Christmas with the Lakes....Winter Wonderland

The Lakes didn't even own a snow shovel, so Cody headed out to Home Depot to pick one up (the only store in town that had one)! They had a chance to do a little service by shoveling for some elderly families in the ward.

The kiddies had so much fun sledding and making snow angels!

This is from a nice Asian family in the neighborhood that built this cool igloo! We stopped and they were excited to let us take pictures in their igloo!

Last Saturday we loaded up the car, and headed to the Northwest. We left at 3:30 am in hopes to just barely miss the big winter storm hitting Portland, Saturday late afternoon. Well, we were so lucky to not hit any bad weather until the Columbia River Gorge. It was a little scarry going through the Gorge and lots of cars were pulling over to chain up. Cody took it slow and steady and even though it took us 2 hours to go through, instead of the usual 1 hour, we still made it to the Lakes in 12 hours! Cody drove the entire time...what a wonderful husband!! The kids were so excited to see their cousins, and they have had so much fun playing in the snow everyday! For those not familiar with the NW....it seldomly snows here, and when it does, its usually just an inch or two. They maybe have 2 or 3 snowplows to cover the whole area! So the streets were packed with lots of snow and it was very slick and icy. We've been lucky to leave the kids with my 12 year old nephew Griffin to babysit a few times while we go to the gym, and went to see the movie 7 pounds, with Will Smith, which was very good!