Yet again the Seattle area has shown its weakness when it comes to a couple inches of snow falling on the city.  I was able to make it to work just fine on Monday morning, but my commute home was more than doubled (and I was extremely luckily that's it) when the show started falling in the early afternoon.  Tuesday wasn't much better with all the ice and snow on the roads, so I decided it was a better use of my time to just work from home.  I made my conference calls just fine and emails were exchanged as normal.  Why spend half my day on the road to work for only a couple hours when I can stay at home and get only a couple hours of actual work done and spend time with my family?  :)  Today was a different story, however.  Today I knew it was going to be pointless to try to go in to work - not primarily because of the road conditions, but because it's the biggest travel day of the year.  My commute to work AND home would have been greatly increased due to all of the traffic volumes on the road.  Not my idea of a good time - and why add to everyone else's stress?  Luckily for me, the libraries are actually open today, so I can get out of the house to focus on getting my work done.

I think I've figured out why Seattle drivers are so freaky when it starts to snow around here - because the City and surrounding areas are consistently ill-prepared for the events and they know they really will be stuck for 5, 7, or even 9 hours on the road trying to get home.  We don't get snow like that often, but when we do it's the same thing every time.  Last time they were just totally unprepared.  This time they got the salt, sand, and de-icer trucks out there, but didn't expect that the melting snow would dilute the materials they spread on the road and just cause massive icing anyway.

I think when the City can consistently prove they can adequately plow and treat the roads, the people who have to drive on them will stop freaking out that they’ll be stuck for so long.  It would also greatly help the City’s cause if people were better experienced at driving in the snow, but there’s only so much you can do about that.  I'm still laughing at the Twitter hashtag of #snOMG.

 
Until then, we can just hope it melts soon and it doesn't stop too many of our families from making it to Thanksgiving celebrations.

Happy Turkey Day everyone!


 
I’ve been a bit quiet on here lately – first I was out of town for work most of last week and this week my computer has decided to not allow me to access the weebly site!  I’m going to have to look into why it’s forever loading on sites with the Google analytics.  The other main reason I haven’t written is that I haven’t felt inspired by a topic and since this isn’t my paying day job, I feel okay with not forcing myself to write.

I decided to start my holiday brainstorming and shopping early this year, so I’m almost done at this point.  I threw my oldest for a loop last night when I told her that she’d better get her list to me soon since I’m almost at my budget – she was amazed that she’d have to do it before Thanksgiving.  The biggest reason I’m almost done is that we did cave in and get the Wii console that I pondered about here.  I started the wonderful Craigslist slog through various listings and finally found one priced a bit higher than the typical console, but better for my family since there was four of every controller and the Wii Fit for me.  I’m fairly confident my oldest doesn’t read this blog, so I can post this surprise family gift; otherwise, her surprise will come sooner rather than later!  We’ve got quite a few games already that the twins can play, but I’m still hoping to track down the Disney DDR for us.  I have a feeling my oldest is still operating on the presumption that we will never have a video game console in our house since we’ve been telling her that for years.  Any good ideas out there for limiting/monitoring video game usage?  I have a feeling it will just be integrated into any TV time that they already get, but I have a feeling the demand will be a bit higher - at least to start.

My husband and I also broke down and bought iPhone 4’s.  Our last phones were really frustrating to use with turning themselves off all the time, so we got ourselves our own birthday gifts and went for it.  The twins love playing with Daddy’s – I don’t let them near mine much.  I’m only getting free apps so far since I’m sure I can spend way too much getting 99-cent apps all over the place.

Between the Wii, iPhones, Ninjabread Men Cookie Cutters, and a shirt from Woot, we’re pretty well done with big stuff for my family.  Now I just need to figure out my mom and I’m all set!  The grandmas are getting pre-made meals for their freezers again which I did last year and it worked out well.  Of course, that really only works if we make it down to my mom’s house for the holidays which is the plan, but you can’t assume anything with air travel these days.

My in-laws are a different story, so we’ll see what we figure out for them this year.  They also typically get some sort of food from us.  We’ve done (all homemade) canned pears, applesauce, pancake mix, bread mix, and I don’t even remember what else.

The other technology that I discussed in my last post on the topic was regarding our computers.  We’re still down one desktop computer, but now that we have the iPhones, the laptop and netbook are enough for us.  I still have to get around to clearing out the old desk so we can get a laptop station there to hook into the existing monitor, keyboard, and mouse, but that’s not a huge deal at this point.

We’re also back in firewood season, so if you know anyone in King, Pierce, or Snohomish Counties that needs some dry, split firewood – let me know so I can pass along his prices.  Do you have a working fireplace?  Up until a couple months ago we didn’t, but our insert is now the primary source of heat for us.
 
Between all the hype surrounding the elections in the US yesterday, the SF Giants winning the World Series (congrats Tim Lincecum - local guy!), and the delay of the shuttle launch from Monday to tomorrow (hopefully), there's not a tremendous amount of ground that hasn't already been covered and beaten into the ground around the interwebs.

I do have to report in that my girls' desire to be a construction crane and concrete mixer was successful over the Halloween weekend.
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They had a great time going trick-or-treating in their costumes and big sister as a construction foreman helped out with ringing doorbells or knocking since their arms had limited reach.  She was also good for reminding them to say "thank you" and was quite agreeable to helping since she knew we wouldn't let her go trick-or-treating otherwise.

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I do have to say that there was a lot of agony trying to figure out how to make their costume ideas work, but a lot of fun once I got a plan and got going.

My original idea for the concrete mixer drum was to get a large balloon and paper mache, but I ended up going with a paper lantern that I got at an Asian gifts store and that worked quite well.

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It did help tremendously that they were quite excited at the process and the finished product.  Positive reinforcement for Mommy!

All-in-all it was a successful costume creation, though I have no intention of letting them pick such bulky costumes again.  Talk about a traffic jam at doorways!

Any fun Halloween stories out there?