Huge Snowstorm

As with much of the country, Oregon has had lots and lots of snow lately. We've had snow, ice, and freezing rain for 9 days now. It hasn't been over the freezing temperature mark either, and has gotten as low as the teens. Yesterday, it snowed for 14 hours straight and we got 8 inches. Then came the freezing rain to coat the top of the snow with half an inch of ice. I thought I'd share some pictures and videos with you.

In this one, you can see the bird bath filled up with snow. I think it looks kind of like a pie. You can also see that the pond is frozen over. In fact, the birds were walking on it.

In this one, you can see how much snow piled up on our car. That was after scraping it off once the day before and driving to the grocery store. You can hear that there is a 1/2 inch layer of ice on the top. Oh, and it was taken through a screen. Yeah, I didn't want to go out in the 23 degree weather!

This was taken to show the colored icicles. They really did look prettier in person. It was hard to get a picture that captured what it really looked like.






Our house with 8 inches of snow.













This is a gazebo in a park in the center of town.













Icicles and Christmas decorations.

Thanksgiving with the Fam

We went to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. I'm sure it was crowded at most airports, but ours was eerily calm for some reason. Our flight was at 8pm, but being that it was "the most heavily traveled day of the year", we decided to arrive at 4pm. Yes, the parking lot was very full and we had to park in the overflow economy lot, which is as far away as you can get, but there was barely a line to check our luggage, a short line through security, and we got to our gate with 3 1/2 hours to kill. Sheesh. However, I'd rather do that than to arrive 2 hours ahead and find long lines in both places and be all stressed out. So naturally we ate, then shopped, then pottied, then shopped, then sat, then walked around, then pottied, then sat. It was fine.

Had a great time with the family. It was nice going from 50 degrees and drizzle to 70 degrees and sun. I tried to soak up as much of it as I could. There were 10 of us for dinner. I have 2 brothers with wives, 2 nephews, my parents, and of course me and the Hubbs. It's hard to get us ALL together at the same time, so it was really nice. I think the last time was in Vegas in 2005. That was for my husband's and eldest brother's 50th birthdays, which are a week apart.

Ok, here's the problem. I have some pictures but not all of them. I have a 4GB memory card in my Canon digital camera, and after 2 years and over 1,000 pictures, it decided to throw a "Memory Card Error" on me -- AFTER I took a bunch of pictures over the Thanksgiving weekend. After researching, I discovered that I have to buy a card reader (which I never heard of before) to get the pictures off of it and on to my computer, but it's not guaranteed that it'll work. It depends on how bad the data was corrupted. Darn technology. I thought I liked it. Anyway, we went to Walgreens and bought another card so I could take pictures of what remained of the weekend.

Here are a few shots of our trip to Sedona. It's just beautiful. My Grandparents lived in Arizona when I was growing up, so we'd drive there from Los Angeles often, and I've always loved going to Sedona, Flagstaff, and the Grand Canyon. There is a church built into the rocks that is so pretty that I'm going to make a separate post about it. (Yes, I know I'm slow at posting and I haven't even finished my Alaska cruise series yet, but bear with me!) As always, click the pictures to make them bigger. These are best viewed BIG. They are really gorgeous.










































































Edited to add: I had gotten a new Flip Video camera just before the trip (I LOVE IT, and will make a post about it later). I was playing with the software it comes with, and here's what I made.