And I’m sad now that it’s melting, even though, for me, lots of snow usually means hiking up and down my 1/4 mile long driveway in Corbett every day for days, sometimes weeks, on end - usually in the pitch black - hauling groceries and stuff up the hill on sleds or by hand, only to slip about 3/4 of the way up and watching them all slide back down! LOL
It’s worth it though because a snowed-in driveway also means lots of sledding!! (after we’re done using the sled to get the groceries up I mean haha) Our driveway is really steep, with a couple of good turns - great sledding material! It’s taken me years to learn to navigate it though - my brother and I have had some good crashes on that one, let me tell ya!
How did you do through the storm? Did you lose your power at home? We did - we were out almost all of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day! A big thanks to the PGE linemen though who worked all through the holidays in the Gorge area and got us back up and running ASAP!!
I hope you had an awesome Christmas and got to spend some special time with family and friends in spite of the storms! One thing about having a quieter Christmas - it kind of forces you to take some quiet time to focus on the real meaning of Christmas, doesn’t it?? I know I’m usually so crazy busy that’s hard for me to do some years.
Give me a call this week while I’m in for John Paul 2PM-7PM and tell me about your Christmas! Ring me up at 503-733-5000 or 1-800-533-kupl.
And I hope you and your family have a wonderful New Year ringing in 2009!
How about this snow?!?!? Are you loving it as much as I am?? You might have heard me say on the radio this week that my truck and I slid into a ditch in Corbett last Sunday, and I have the feeling I’m going to be footin’ it 1/4 mile up my driveway tonight cuz my truck will get stuck, but I still LOVE winter and the snow!!
I’m totally hoping for a white Christmas - there’s just nothing else like looking out your windows past the lights of your Christmas tree at a beautiful blanket of white snow on the front yard!
Speaking of the Christmas tree - I should tell you (I’m not sure why, but I feel as though I should) that one of my favorite Christmas traditions is, right after the tree comes home and is put up and decorated, to stick my head halfway into the center of the tree and soak in the smell of the Doug Fir needles and look around at all the lights and pretend that I’m one of the chipmunks on that old Mickey Mouse and Pluto cartoon and I can run around up and down the trunk and all the tree branches. :-)
How is your Christmas season shaping up? What are doing this week to celebrate? Let me know tonight at 503-733-5000 or 1-800-533-KUPL
So how’s it going? Are you staying ahead of the Christmas Tide? Keeping up with the shopping and the wrapping and the decorating and the baking and the hosting and the pageants and the concerts?
It’s crazy isn’t it? This is the second year in a row that I’ve promised myself an afternoon at the Singing Christmas Tree at the Keller only to miss it almost before I even realize it’s started!! I AM proud to say though that I got my tree up right on time and even managed to make chocolate covered cherries this weekend! My mom and I started a tradition of making them 5 years ago or so and we try to do it every year. The problem is that chocolate covered cherries have to sit in the fridge and “ripen” for like 6 weeks before you can actually eat them, so we almost never get them made in time for that to happen. So we end up eating them with the goo that’s supposed to be in the middle not really gooey, but more like frosting-texture. NOT that there’s anything wrong with that.
I know it’s only the 3rd day of December, but I say - get right into the spirit! (The sooner we do, the sooner we get to start eating fudge and Christmas cookies, right?) And eggnog! I tried Darigold eggnog for the first time this year, and I’m really loving it! I’m a HUGE eggnog fan, so much so that I tried to make my own one year. That…. didn’t work out quite as well as I had hoped, however. Pretty much I ended up with a jugful of runny raw eggs mixed with sugar and spices. Yeah.
So no homemade eggnog for me this year. I’m having enough trouble with my Christmas tree. I went out in the woods around my house on Larch Mt in Corbett and cut one this week, and it was one of those times when the tree looked pretty good in the woods, but not so much when I got it in the house. It has NO limbs on the bottom third, and really not that many on the top two thirds either, so I ended up having to put alot of the ornaments that I usually put on the tree back in the box cuz the tree wasn’t big enough for them!
:-P HOWEVER, like any other red-blooded American who’s grown up watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” I have learned to see the good way down deep inside of every Christmas tree and accept it for who it is, so my Christmas will be merry in spite of everything.
Tell me what you’ve got going on for the holidays! Give me a call tonight - 503-733-5000 or 800-533-kupl! I’ll be waiting for your call!
Can you believe the holidays are here already? Thanksgiving’s just over a week away! What are your plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year? What are some of your yearly traditions? Let me know tonight - 503-733-5000 or 1-800-533-kupl!
My family almost always has a big dinner for both Thanksgiving and Christmas Day at our house, when we have some family over. My mom has a huge china set and we break (NOT literally!) it all out and fill just about every little pot and jar and dish and plate with SOMETHING. My favorite parts of the dinner are the sweet pickles (I always get the little midget sweet pickles), the black olives, the Stovetop stuffing, and my grandma’s/mom’s famous “orange salad.” What about you?
After dinner, we all get together in the kitchen and help out with the clean-up and washing and drying the dishes, which is all part of the fun too! Then it’s back in the dining room for coffee, pie, and ice cream.
At my house, though, the day AFTER Thanksgiving is almost as big of a deal as the day itself - and it’s not because of the shopping! :-) Starting the morning after Thanksgiving, and usually lasting thru most of the weekend, we decorate our entire house, from top to bottom, inside and outside, and even our barns and outbuildings, for CHRISTMAS! You’ve never seen boxes until you’ve seen our house on the day after Thanksgiving!! We’re all dead at the end of the weekend, but it’s worth it!
WOW - what an election year, huh? I keep finding myself not quite believing that it’s really over! What do you think about how things turned out? I’d love you to call me and let me know while I fill in for Leela 2-7 this week! If you listen to NW Nights, you might have guessed that I’m a McCain supporter, and to be totally honest this election night was a difficult one for me.
HOWEVER I believe God has complete control over our world, our country, and the lives of those who know Him, and He has given me an incredible peace the last couple days. I am a big fan of Beth Moore (she writes Bible studies and leads seminars and stuff for women), and no matter what your political views or your feelings about this election, I thought you might also find peace and hope in these exerpts from Beth’s blog (http://livingproofministries.blogspot.com/). My pastor’s wife in Corbett passed this along to me this week:
A few things I’m so thankful for on this election day, regardless of the outcome:
*We live in a democracy where we have the right to a vote and a voice. We have the God-given responsibility to use both wisely and in the way that best reflects what God conveys through Scripture.
*God “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will” and “according to the plan.” Ephesians 1:11
*Not only does God work out everything in conformity with His will, He has promised to work out everything for the GOOD of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
*God sets up kings and deposes them and gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. Daniel 2:21
*We, the beautifully diverse family of God, are never - not at any time - powerless. Nor are we ever victims of a system. Believing prayer takes us through doors we’ll never be invited to enter and into judges chambers we’ll never grace. Take a look back at Genesis 18 once again with astonishment over the dialogue between God and His servant and friend, Abraham. Rejoice that God is ever mindful of a faithful remnant. The Judge of the Earth will always do right.
*Even if persecution should await believers in Christ or harrowing circumstances hound us, God will use hardship to bring unity and purity to a people who need it desperately. The best of circumstances do not always produce the best in the Bride of Christ.
*The living God is firmly established upon His Throne and there at His holy feet we can always find grace and mercy in our time of need.
*No matter what happens today, we are GOD’S elect. He has elected us to show His heart and to walk in His ways in the culture that surrounds us. We are called to walk in the challenging balance of grace and truth.
May we be filled with Christ’s Spirit today and our mouths given to praise and to believing, receiving prayer. God IS faithful and He has us firmly in His hand. We will not fear. We will not doubt. We will not hate.
“Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in Him, for He shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between His shoulders.” Deuteronomy 33:12
More fall walks in the woods this week have gotten me thinking about one of my favorite fall poems (that’s the downside - or the upside - depending on how you look at it - of walking in the woods with me. I tend to randomly quote lines of poetry when inspired by the beauty of nature or a particular season. Or when, for no particular reason, I’m just feeling poetic).
ANYway, I thought I’d share it with you - it really is entirely reciteable anytime you’re gazing at the beauty of fall in the NW - the leaves of the trees on Mt Scott, the pumpkins on Suavie’s Island, the apples in Hood River….whatever.
A Vagabond Song
by Bliss Carman
There is something in the autum that is native to my blood - touch of manner, hint of mood; and my heart is like a rhyme, with the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills to see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir; we must rise and follow her, when from every hill of flame she calls and calls each vagabond by name.
My mom and my little sister and I went for a fall walk in the woods today around our house in the Gorge. It was so gorgeous! (Gorge-ous?) All the leaves are just coming into the peak of their color, although they’re not quite there yet - reds, yellows, purples, oranges, and the ones that come out half red and half yellow. My mom and I came to the conclusion that it must be the sun that turns the Vine Maple leaves red, because the ones in our woods (higher up on the mountain and in the shade) are always only yellow, or even kind of a whiteish shade, whereas the ones further down the mountain, and the ones that are in the sun, are red.
OH, and not to get off the subject, but my family also carved about 15 pumpkins Sunday!!!! They were so great - we got them fresh from a neighbor’s pumpkin patch in Corbett this year, and they were some of the best we’ve ever had! They were really easy to carve, for one, and they had a TON of seeds!!! Especially the little ones - those little suckers were STUFFED with seeds! And they fried up really good too - nice and crispy and crunchy and easy to chew. The only bad thing was that the rain set in right after we carved them, and since we always set our pumpkins out on our back porch, I think the rain and the moisture kinda made them turn soft a little early, so the tops are already falling in on some of them, especially the little ones. MAN I hate that.
My family and I have been watching our usual slew of “Halloween” movies this week. We have a variety of these on DVD/VHS, most of which I have literally watched every single year of my life since I was like 4. My dad taped them off TV back in the mid-80’s and they’ve been a part of our Halloween tradition ever since!
Most of them are Disney - Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, all the old Halloween Donald Duck cartoons, etc. And then there’s this one really cool special that was only on one year, in like ‘87 or something, and it’s a mix of all these clips from the old Disney cartoons and animated movies spliced together with rock and roll “Halloween-themed” music, like “Bad Moon Rising” by CCR, “The Monster Mash,” etc. It’s WAY cool and we love it to death.
And then there’s “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” and an old Halloween Garfield cartoon.
And of course all the classic full-length movies like “Arsenic and Old Lace” with Cary Grant, “Blackbeard’s Ghost” with Peter Ustinov and Dean Jones, and “The Ghost and Mr Chicken” with Don Knotts.
And it goes without saying that none of the above can be properly watched without a mug of hot spiced cider and plenty of roasted pumpkin seeds, popcorn, and candy corn to go around!
AAAAHHHH, fall in the gorgeous Northwest!! And what a great weekend we have in store…..chilly and sunny….
I think I might love the mornings in the fall the best, when all the mist is just rising off the fields in spots like Canby and Ridgefield, and the sun is breaking through it, and maybe there’s a little frost on the ground….
My neighbor Dave in Corbett was generous enough to donate a ton of pumpkins and squash and those cute little gourds with all the stripes from one of his fields to my family, so right now our front porch looks like a pumpkin patch! Ha! I can’t wait to carve them (the pumpkins, I mean!) - my family always carves up about 10 of them and we light them up every night leading up to Halloween, while we watch our “Halloween movies,” like Disney’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” I’ve been watching that one every year since I was about 3 years old!
What are your fall traditions? Call me tonight and let me know!
