Our Christmas Break

We spent Christmas in Utah visiting Greg's family. We all had a good time. My Children really enjoyed the snow. Whether it was playing in Grandpa's front yard or our sledding trip.

This is Mitchell sledding.

This is William out in the snow

We had a nice quite Christmas morning. Then later on that evening we had more people join us. I think we had 24 for dinner.

Greg reading to Shelby and Wesley Christmas morning.

This picture was taken Christmas morning. She got all the jewelry including the ring pop, the bubbles, and the hair bows in her stocking. She had a great Christmas morning (by the way she dressed her self in all the jewelry).

Sorry, I was so late in posting this. I hope you all had a good Christmas also.
Congratulations Todd and Melissa.

Dryer Land......

Hello everyone..... A quick update from Skagit county.....We are still working out the knots in our backs from the sandbagging (a first for me-Lydia) that we did on Wednesday morning and things are somewhat better in our neighborhood. The new rain that we have received yesterday and today has brought the river back up and also the level of water in our ditches. But, nothing compared to what we experienced on Wednesday and Thursday (thankfully). We are all waiting for the rain to stop so that we can start the cleaning up process (parts of the roads are torn up, our gravel/pebble drive way is everywhere and uneven, parts of the bridge to the island is torn out ect..). Some of the clean up will paid by the property owners and also the covenant funds (so I hear..ummm?). We are very thankful and blessed that we were speared from getting water in our home.

Other news.. lets see... Sasha began dance classes this week (Skagit Dance Company) she audition for Hip-Hop on Thursday and she was also asked to audition for advanced Jazz. She will do this next Tuesday. Sasha has been very vocal about her sore legs and muscles these last couple of days. Kyle is busy with work. Mike is busy with work and soon we will both be busy outdoors (our plants took a hit during the winter snow storm and our front parking and gravel needs attention). Lydia is busy with work and keeping the carpets/home clean from all muck. I (Lydia) will be going to Olympia Washington in February. Six of my student's that went to Washington D.C. with me last summmer have been asked to present their presentation at this years Legislative Conference. Schools and legislators from all across the state will be present (this is a huge honor). My student's are grinning from ear to ear :) and I'm very proud of them!!!

My eyes are getting heavy so... I will close for now. Have a rested and wonderful Sunday!!!

Love , Lydia

Cat Update

The flood water has gone down and we have the pasture back. The silt that the flood brought may actually improve the quality of the pasture. There are a couple of fences that need repair work but all and all I think the flood was a benenfit.

I walked down to check out the pasture. There is still a lot of mud. As I was looking at all the deer tracks I noticed a set of cat tracks. LARGE cat tracks. It would seem that at least one of our furry long tailed neighbors is still with us. I will continue to carry a pistol when I'm out and about at night. Does that make me a poor neighbor? Mmmmmmmm

An interesting week !!

We figured out this week what you get when you have record snowfall followed by record rain fall. You get record flooding!!! This is a picture of our house and as you can see the road is completely flooded. And it is about 2 1/2 feet below our house. Luckily the survey when we bought the house said we were 4 feet above the 100 year flood. So I guess we'll have to wait 100 years before it our River gets this high again.
The Samish River is (or was) about 125 feet from our house, but as you can see it isn't right now!! Lucky for us it never made into our house but our neighbors a couple houses down weren't so lucky. My back is still sore from filling and lifting sand bangs. We have about 5 to 6 feet of water at each end of our road but finally the water is starting to drop but I still have to hike out in my fishing waiters to get to my truck the parked by the highway. I need to finish wating the BCS championship game so I'll talk to you later.

News!

I haven't blogged in a while, but I have some exciting news to share from Houston! Todd proposed to me on Christmas Eve and naturally I said yes! The wedding planning is in full swing as we are hoping for a June '09 wedding. Below is a picture of us on Christmas Eve (a couple of hours before the proposal) and of the beautiful ring he gave me!
~Melissa

Girls, where are you?

A couple of us brothers were talking the other night about how a couple of our daughters wanted to blog so we could all stay in touch. It seems the daughters have dissapeared off the grid while their dads have been blogging. I don't want to mention any names here, but come on girls. Let's see some blogs.
Love ya both!
Don't want to mention any names here:-)

New Years Day

We slept in this morning. This afternoon we fixed a yummy ham dinner for 9. It was a pepper incrusted ham from Hills. Wow was it good!

Tomorrow we are going over to Pasco for breakfast with Joe and Laura, then on to COSTCO. We're taking the truck in case we run into some shelving for basement.

Ed, remember your heart - don't let that exciting Iowa get out of control.

Happy New Years!

Its 3:25 AM and the last of our guest just left. It was a small but nice group this year. We had fewer fireworks but they beautiful and the Dutch Oven breakfast was scrumptous. We have a very nifty jigsaw puzzle about half done. All and all the new year is off to a good start. Mmmmm, I think it maybe bed time. Love Ya All - Good night - whoops Morning. - Popa