Wet Winter

It's been a while.  Things have happened.  We've seen the many forms of Portland winter, many kid activities, a march, many days out of school, and a big indoor waterpark.  Needless to say, we're looking forward to warmer, drier days.  We did officially schedule our 2nd sabbatical - 8+ weeks off work - for the late summer/early fall.  Lots of travel planning in our very near future, but we're already anticipating visiting our European friends and places familiar and new. I'll just let pictures do the rest of the talking.

We got a lot of snow and ice over the course of December and January.  Lily's dance recital was delayed and she ended up dancing solo in front of a crowd of about fifty.  She claimed stage fright, but she was great and got huge cheers!  Go Lily!

We got hit with almost a foot of snow in early January and got to go sledding in the neighborhood and have big snowball fights.  The streets were a mess and traffic was quiet for a few days, it took over a week for it to melt vs. the usual day or two.  We were definitely ready for it to disappear.

Change of pace with silly Paul.  He's becoming quite the goofy-face artist.

At the Portland Womens' March with ~100,000 of our closest friends.  Glad we could get out and make our voices heard in a really positive environment.  

 Another change of pace with the twins in their homemade "bunk bed" made of tumbling mats and bedside tables.  The first version was rejected due to poor engineering, but this version lasted a few days.  

We surprised the kids with an overnight trip to Great Wolf Lodge, a huge indoor waterpark slash kid heaven.  We picked up the twins and then pulled Lily out of school a couple of hours early before spilling the beans about our adventure.  It was fun, everyone went on almost all the waterslides and splashed around in the wave pool.  

Off to the races into the wave pool.

A peaceful moment with Oma.  We've loved having them around for a more extended stretch than usual.

Another fun winter outing, skating with friends.  P&E's buddy Ren from preschool also joined us for a sleepover, their first sleepover hosting.  They even managed to get some sleep.

Skating this year was much different than last year, everyone was independent instead of clingy, with Paul tiny-stepping around the rink, Elise cautiously sliding along, and Lily totally getting it looking like a pro.  

The goofballs after a trip to the Nike Company store.  The Michigan move from Adidas back to Nike is definitely being felt in the Mather household.  Go Blue!