Football anyone?

I'm going to venture out on a limb here and say that our thanksgiving traditions are decidedly nontraditional. While most families were basking in the glow of large screen TVs, I loaded everyone who wasn't on cooking duty into Emily's 4runner and headed straight for dangerous, snow covered mud roads. Since I had recently learned that target shooting was a perfectly legitimate use of national forest lands, we threw several hundred rounds of shotgun shells and a couple of boxes of clay pigeons in the back of the car to amuse ourselves at a later point in time.

Unfortunately, we ran out of clay pigeons before we ran out of time--I had promised Emily that I would keep people out of her kitchen until at least 2:30 PM. I did, however, have sufficient foresight to bring along the GPS. Cindy was all too happy to get out of the heavy snowstorm and go for a ride in search of a geocache. Remarkably, and in spite of all the snow, we found the geocache hidden in an ammunition box within a stump. James promptly left some Pfizer promotional materials.

let it snow!

as it turns out, we were in for quite the weather treat when we relocated to the beautiful pacific northwest. this november has been the wettest month since december 1933. and, for all you smarties out there, what does wetness do when it is engulfed by sub arctic temperatures (also a weather novelty for this year)? it freezes.

thus, school has been closed for the past two days due to treacherous driving conditions. microsoft closes for no one--no, not even mother nature. how else is bill to get his billions?

meteorology aside, we have just finished entertaining the wheeler clan for thanksgiving. this year's lessons learned: we should return to plain white mashed potatoes and no more cheesecake. we also learned that i beat everyone at bowling (with my special chicken dance) and cindy washes a mean dish (take that, grant!). and when bryan drug us out into the snow blown wilderness in search of another one of his geo caches (which, for morale's sake, we FINALLY found) we learned that snowshoeing can actually be quite hard (shout out to all our troopers!)

plus, for those of you who may be unaware, butter becomes a raging flame when left in an oven with temperatures excessive of 400 degrees fahrenheit. always keep the baking soda close by.

Inordinate decay

Emily's been pressuring me to get rid of the pumpkin goo on our front step. My goal has been to make it last until James comes for a visit (unfortunately, this is directly at odds with emily's goal of cleaning up the pumpkin goo before anyone comes for a visit). I was hoping it would remind him of the night when, with the suggestion of an older brother, he decided he would like to try his hand at pumpkin smashing. Given that the night in question was a good deal after Halloween, the two brothers should have realized that any pumpkins still remaining on doorsteps would have already turned into a pile of slime and mold. Alas, the follies of youth.

cry me a river

so after months of waiting for this alleged "wet" weather that plagues the pacific northwest to begin, the sky has finally opened her fury...and it has been raining for over a week. really, really raining.

two days ago, as bryan and i were leaving for work in the morning, we discovered that the road we usually take out of duvall was flooded (please note pictures above). however, we also discovered that an alternate route was still available, and being the smart cookies we are, we took it. only to discover several hours later--while still at work--that all the roads in and out of duvall were closed due to flooding (there are only three). alas, we had been clever enough to get out, not thinking about how we would then get back in.

so we didn't. we actually enjoyed a mini-vacation at the marriott in downtown bellevue. i purchased shirts for each of us so that we wouldn't go back to work in entirely the same outfits (everyone has different priorities), we ate out, watched tv, and i finished my report cards.

it still hasn't stopped raining.

Hallo-CareerDay

Emily has a long standing tradtion of wearing a necktie one day per year. This year, tie day fell on Halloween. It was probably because career day fell on Halloween as well. I think the school district figured out it couldn't prevent kids from wearing costumes, but at the same didn't couldn't appear like it was supporting a religious holiday.

In case you were wondering, religious holiday is a bit redundant, since holiday likely derived from "holy day." At any rate, Emily and I were shocked to discover that many people strongly believe that Halloween is fundamentally more than sinister trick-or-treaters and late night pumpkin smashers.