it still was a pain in the butt!

Thanksgiving '12

Last year we started a new Learish family tradition.  We take the family on a little mini trip somewhere.  Last year we visited Chicago and this year we headed to Minneapolis.  We got off to a pretty late start on Wednesday and had to call the hotel so they would not give our room away.  As we pulled into the city it was like a ghost town!  No cars or people.  It was almost eeerrrryyy.  Then I saw "the fishy building".  It was a HUGE sky scrapper building and the top like 10 floors was all lite up like a fish tank!  The fish were swimming around and it looked very real.  I tried to take some pictures of it but my camera did not have the proper settings to do it.  Anyway, we got checked in and headed to our room.  We were on the 22nd floor and as luck would have it, we have the perfect view of the fishy building!  The kids were pretty wound up at this point but we all managed to go to bed.

Click to see a video of the fishy building (Target Building).

Thanksgiving day we had planned on going to the Mall of America to see Lego Land and the Aquarium but when we double checked the web site it said they were closed on Thanksgiving day.  So, plan B.  It was such a super nice day we decided to take a walking tour of an art garden that was close to the hotel.

This is Acacia trying to eat the extra large cherry we found on this enormous spoon.

After the park we walked back to the hotel for our Thanksgiving meal.  The hotel had this KILLER spread!  All the appetizers, salads, shrimp, cheese and crackers, etc were on a buffet. We just helped ourselves and when we were ready for the main course we just let the server know.  They brought out family style turkey platter, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy  green beans, etc.  It was just like being at home (but no cooking or cleaning)!!  They kept bringing out more and more until we said we were done.  Then it was back to the dessert buffet.  Once we had our fill and asked for the check the server realized we were hotel guests and told us that he would save us a bunch of left overs so we could have turkey sandwiches or whatever later that night or tomorrow.  He also set aside an entire apple pie for us!!  We must have done something really nice because the also gave us two free in room movie passes!!

In an attempt to burn off some of the tryptophan we just consumed we walked to the river to see this amazing Stone Bridge and then go ice skating.  It started snowing while we were ice skating (like blizzard like conditions) and our walk back was a bit chilly!!

We took advantage of the swimming pool, hot tub and sauna before retiring to our room for more turkey, apple pie and an in room movie and then off to bed!

Day two - BLACK FRIDAY!  Of course, this is the day we go to the Mall of America. Once we arrived and found the Aquarium we realized that it was in fact open the day before.  This was a bit of an irritation but we got past it since the weather was so nice the day before for our walk through the park.  The aquarium was pretty cool with this super long under water tunnel.  We were allowed to go through as many times as we wanted and ended up going through at least three times.

Underwater tunnel

This is Chris at the Lego wall in Lego Land.

We spent the entire day at the mall.  Between the Aquarium (part of the mall), the indoor theme park (ride all day wrist bands), Lego Land and the least amount of actually shopping I've ever done at a mall we filled the entire day, easy.  Back to the hotel for more swimming, movies, etc .... 

At the hotel, in the lobby.

Day Three - we checked out of the hotel and walked to Macy's to see Santa Land.  WOW!  This was like It's a Small World but with a Christmas theme.  We were not in a boat either ... We walked through these amazing scenes of Christmas.  Then watched a puppet show.

Macy's Christmas Land

Hay!  It's a requirement to get your photo with Santa!

After Christmas Land, we drove back to the river to go to the Mill City Museum.  THIS was sooooo cool!  What an amazing piece of history!  We started with a tour of the mill by sitting in a huge freight elevator that traveled 8 floors.  Each stop educated us on a different part of the mill and the history of it.  I never knew that flour dust was highly flammable ....

Biggest box of Bisquick I ever saw.

On our way home we stopped at a Best Buy and spent a bit of money on some tech stuff as we thought there was not sales tax in the state of MN.  Turns out, there is.  But, we bought stuff anyway!  :)

To see the slide show of all the pictures from our trip, click this link.

Slideshow of Minneapolis