Joel's Birthday

Happy 18th birthday to Joel! We are so proud of this young man of ours. He’s having a great senior year and has the busiest social life of anyone in our family—always doing something with someone, usually multiple someone's—basketball, tennis, video games, sledding on Mt Hood in winter, paddle boarding at the lake in summer, FCA, Young Life, youth group, Dave’s Hot Chicken. He’s heading to CBU (Cal Baptist) next fall, and we are so excited for him. The icy weather has changed all the plans he had for this birthday, but he’s making the best of it. He’s good at rolling with whatever is thrown at him. Happy birthday, Joel! Love you!

He ended up having a few friends come over on his actual birthday, a couple friends who could actually make it to our house through the ice, and we had a family party the next day and managed to get people here and home again safely.

Ice Storm

We had a massive ice storm with a tiny bit of snow that led to a whole week of school being cancelled. The ice came and then just stayed. The temperature didn't get high enough to melt it away, and we were stuck. It caused a lot of damage (Fred Meyer had issues--see the empty refrigerated/freezer shelves) and a lot of power outages, but we never lost power for any significant amount of time. 

New Year's Day

Spent New Year's Eve at the Pate's with a bunch of other families, playing games and then watching fireworks at midnight. We played some Dudos (a dice game) on New Year's Day.