Levi turns four

Happy Birthday Levi! Today you turn four years old. You are truly an amazing child. You surprise us everyday with how fast you learn concepts and with your astonishing memory. Not only are you creative and curious, but you are considerate of others and a very loving boy. You play very well with other children, but especially with your sister. You are a remarkable big brother and Claire is lucky to have you as a sibling.

I asked friends and family members to give me their one-word description of you. I think that they sum you up perfectly.

Grandma Kay: inquisitive

Grandma Ann: sensitive

Grandpa Jim: thoughtful
Aunt Veronica: considerate

Aunt Lora: thoughtful

Uncle Ben: intelligent

Aunt Kari: smart

Aunt Cyprianna: charming

Uncle Christian: concerned

Lesley: tall

Donna: tender

Jennifer: dinosaur

Nicholas: a play friend

Spider: my friend

Eleanor: dinosaur

Khalila: silly

Tina: mature

Joachim: silly

Mama: talkative

Papa: unique

Levi, you are all these qualities and much more. Thank you for being a helpful and loving son. I love watching you play with your sister; I love when you help me make dinner; I appreciate when you clean up yours and Claire's toys. I love you to pieces; you are a wonderful boy.

He's Back!

Josh's plane actually left San Francisco only an hour late! He is now home and happy to be here!

San Francisco Update

So Josh landed in San Francisco just fine at 2am. Then at 6:20am United cancelled its first two flights out of SF to Seattle. Josh is confirmed on the third flight scheduled to leave at 11am. We are just waiting. Well, he is waiting and I am making breakfast, changing diapers, washing dishes, making beds and dressing children.

Right now we have two options.

1. Take the United flight to Seattle, or

2. If the flight is cancelled, Josh will rent a car and drive to Portland. Once in Portland he will stay the night at a friends house and then Tao and Jamie, who are driving to Seattle on Tuesday anyway, will bring Josh as well.

So the absolute latest Josh will get home is tomorrow afternoon. Only five days late.

Happy Birthday Claire

Happy Birthday to my baby girl!

I can hardly believe you have only been with us for two years. Your presence in this family seems familiar and normal. Your extraordinary personality is sometimes a challenge, but your smile and your kisses make your tantrums worth it.

I thought it would be fun to have your friends and family describe you in one word. Here they are!

Grandma Ann: persistent
Grandpa Jim: affectionate
Grandma Kay: determined
Uncle Christian: defiant
Aunt Veronica: feisty
Eleanor: funny
Uncle Aaron: charismatic
Uncle Ben: cute
Aunt Cyprianna: spunky
Aunt Lora: headstrong
Sbeenti (godmother): active
Khalila: playful
Donna: determined
Leeanna: feisty
Papa: flirty
Mama: "o-tay"

As you can clearly see, while these traits are tiring and difficult at times now, they will serve you well in adulthood. You make everyone around you smile and laugh. Your voice is sultry and husky; bringing faint smiles to those who stand next to us at church. You love to sing; you know so many songs it would be impossible to list. Miraculously, you love playing with Levi, but definitely need your space from him. There are many times when I find you playing by yourself, perfectly content driving a car on your garage, or pushing a train down the tracks.

Incidentally, you like much of the same things Levi likes. However, you do like one thing that he despises: talking on the phone. It does not matter who I am talking to, you always have to say Hi. Your "hi's" last a long time, and you often carry on a full conversation with whomever is at the end of the line.

You are extremely active. Your favorite activity is swimming, and I am constantly amazed at the risks you are willing to take. That goes for out of the pool too! Many times you are copying your brother, but once you discover you can jump off the couch, or put your face under water, you become so proud of yourself and keep right on going.

I cried the day you were born out of sheer joy, and you still bring tears of joy to my eyes. I love you so much.

P.S. I don't know why nobody stated the obvious, but I will. Bitty, you are loud!

The rest of December

As usual, December is a very busy month. Here are some of the month's highlights:

On December 5th, St. Nicholas made his yearly visit to church. This tradition is a lot of fun and the kids have a blast. St. Nicholas brought Levi and robot and Claire a Christmas book.
Later in the month Grandpa Jim came to Seattle. He had meetings for two days downtown, so the kids and I picked him up at Sea-Tac and then he took us out to dinner. Levi and Claire had fun watching Veggie Tales videos on YouTube with him!
Sometimes I feel really bad that my children don't know there Alaskan Family as well as their Washington Family. Luckily Levi and Claire are very lovable kids. They were sad when we took Grandpa to his hotel later that night, and Levi cried on the drive home.

Finally, right before our snow storms, C & V and their kids, and Lora and Addison, and me and my kids all went to downtown Bellevue for their Christmas celebration. Beginning at 7, the Bellevue Marching Band puts on a great sing-a-long and drumming party. All the kids had fun dancing and eating their free lollipops. Eleanor got to meet the Snow Princess. She was in heaven!

After the Bellevue thing, we drove to the Botanical Gardens in Bellevue. This place is amazing. They have a whole garden made out of Christmas lights. It is called Garden d'Lights.

Snow day? More like 'Snow Week'

Desperate Housewives is not on, so I may as well catch up on blogging...

The snow in Seattle started last Saturday night. By Sunday morning, it had melted and then froze enough to leave a layer of ice on the roads. Only after dressing for church and warming the car did I realize it was worse then I thought. I could not get out of our driveway! Now, I did not aggressively attack that hill as well as Josh may have, but I did have two kids in the car and a wimpy attitude. Needless to say, we skipped church and had a snow day.

Monday was supposed to be Levi's birthday celebration at preschool. Preschool was cancelled Sunday night. Tuesday we made it to work fine and the roads were fine. It was bitterly cold though.

On Wednesday every meteorologist in the state was declaring an imminent storm. Don't go to work, they said, don't go to school. So the school districts complied and school was cancelled. Of course, nothing happened Wednesday. Nothing. Not until everyone went to bed that night...

This is what we saw when we woke up Thursday morning.

It may not look like a lot to you Alaskans, but it was enough for the city of Seattle to shut down. I think that day we got almost 3 inches. I ended up not having to go to work, so another snow day.

Levi loved it. Claire, not so much. Levi played outside for over two hours before coming in. He stayed in his snowshoes the entire time! He went out again after lunch.

By Friday, nothing had melted. In fact, I don't think Seattle has gotten above 25 degrees all week. Anyway, Friday schools were cancelled as well, as roads were still treacherous. This happened Friday afternoon. Saturday we knew another major storm was heading our way. Early Saturday morning the kids and I packed up for Kirkland to Christian and Veronica's house. They got even more snow than we did and had a spectacular sledding hill a short walk to their house.

That was a blast. A quick crash in the ditch brought things to an early close. Don't worry, the kids were fine. We left Kirkland by 2 and it was a good thing that we did. The snow started falling in Seattle by 4pm. And it just came and came. Vespers was cancelled that night and shortly before 9pm I got the call that Liturgy would be cancelled the following morning.

Here is what greeted us in the morning.

Sunday morning we had 5 inches at our house. Knowing we were getting tons of snow, Jule and I made plans the night before to go skiing. Cross country skiing! I took the kids to her house at 8am and her husband watched all four kids while we skied the ghost-town of Seattle. It was amazing!

I LOVE SNOW!!!!

Joshua's Travel Woes

If anybody out there remembers... Joshua has been gone since the beginning of December interviewing for residency positions on the East Coast. His last interview was on Friday at Maine Medical Center. Here is a re-cap of his weekend.

Friday
1:00 pm: interview at Maine Medical Center finished. Get in rental car and drive to Boston to catch 6pm non-stop flight to Seattle.

2:30: arrive in Boston, minutes after large snow storm hits the area. Travel out of Boston-Logan airport is impacted. Airport leaves one runway open for arrivals and departures.

6:00: Jet Blue flight to Seattle is delayed till 7pm.

7:00: Flight to Seattle delayed again till 9pm

9:30: Passengers are told they can board the plane. They all get on.

10:30: Flight starts to taxi to runway. Airport shuts down all runways for quick snow removal.

11:10: Airline opens runway.

11:15: Jet Blue flight crew has now worked past their mandated time and flight returns to the terminal and flight is now cancelled.

12:00: Since Jet Blue only flies once a day to Seattle, the flights fill up fast. Naomi finds a United flight on Sunday at 11am. Josh cancels Jet Blue flight and gets a hotel in Boston for two nights.

Saturday
1:00 am: Josh arrives at hotel.

Josh kills time in Boston and changes flight out of Boston to 9am.

Sunday

7:30: Josh arrives at airport.

8:30 Passengers begin boarding plane.

9:00: Plane is now broken and maintenance is called.

10:00: United flight finally leaves.

12:25: Josh's connecting flight in Washington DC departs.

12:30: United flight arrives at Washington DC.

12:45-5:00: Josh stands in line with a million other people trying to get to the West Coast. Josh calls Naomi a zillion times with various crazy ideas how to get home. The best one? Rent a car and drive to Seattle. From DC.

5:00: Josh finally gets confirmed on a flight at 10:30pm to San Francisco, but is told to wait on standby for the last flight of the day to Seattle.

5:15-8:00: Josh waits on standby for the flight. At one point they begin boarding and he is only the 20th person on the standby list, then the plane breaks and the flight is eventually cancelled.

8:15: Josh goes to the San Francisco departure gate and waits.

11:00: Josh boards the plane, and, since he has not called me in the past five minutes, I am assuming it has left the airport.

Josh is supposed to arrive at San Francisco around 2am on Monday the 22nd (Claire's second birthday.) Flights to Seattle start to depart at 6:30, and that is when he can start to standby for those flights. Hopefully he will get home in time for birthday cake and for his interview at Virgina Mason on Tuesday!

What a trooper! The only time he totally lost it was after he missed his connection in DC. He swore to me that all East Coast schools were getting ranked last. Apparently we can never visit Boston or DC again. He even wanted me to buy him a ticket to Seattle for $2000! That is when I called in the reinforcements: sister Lora and brother Christian. They obviously had more success than I, his attitude has been stellar since then!

As for the kids and I, this could not have happened at a better time. Seattle got 5 inches of snow last night and we are expecting another 3-8 inches tonight. We have been sledding and snowshoeing all day! I even got a cross-country ski in early this morning! And on that note, now that my kids are in bed and asleep, I am going skiing again. I may never have this opportunity again to ski out my front door in Seattle! Love it!