Life at the Leingangs': December 2008

Family Get-togethers

On Saturday, our entire family got together for the baptisms of my cousin's youngest daughter and our niece, Ada. We had it at the little country church where Frank and Amy got married. It's a cute little chapel and looks even cuter in the snow.

Next to the church is a historic cabin and barn. We got there a little early and took some time to explore a bit. My great grandfather donated both the butter churn and the shake cutter to the museum. My parents live in the house that was on our grandpa's dairy farm. It was cool to see some of our own family history there.

walking to the cabin

Ada and her daddy

Super-Grandpa's butter churn

My uncle Dennis baptized both Mae and Ada. It was a really nice service and it was so nice to see so much of our family again. We took advantage of the situation and got to take some big family pictures, too.

Despite (or maybe because of) the warmer temps and all of the rain, the driveway was still pretty slick. Dad had to get out the tractor to tow us out to the street so we could head out to Gresham to have supper with the Paulsons. It was so fun to see both family and friends over Christmas! We are very blessed!

Ada thinks dad and her puppy are pretty funny

getting out

thanks for the tow Dad!

there was a lot less snow when we got home

but Goliath didn't look very good anymore :o(

Snow & Shopping Adventures In Portland

With the warmer weather, melting snow and my parent's 4x4, we were able to go out on Friday. Chris, Theresa, Mom and I went shopping. There weren't many great deals (except for at Kohl's and World Market), the parking lots were a mess, and everyone had come out to survive cabin fever. But we had a good time and came back with some fun stuff and yummy treats!

The boys and Grandpa headed down to the creek property to do some exploring and see how everything looked. The creek was a little high and they lost a few trees and limbs but everything looked pretty in the snow.

the boys on their giant snowball

at the Clarks'

heading to the creek

Over The River And Through The Woods...

The snow stopped at about noon, the temperature went up about 4 degrees in less than an hour, and we realized we didn't really want to spend Christmas with just the 5 of us. Most years we look forward to spending Christmas Day as a family at home. We open gifts, play games together, watch Christmas movies and eat yummy food. But we had just had 8 snowy "Christmas Days", and it really didn't seem special anymore.

So we called Grandpa and Grandma, packed all of our stuff, and hit the road south. As usual, our road was the worst part of the drive. The roads all through town were clear and wet until we hit my parents' street. But we made it safe and sound and were able to spend Christmas with family!

the sun even came out while we were leaving

thankfully we had our new GPS to help us find our way LOL

Christmas made the boys pretty sleepy

which made for a quiet trip down

the first thing the boys did was to help Uncle Frank and

Aunt Theresa with their snowman and giant snowball

my dad is allergic to normal Christmas trees

so this year they tried a cedar tree instead

Andy and Zack were pretty excited to get Guitar Praise

And we are ALL excited to be going to Creation '09 this summer!!!

Charlie loves Thomas and he also liked using his new bag

as a mask, or a cape, or for carrying stuff around

Maggie looked beautiful in her flower princess costume

Will didn't get his gift from us in the morning because

it was stuck in Portland.

I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas

For the first time I can remember, it snowed in the NW on Christmas morning. Any other year we would have been deliriously happy. This year was more like, "Oh look, it's snowing again." After days of snow, missing family get-togethers, and cancelling church services it didn't seem nearly as magical and dreamy somehow.

by the time we were done with presents the branch

was touching the window

most of our bushes didn't do very well

neither did Goliath

he's starting to lean

but the trees were beautiful!

so was the neighbor's roof

the boys built a new addition on their fort

But it was pretty and we had a wonderful Christmas morning! We got all kinds of great gifts, had our favorite breakfast of egg nog baked french toast with bacon, and got to play in the snow before it stopped.