Well, hello there!

I hope this New Year is finding you well!  As I sit here and watch the snow fall I thought I'd update you on our lives so far this year!  The 3rd found Tiana and I back in school.  Can we say "Hit the ground running?!"  I swear the amount of reading this quarter is double last quarter!  So that was the first Tuesday of the year.  That Friday evening we picked up this year's exchange students from Australia.  First stop on that "cold" night (to them anyway!) was Dick's Hamburgers and Starbucks.  Saturday we spent the day downtown and then celebrated Stacey's 15th birthday at Buca di Beppo.  We invited her best friend Stacey and Stacey's host-sister and Tiana's best friend Kaylin over for a surprise birthday cake. The next day was meeting and for lunch we had Thanksgiving dinner. After the Gospel meeting we were invited to Gent and Elaine's for dinner and games.  That was fun and Alice and Stacey got to meet some of the local kids.  The school week finds the girls on tour while Tiana's at school.  They experienced snow for the first time ever when they went skiing. At the end of the week we headed to Seaside, OR.  Before we left it started to snow.  We weren't sure what the roads or weekend would bring, but after we got out of downtown Seattle the weather cleared completely.  The next day we spent some of the time in Seaside shopping and being lazy and then we took a side trip to Cannon Beach.  It was windy and cold and I LOVED IT!!!  That night it got super exciting because it started to snow -- ON THE BEACH!!! WOOHOO!!!  The ride home from Seaside was a white knuckle drive over the hill and into Washington.  It was very snowy, very slick and snowing fairly heavy.  After we got beyond that, though, the roads were clear.  We did hit some snow at times, but it wasn't sticking.  We got home in just over 4½ hours and the drive usually takes about 3 hours 50 minutes!  Not too bad!  Once we got home the girls had a bit more play time in the snow and then this morning before dawn we had to say good-bye!  Feel free to look at all of the photo albums.  I will warn you that some of them have lots of "boring" scenery shots that look identical!  I was either playing with camera settings or trying to catch waves crashing on the rocks!  Sorry about those!  Or, I was attempting to miss the wiper as it was working to keep the windshield dry!  Wherever you are -- stay warm!