Well, on Sunday, Kyler made it through 5 nights with out wetting in his pullups. Yea!!!!!!!!!. It took a while and a number of false starts (3 day dry, then next wet), but he finally made it. We are so proud of him. He still has an accident every once in a while but it is not that big of a deal. I would say he is completely potty-trained.

For Kyler's reward we took him (and Ilea) down to Fred Meyer to ride on the mechanical horse. Then we went do to Auburn mall to ride the carousel. This was about 6:30pm on a Sunday night. It turns out that on Sundays the mall closes at 6:00pm. As you can guess, the kids were really bummed about not being able to ride the carousel. So we went down again tonight. Both kids were really excited and ran ahead to get into see the carousel. I paid the $5 for 4 tokens and Ilea, Kyler and I got on. Kyler got on a horse almost right away. I asked him what his horse's name was and he said "Spirit" of course. Ilea chose a blue dragon and named him "Feathery" because he had scales that looked like feathers. We all had a good time.

Kyler has a really cute thing he has been doing the last few weeks just before going to bed. Basically we give him a kiss before putting him down. He has been saying he wants to kiss us as well. Then he proceeds to kiss us on the lips, nose, both eyes and then the very top of our heads. It is very cute.

Ilea is already talking about her visit to her grandparents this summer. She is so excited. She remembers how they gave her an ice cream cone last year, Rocky Road, her favorite, and maybe they'll do it again. And how they found little chairs for them to sit on outside. And mostly, they might teach her to swim! She is so excited she can hardly sit still! She can't understand "8 months away".

My friend Su gave us a snowman kit last year - just add snow. It has 2 styrofoam 1/2 balls for the eyes, a wooden carrot painted orange, a pipe, and a small scarf. But our snowman was too big and we used one of my old scarfs. We also had 3 rock buttons, and 2 ceder arms. We didn't have any real hat so we used an upside down pot. We built the first snowman on New Year's Eve, but it's head fell down the next day. There was still snow around. On Sat, during a break between one of the storms (there were 3 that day), we put the top of Frosty back on, and build a snowpup. He's made up of two snowballs, a ceder tail, ceder ears, and rock eyes & nose. He also had front legs from some stakes. He's pretty cute too. The timing was great. They got lots of snow Sat, and were pretty solid Sun and Monday (cause the temp never got above freezing). Then more snow on Tues, and an ice cap on Wed. It is Friday, and they are finally down to melting lumps. This makes Kyler sad and he wants to take them to the North Pole, like they do in the movie.

Kyler was ready for dessert, and went to look in the pantry. He found the chocolate graham crackers.
He came out and asked if they could have them.
When I said yes, he jumped up and down saying, "I'm a hero!"

OK - we sure got it. We had some snow left over from Fri and Sat. Then Tuesday brought a real storm. 3 - 4 inches in our yard, with snow blowing all morning, up to 30 -40 mph. It was blowing off trees and the house, building up in drifts. It was pretty cool, and very hard for a lot of the day. Schools and everything else closed all over. Of course, we didn't get as much as Portland, but it was quite a bit for us. Temps in mid 20's all day. Then about 8pm, it started freezing rain. Did I mention it hasn't been up to freezing since about Sat or Sun? We got up to 35 one of those days, prob Sun. Tues was in the low 20's most of the day, warming up to 27 by the evening. That's when the rain came. It was supposed to warm up quite a bit over the night and be fine today. But the weather people were wrong again. This morning everything is covered in about 1/2 - 1 in of ice. There is a lot of snow left, and the roads are mush. The biggest disappointment is the beautiful lace leaf maple in the front of our house split due to the ice, and I don't think it will survive. It was one of my favorites, and so beautiful in the summer. One side of our house is solid ice, and you can see the ripples all frozen down the side of it. We have lots of icicles and the trees are really pretty, except for my broken one.

This morning while we were going to the store, Kyler saw the big tree that Covington had Christmas lights on. He asked why there were no lights. I told him that Christmas was over and there wouldn't be lights until next year at Christmas. He said, "I know! How about we have Christmas at 3:00 today! That would be a good idea?"

Today almost finishes a great vacation for Kipp, and a great time for all of us. Right now is a Currier & Ives moment - we went for an afternoon walk in the snow, came back and the kids are watching Bambi while it snows outside, and I'm cooking some delicious chili. We have a big snowman in the back, and his faithful snowpup at his side. They are great.

Kipp has taken every Fri in Dec off, due to some vacation time he needed to finish. Then he started Christmas vacation on the 18th. Monday he has to go back, which is very sad. We went to play at the snow in the mountains on Dec 19, and had a good time. Kipp's parents and his grandma came from the 23 - 28th. I had 4 Christmas Eve performances (not all in one day), and then Christmas itself was great. The kids had so many presents that they got tired of openeing them! Elsie was no problem at all, and stayed on the bottom floor. The kids mostly slept together in Kyler's room. The kids love having grandparents here.

The day after Christmas Kipp and I got to go to Seattle overnight all by ourselves. We really appreciated Grandma and Grandpa Howard watching the kids so we can get away! It was a lot of fun. We stayed at the Holiday Inn this time, not quite the Sheraton, but OK. We saw Lord of the Rings, and had great seats. It was a really good movie, and we both loved it. We ate dinner at Gordon Bierch, which was also good. We got to shop and browse, and had a nice time. We did some more shopping the next morning, and got back in the afternoon. The Howards and Elsie left the next morning at 8:00am and encountered some snow going over the passes. They got to Redding at 10:00pm that night. Even with that, they probably left just in time to aviod all of the cold/wet/snowy weather that came after.

Tues, 12/31 we got about 2 inches of snow. It was fun in the morning, but mostly melted in the afternoon. New Year's was uneventful, and we rented a movie - Pirates of the Carribean, which was great. Wed we got a few flurries again, and then Th a few flurries. Yesterday it was just wet and cold. Today, Sat 1/3 it has been snowing off and on all day, and staying below freezing. We fixed our snowman, which has fallen over, and played outside some. It's been great, with storms coming in and giving more snow. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 20s, so it might stay a day or two. Luckily, we don't have to go anywhere!