Remarkable Winter Trip

Packed it up with the Bradfords, drove through a blizzard of Ozz, and then it was really nice. Arthur, strong:

Much time was spent building a snow fort.  Intense.  The "snow gatherers" rolled snowballs and delivered them.

Here you can see most of the crew at work.

Lucy was extremely helpful.  She continued to become acquainted with "snow," until she quite liked it.

Skiing!

The sledding spot:

It was quite beautiful up there.

Girl Update

Last night I pulled out Ida's other front tooth. Very satisfying.

Also, a very rare blue card.  Not just rare for Ida, but only seen a couple times a year, allegedly:

Lucy is not leaking due to hormone pills and has not tried to eat any poodles lately.

Miki?  She's just feisty as ever.  Here's a conversation we had this morning:

M:  Did you ever hear about Bugs Bunny before me?

P:  Yeah.  We had Bugs Bunny when I was little.  I watched him.

M:  Did Grambee, when she was little?

P:  I doubt it.  I don't know if they had TV.

M:  Back then, they didn't have TV at all.  They had to imagine TV.

Various Forays

So much happening here all the time--snow!--that we didn't quite even get caught up on that whole Astoria trip; one cool thing at the Maritime Museum is we got to go on this "Light Ship" (floating lighthouse) and climb up into all the bunk beds and everything…

Soon we got to play some more on Freddy!  But alas!

Man overboard!

Fortunately, the captain and the first mate dragged me in, and we got back to Portland to have a sleepover with Elsie!  Next AM, we headed out to one of our old favorite hikes, Waclelah; it used to seem much longer, but now the girls can walk.

The Falls

Lucy was trepidatious, but everyone got a kick out of her finally crossing the stream.

Then Ida lost a gigantic tooth!  We didn't know how big this tooth was until it was gone.  And the other top front tooth seems about ready to go, at which point she'll be unable to speak at all.

This past weekend Ida conceived of a whole "scavenger hunt picnic" idea, so we scaled Powell Butte.  Another old favorite.

This is the picnic part.

Here's the list!  We really triumphed.

Maybe did see plantain, I don't know what happened.

Here's a picture of me.

And then, it was (suddenly and kind of arbitrarily) decided that February 2 was Lucy's birthday!

She's 6!  Possessed by demons!  Hasn't attacked a poodle in months, though.