Christmas, Vacation and New Years (December 22 - January 3)

**Pictures to come in a subsequent post - the battery in the camera was completely dead :-( ***


For the first time in 3 years, we spent Christmas in Eugene. We drove down to Eugene on Wednesday and had Christmas with Nick’s brother’s family and his mom and dad. It was awesome to get together, eat good food, exchange gifts and just spend time together. Nick and I headed back up to Portland that same night and then returned on Friday to spend Christmas Eve with my extended family and then Christmas morning with my family, siblings and nephews. It was nice to be in town and see everyone. 

I don’t believe most of my family reads my blog and I did not share my missed miscarriage when it happened - and there really hasn’t been a good time to share the whole thing yet, so I am pretty sure none of them know about that or the fact that we are trying. So, of course comments were made - we do a white elephant gift. I have a cousin that is 6 months old who is a boy - for that matter, every kid that has been born for the last 19 years in my extended family has been a boy, so the family is really hoping that someone has a girl one of these days. So they were giving him his gifts and my aunt (all in good fun) said, when are you going to give us a girl McKenzie - and gave me a hard time about it. Now, I know it was a joke, and I know it was all in good fun, and I know that none of them know about my situation (and it was not the time to pipe up and say...well for your information...) but it still hurt. If you don’t tell people about a situation from the get go, it is hard to break it to them later - and awkward - so to this day, they still don’t know. 

I digress - So after Christmas morning, N my little sister H.K and I drove out to McCall to our cabin. The drive was clear and without incident. We arrived Christmas day night and met up with N’s dad G who had come out before us. When we arrived, there were about 2 feet of snow on the ground. By Wednesday, there were 4.5 feet and I-84 has been shut down (which is our way to get back to Portland). Rumor has it, there is supposed to be 3 inches on the valley floor in Portland tonight. I love snow!

Anywhoo- we have busied ourselves having fun. We played 3 epic games of scrabble, the first one, all but 3 letters were used, the second, all letters were used and the third, all letters were used. N won the first two games and G won the last. And in case you were wondering how we were able to play all the letters - well, you just have to get creative. Qi is a word it means the same as Chi and represents a part of all living things. Yi is a word which means a letter of the ukranian alphabet. While we did not use these words - apparently xyst is a legal scrabble word which means portico or tree lined path and xylyl is a chemical property. Weird. I used xyst in the third game. I still lost, but I was happy to have played such a weird word. 

We have been up to Brundage mountain four times to ski. N has not skied for 15 years and got back on them like riding a bike. I have been snowboarding. I want to ski, but the cheap in me wants to buy a pair off craigslist like N did so that I don’t have to pay a bunch to rent them or to buy a pair from the store. My little sister H went up and used N’s snowboard. She did really well considering she has only been twice in her life. I was going to try skis but the rental place was out of my size so I just boarded. 

It is Brundage mountain’s 50th anniversary so they had a party with fireworks. It was AMAZING. They lit them off right at the bottom by the lodge in front of the Bluebird lift and they did a really good job! I hope that someday N and I can either move to Bend or to McCall. I love the outdoor nature of life here and in Bend. Here, we are 15 minutes from our door to the mountain. In the winter- snow sports abound! In the summer, there is the lake with water sports, hiking, mountain biking...so glorious! Bend is very similar. The biggest difference between Bend and McCall is the size. McCall has 3,000 permanent residents with most of the houses being second homes. Bend has around 50,000 permanent residents and most of them actually live there. There are, of course, pluses and minuses to both placed - I believe either would be a great place to raise a family, for different reasons. With any luck, the big decision will happen in the next 5 years. And with any hope, that decision will be made with kiddo’s in the picture.  

We went out to dinner on New Year’s - then came home and played the third game of scrabble. I am pretty sure not a single one of us made it to midnight. Oh well! 

We went snowshoeing twice. I love snowshoeing because it is an amazing workout, you get to see so much pristine untouched snow and it can be so relaxing. If you have never done it, I suggest that you try it. Note that a groomed trail is way easier than powder.