December Flashback

I just have to report some of our fun family adventures for December! On Saturday, December 20th, we had a Christmas Party for Bryan's work which we were looking forward to. I was excited to meet some of the people he talks about and we have not actually been out together for a long time with the crazy year we had! Well the weather was very interesting that whole week before. Bryan was not able to work almost the whole week and the roads were very icy and full of snow. He even wore jeans that night because he knew we would need chains to get there! But, we were able to make it through and had a pretty good time. We had Christmas that day with the boys since we weren't going to have another morning before we left for California. We had a fun day opening presents and playing with the Wii which of course was a big hit!

We got home late and exhausted and all settled in for a good nights sleep. When we got up we had no electricity and it was getting colder! The trees were covered with ice after the rain and it was actually quite beauitful to look at! Talk about a winter wonderland! This is one of the trees just by our front door and the whole neigborhood was covered with ice trees!

It was sleeting, and snowing on and off so we all bunkered down in the family room where we were so blessed to have a working gas fireplace! In the afternoon we decided to venture out for some emergency lighting and extra batteries. (we were told this never happens here so we weren't so prepared as we would of liked) We had lunch, ran a few errands then came home. We hung a quilt over the doorway to the family room to really heat the room and made beds for all of us in there. Of course being 5 and 7 the boys that this was the best thing ever! The rest of the house got down to just 44 degrees but we were pretty warm and toasty in front of the fireplace! All night long, we heard ice breaking off the trees and falling on the house, it was a little scary! We have some limbs down in the backyard but lucikly there was no damage. When we woke up the next morning, there was still no power so we decided to just take off early on our trip which we did! We drove to Saramento that day and then pulled into Yucaipa at noon the next day to start our Christmas vacation!

I guess for our first year here, now we know how bad it can get! Everyone swears this is not normal for Salem but they sure did enjoy the white Christmas!

By the way, one of the boys took the picture of us, the camera was pretty heavy so they come out pretty crooked but they are getting the hang of it! It comes in handy because there are so few pictures of just Bryan and I!! I can't believe this year we will celebrate our 10th year of marriage!