Southern CA grandchildren enjoy winter in OR

Sarah looks the hill over, then starts down the hill followed by a crash.

Noah looks the hill over...

goes over the jump he and his dad constructed...then reaches the bottom safely.

Noah makes an ice fort.

Ice tastes so good, at least Sarah thinks so.

Winter continues

We are now experiencing the third snowiest winter in the recorded history of the state of Oregon. Eric gets involved in shoveling the sidewalk.

In order to get out, we need to have chains on our tires. Salem only has 30 trucks with snowplows and sand/gravel spreaders. Our road has not seen one of them for days. But our road leads to one that has been taken care of, so off we went to do some shopping.

Besides all the extra work snow brings, the beauty of the fresh snow is wonderful to observe.

And while ice is pretty treacherous, it coats the trees and allows them to glisten.

Winter comes to Salem

Snow is a rare thing here in Salem, so when it comes, there are a variety of responses. When we arrived at church yesterday, there was a group making a snowman that turned out to be at least 5 feet tall. The children in my preschool class at church kept bringing up the subject of going outside to play in it. Many stayed home from church because there are a lot of fears related to driving in the stuff. By evening, it was snowing at a good clip with the wind blowing, too. I went online to see if the schools had posted whether or not they would be closed on Monday and was pleased to see that there would be no school. But this morning I had to venture out to get the following photos to document what's happening here at our house.

This is what Molly does on a cold, winter day (or any other day for that matter).

Although it was cold (21 degrees), taking these pics, this shot makes it worth it.

It appears from the amount of snow on our deck railings that we got 2 inches.

Our neighbors are having fun on our hill (watch out for the shed at the bottom!).

The plow made it halfway up the hill but then turned around.

This is what happened when I took a photo with flash last night.