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These pictures are really old now, but I had uploaded them to the ftp site so I might as well go ahead and post them. This was from the first day of our rather large snowfall. It was still new and exciting at that point. After a week of being intermittently stuck at home it had lost its charm. Hehe.

Incidentally, who knows what’s up with the crazy weather here. The snow has now all melted, which the rain helped to accomplish in the end, but now we’re getting so much rain that some areas are flooding. If anyone saw that in the news (it was the main story on cnn.com last night), don’t be alarmed for us. We’re not in that area that’s been evacuated. Still pretty wild, though.

Thursday was my birthday. For New Year’s Eve, we went to some friends’ house and goofed off, playing Ticket to Ride and then Dance Dance Revolution. (I did one really slow song, figuring it was best to not bounce around too much, but Adrian was getting pretty decent at it.) We actually missed midnight, but that’s okay because we were having fun. So after we left there and came back home, seeing as it was officially my birthday, Adrian really wanted to give me my present then. It was already sometime between 1 and 2 am, so we took it all upstairs and I opened it all on our bed. And now you see what has been keeping me busy and entertained for a few days…
A new digital SLR! I’ve been “hinting” that I wanted one for a bit now. I know we already have a lovely camera, but I have always loved photography and I thought it would be awesome to have for taking good baby pictures and such. And yes, I do have an SLR that I bought in high school… but it’s film and whenever I would use it I was always conscious of not taking too many pictures because I didn’t want to waste the film and have to pay for developing tons of pictures. Anyway, enough with this justification. It was a present, and it’s my birthday/Valentine’s/anniversary/new baby gift. Adrian’s covered for a very long time.
Here is the little lovely, out of the box, though clearly I hadn’t even put the lens on yet. Adrian hunted things down online and even got me this awesome zoom lens that I’ll probably never use to its full potential (the way it should be used I mean) but it’s very very cool to have. I always wanted one for the film SLR (also a Nikon), so I was pretty geeked out, as the phrase goes. He also found a bunch of accessories which I am still learning to use. I was very impressed with everything he picked. He’s definitely getting himself to that illustrious best husband ever award.

I stayed up way way too late reading the manual and playing with it all, but the battery was still charging so finally I had to give up and go to bed. But then I woke up really early and had a hard time falling back asleep because I knew the battery would be charged and I could get up and play if I wanted. Hehe.

So between playing with the new camera and reading the manual and being SO TIRED from (a) staying up late playing with the camera and (b) being 8 months pregnant… I haven’t been blogging. Also, we’ve been working on some fun stuff behind the scenes with the blog. Mostly this falls to Adrian, since he’s the genius with that. If we can work kinks out the way we want, it’ll be a lot of fun, so just wait and see.

I had a conversation with my good friend Navid today. It went something like this:

Navid: Do you have snow?
Adrian: Are you asking if it is currently snowing? I am unsure what you are asking.
Navid: Is there snow outside?
Adrian: Ah. Let me go take a picture for you.

Navid: HAHAHAHA!
Adrian:

So yes, not only was it currently snowing, but I’ll also be able to drive my car again in April…hopefully.

I KNOW that before we moved up here we heard from multiple people that it snows occasionally, but it doesn’t usually stick or it’s just a couple days a year… etc. Yeah, well, we’re apparently getting the winter storm of the century, then. Hehe. Actually, it seems like there is bizarre weather up the whole West coast, from snow in Vegas to crazy rain at home in Orange County. 

Yesterday they cancelled school and everything expecting the snow to start, but it never really did. It was a bit of a letdown. Even when we went to bed it hadn’t started yet, so there was just a little bit still on the ground from last week. This morning we woke up and I opened the blinds to see this:
Woo snow! Adrian thought I was nuts but I went to get the camera, opened the window and took off the screen so I could get some good shots from our room. So this is looking one way down the street…
…And this is looking the other way. There were already kids outside in snow gear playing, and there were a few tire tracks. They must have all wheel drive.

Adrian’s car under a serious blanket.

The trees above the houses across the street. It’s fuzzy because the snow was still coming down pretty strongly.

I figured Toby at least needed to go out and take care of business. He was a good sport but only went as far as that tree and then came back. Notice how far it goes up his little legs.

And a shot from out the back door to the back yard.

I measured how much snow had accumulated on our patio table and we were at 5 inches. But it was still coming. Seeing as they really don’t normally get this much snow here, the systems aren’t in place to deal with it. This means the roads do not get plowed. A neighbor told us our street will not get plowed, and the main one we’re off of will get plowed in a day or two. So I guess that means we stay home. Every neighbor on the street seems to have that same idea–no one left for work. We put on our snow gear and went out to play. We’ll put up pictures of that later. When we got back from playing I measured the table again, and we were at 7 inches. But that was over an hour ago, and it hasn’t stopped yet.

Better to drive today when it’s mega powdery than tomorrow when it likely will ice over a bit, so we’ll see if we totally hole up or get out at all.