All I Want For Christmas...

...is "200 dollars" and a bunch of other stuff, too.

Polar Express

On December 9th, our family took a ride on the Polar Express. The Mt. Hood Railway transforms itself into the storied train for the holiday season. It is a bit of a haul out to Hood River from Salem, and the drive was made worse by torrential downpours. We were thinking we might need a ride on the Polar Ark instead, it was coming down so hard!

"All Aboard!" - Megan made sure her ticket was good and punched.

The train took us to Santa's Village, where we saw elves working on toys (actually, the factory workers in Hood River wearing elf hats - so awesome!). Then Santa came on board, gave us a bell, we read the story and had some hot chocolate.

It all left Liam a little tired, but we dragged him to the pizza place across the street afterward anyway. You get hungry when traveling to the North Pole!

O Tannenbaum!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was on my way home from a 15 mile run with the Gov Cup group. It was a blustery day and as I approached my turn off of Skyline, I spotted a large pine branch blocking the north bound traffic. As I got closer, I realized that it wasn't just a downed branch, but rather a Christmas tree.

I stopped the truck and dragged the tree to the side of the road. Of course, I didn't want to be stealing the tree from some unfortunate family, so I waited by the side of the road for the next ten minutes, but the street was dead; nobody came by.

Woohoo - finders keepers! Free Tree for the Smith family! It needed a good hose down and the trunk was a little wonky, but otherwise, not a bad find. I think it must have fallen off one of the trucks from all the Christmas tree farms down here. Either that, or it really was some poor family's tree and they didn't come back in time to get it. I would feel a little bad about the latter, but what can I say now, except maybe, "Tie your tree down better next year, suckers!"

The kids were so excited we decorated it that afternoon - it was still dripping from its hose-down.
Megan and Liam had very different attitudes toward decorating the tree. I said the ugly ones should go in the back. Every ornament Liam pulled out he thought belonged in the back. Megan wanted all of hers in the front. Even when I would tell her it was an ugly one (I have a lot of ugly ones), Megan would say, "how about we hang it on the side?" So we didn't have much trouble decorating ALL sides of the tree.

Not too bad for free!

Thanksgiving

This year I was on call and it was just the four of us at home for Thanksgiving. A very low key day with a few art projects and dinner in our sweats and PJ's!


I am thankful for a great day with the family.

Snow!

Monday we woke up to a dusting of snow. Poor, snow deprived Liam was so excited,"Oh my gosh! There's a ton of snow!"

Megan wasn't much better: "Can we go build a snowman?"

We settled for making footprints and eating snow off the deck.

Just Beachy

The first weekend in November, we were very generously offered the use of a friend's beach house in Walport.

The house had an almost eery location, situated right on the dunes, with huge mounds of sand piling up around the walls and doors. But it made for a lovely view.
It also made for great sledding!

Annie and Liam getting good speed

We were joined by our friends Annie, Garrick and Lilian. They thought they were getting a free beach weekend, but really we were getting free babysitting! They kindly watched our kids while Mac and I got in a long run. They seemed to find plenty of things to keep the kids busy out by the beach.

A log fort!

Very cold water!

Megan (5 3/4), Lilian (10 mo), and Liam (3 3/4)

Feel The Love

Poor Liam!