Snow and ELSE

Portland has become and snowy playground.

Zion and Elise both loved exploring the snow with Aunt Lori, Uncle Cody, and Uncle Mike.

Elise in motion.


The arrival of snow brought quite the surprise. Elise can write her name! Or close to it - she forgot the "I". I had no idea she could do such a thing until she used her mittened hand to write in the snow.

A Real Tree

At home we have an artificial Christmas tree. A fake tree. I won't go into our rational now, but it should be know that every year it is with a bit of shame that we unpack our tree from its box and bend the limbs into place. This year in Portland we not only have a real tree, we got to cut down our Christmas tree.

We picked out a beautiful noble fir.


Unfortunately, the tree trunk was very large. Note Grandpa Leon sawing away in the background and the kids fighting over my lap while Zion repeated asks for "milk!" and "deat" (eat)". I think that was really toddler language for, "I'm cold. I'm bored. And I want to go home." We finally left Grandpa Leon still sawing and went home. With some help from a chainsaw, he later brought home a very lovely and very large tree.

Safe in Portland

I survived traveling from Nashville to Portland alone with my two toddlers. And it was actually not that bad. Low points included a terrible diaper rash for Z, the batteries running out of the DVD player, and making it through a long three-hour flight only to land and know that I had another three-hour flight to go. But my list of high point is longer: Zion exclaiming, "Pane! Pane!" while pointing vigorously at our plane through the terminal window. He shouted with glee and shook with excited for a good ten minutes, the whole time rotating between pounding the window with his pointer finger and looking expectantly at the other people waiting for the flight. He seemed unable to grasp why no one else was as excited as he was. Other high lights included Zion falling asleep curled up in my lap with his head tucked under my chin and Elise being sweet and obedient the entire trip.

Here are just a few of the pictures that the doting grandparents have taken in the past few days.

Aunt Lori reading to Zion.

Uncle Mike pulling "uncle duty" as he watched nature movies with the kids.

One of the kids' favorite "toy" is the trampoline. Zion can only bob his head when he tries to jump alone, but he giggled with glee when his grandpa bounced him high.

When Zion Grows Up

Recently Elise has become interested in how things will change when Zion grows up. Yesterday she began a monologue on life after he grows up, "like me".

"When Zion grows up, he will get to stay up late like me.
When Zion grows up, he will get my carseat. Then I will have his carseat. Yep, that will be exciting.
When Zion grows up, he will have my big girl bed."

At this point, Elise began to look perplexed. She studied Zion's crib carefully and seemed to come to the conclusion that she could not reclaim his crib after he grew up and took her big girl bed.

She turned to me and asked with great concern, "Mommy, where will I sleep when Zion grows up?"

Apparently she had been pondering the problem all night because this morning she cheerfully announced, "when I grow up I will sleep in your bed! Then there will be three people."

I love the naivety of childhood. Elise can't imagine herself growing up and being anywhere but here with us. And I will gladly keep her close to me until she is ready to fly.

But, she is staying in her own bed.

Awfully Good

Elise quote of the day:

Jeffrey was helping Elise use the bathroom. He made the mistake of turning on two lights instead of her customary one light.

Elise: "Daddy no! One light is awfully good enough."