Four Part Harmony

Thought I’d put up some more photos from the rest of our week of snowbound excitement…

At some point the weather warmed up to the point where a proper snowball could finally be formed, so my mom and I bundled up the kids and set to work building some snowmen in the front yard.

Milo and I tried to make the Worlds Biggest Snowball, but soon realized we’d never get the next one up on top of it.

We salvaged some produce from the bottom of the fridge, found some scarves and hats and voila! Two snowmen (or snowwomen, I’m not sure). Anna had lost interest by that point, so mom and I ended up putting on the finishing touches. We named them at some point…Frosty, and I forget the other one’s name….actually I forget which one was Frosty too.

Sadly, sometime the next day the snowpeople suffered a terrible fate. We like to think that maybe it was natural causes, but now suspect foul play.

Christmas morning. Anna was pretty excited to see what was in her stocking. Milo got this cool wooden rattle and some teething rings…some other things I’m forgetting. Anna got some painter’s tape, a deck of cards, some trail mix, a paper cutting stamp…and probably some other things I’m forgetting.
Later, we sat around the tree and opened presents. Anna made sure to help everyone get their presents open.

I think I mentioned that we had been snowbound and in a craft/project frenzy. Here are some of the fruits of those labors. Some hand-dyed (onion skins) and freezer paper stenciled onesies for Milo (he’s already almost too big for them we’ve found out).

Some hand sewn felt blocks. Nicki and my mom made these and they turned out great (I cut the starfish).

Milo likes them too.

Nicki made Anna this camping-themed skirt, and she and my mom collaborated on this little fabric tent which folds out and has two little people that camp out in it. It’s hard to describe, and I guess this picture doesn’t do it great justice, but it’s pretty neat. Anna is really enjoying it anyway.

This post is getting long but bear with me, I have to tell you about our Boxing Day snowshoeing excursion that almost never came to be. For starters, the road report was saying not to even leave town…they were saying chains required from Troutdale all the way out to Cascade Locks. The sun was shining though, and we already had the chains on anyway and we had been cooped up long enough. We headed out and Doyle, Dawn, and Kadin were going to meet us at the trailhead to the Government Mineral Springs Cabin. This is an old Forest Service Guard Station in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, outside of Carson, Washington. Nicki and I have stayed there twice before, once before Anna was born and once when she was about Milo’s age.

The road out the gorge proved to be not too bad. We took the chains off right away and made good time. Put the chains back on in Carson, where the snow was quite a bit deeper as expected. They had had a ton of snow and the trees were heavy with it. We got 10 miles or so out of town, almost to the trailhead, when we came across some people going the other direction who told us a tree was down across the road. We went and checked it out, didn’t seem too bad, but still impassible.

Here’s the rest of the road, trees leaning. We had turned back, ran into our friends, and were evaluating the options when the County road crew showed up and cut the tree out of the way for us. We ventured on as it was getting later in the afternoon at this point and we still had to snowshoe into the cabin.

We got to the trailhead (or close as we could get), and started getting us and the kids geared up. About that time we realized that our main bag of food was comfortably tucked away in our refrigerator at home. We took inventory of what we had brought collectively, and made the decision that we still had plenty of food to make a comfortable trip of it (we were only going in overnight afterall) so we packed up what we had into packs and onto a sled, hoisted the kids into slings and into our arms, and set out.

Here’s the trailhead. There had been a ton of snow, and almost nobody back there for several days. A group of cross country skiiers arrived at the same time as us, and broke a narrow ski track before we walked in, but otherwise we were breaking a trail in several feet of fresh wet snow. Nicki and I have snowshoed on this trail to the cabin before and it’s generally a short quick stroll. This time it wasn’t that way at all. It was pretty grueling. I’ll skim over the details.

Eventually, by nightfall, we were all safely and comfortably sipping wine in the toasty cabin and the kids were happily pulling all the utensils out of the drawers and running around crazily.

The garage/woodshed. The next morning.

The cabin.

Precariously leaning tree.

The hike out was slightly less grueling, if only because we knew what we were in for, and because we had taken an early load of stuff out so the last trip was mostly just with the kids and one load of stuff on the sled. Also, by this point there was slightly less trail to blaze.

Back at the trailhead after the hike out (which was mostly in a drizzling rain). We got to the car and were soaked. On the drive out it was clear that several more trees had fallen in the night and had thankfully been cleared by the road crews that morning. Power lines were down too.

It was a fun trip, one not soon to be forgotten.