White Christmas

We're supposed to host Christmas Eve dinner and a Christmas Day open house. Right now, I'm wondering why we don't have Christmas in July. Most of my online orders are stuck at the distribution centers and we're not sure folks can make it to our house (hey, even the mail didn't arrive yesterday!).

It's been snowing all week with record lows (the lowest at our house was 9-degress fahrenheit (-12C)). We're quite happy that we're not trying to stay warm in a motorhome right now. The lowest we encountered while traveling in Europe was -14C. Not a fun night on metered electricity!

Blick from our back deck 12/21

As we look forward to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, my wish this year is for the roads to clear enough for folks to get here; for the snow to hold off so they aren't stuck here; for the packages to arrive - or at least be available for Dan to retrieve from distribution centers. But most of all, for each of you to have a very warm, Merry holiday with your family and friends.

I'm back!

For me, blogging isn't the same without pictures. Besides, you and I know the grandparents are only reading the blog to see pics of the grandkids.

Long story short, after upgrading to Vista, my flash card reader no longer worked. My attempts to fix it fell flat. Sony said that the laptop I'm using isn't rated for Windows Vista "Business" and that I would need to contact Microsoft for support. I didn't bother - Microsoft would just tell me it's an OEM issue and to contact Sony. I gave up.

Dan recently started bugging me. "Are you sure the issue wasn't fixed with SP2?" he'd ask. I finally relented and checked again - no luck. He ran a manual update cycle and Voila! A search of the Sony site generated, by Windows Updates found the missing drivers and installed them (though Vista still thinks they were not installed properly) and my flash card reader works again.

I'll make a few "historical" posts and back date accordingly. After all a ton has happened in the past 2.5 months.

But first, a weather update. This week brought winter cold (bitterly so) and snow! Yeah! We're really happy that we aren't trying to keep warm in a motorhome right now - though the condensation on our bathroom windows did freeze on the inside a couple mornings this week.

Saturday morning - the kids were thrilled to have slush to play in from the overnight weather pattern. Megan kept asking if she could build a snow angle ... but I managed to convince her the snow was too wet. Instead, she "snowplowed" the back deck.

Saturday morning slush fest

Saturday afternoon - the snow started at 12:00 and started sticking at 6:00 pm. Sunday morning, all of Megan's hard work "snowplowing" the deck was undone, replaced by fresh, powdery snow. About 3-4 inches worth. She was bummed that she couldn't make snowballs out of it.

Sunday morning wake up call

Monday-Wednesday the weather just turned COLD. Dan was awesome, putting up with my refusal to drive on our side streets, and played chaffeur, ferring me back and forth to work.

Forecasters promised 4-8 inches Wednesday (today), resulting in schools closing before the first flake fell (Northshore, Bellevue and Redmond to name a few of the districts). Needless to say, nothing happened all day in these regions.

At 5pm, I was on a conference call at home and heard this funny "ticking" noise. 20 minutes later, realized the skylights COVERED in snow! We got about 2.5 inches in 2 hours! It stopped around 7; but forecasters are promising another 2-4" overnight.

Wednesday night blick of our driveway, about 20-minutes after it started snowing.

Am hoping this stuff goes away for Christmas and New Years ...

Ciao!