Even before the snow started it was really cold, so I took some art shots of the fountain... |
Aunt Maggie came to visit. I think everyone else was excited, but not as excited as Buttercup! |
They can't do hippie like I can but you should hear them talk in palindromes (that's an inside joke just for me!) |
Dad keeps saying there is a reason he doesn't do selfies, but I don't understand why not... |
Aunt Maggie's departure was delayed by Icemagedon! The big storm that wasn't... But after she left, we got some serious snow... |
Did I mention that it snowed a lot? |
You might think Dad played with Photoshop, but he didn't. He played with (un)natural street lighting and dark skies... |
Even Mom got in on the sledding action! |
And this was the tree limb that almost fell on Mom and me... |
Bebe gave me a snow man kit years ago... we finally had enough snow to use it! |
I think I mentioned that we got some snow... |
Buttercup and Axel had a great time! |
But I think Quinn babies Axel a little bit too much... |
I don't know... my head is in the ideal spot in this photograph and yet there still seems to be something wrong with it (the photo, not my head...) |
In case you were wondering why it isn't a good idea to mess with snow covered branches... Amelie will demonstrate... |
Pretty cool what you can do with an iPhone from a moving minivan... |
Don't worry... the street is still plenty icy so Aven and I can keep sledding! |
Unfortunately it doesn't really add to the snow already on the ground, but I can still make a pretty cool snow shower! |
Dad got these out of order, but here are some snow shots from Mom... |
Amelie and I are clearly trekking through a remote wilderness path here :-) |
Mom made it to the top of Watercrest Rd... |
And then got this cool picture of Mt. Hood... |
Dad says it came out of the iPhone this way, but I think he was messing in Photoshop again... |
And you can tell Dad really likes to be in front of the camera (even though he says he doesn't...) |
I know what you're thinking... where's the train cake? - don't worry, there it is! It just had a slight snow delay... |
Speaking of which... we finally got to do our December 14th choir concert on January 19th! |
I can't believe Amelie didn't tell me she had a reading! (Don't they all look joyful singing their fingersnapping song?) |
For Mom's birthday we went to Hoodoo... |
And went tubing! That's right, Mom didn't have enough snow at home, so we had to go see more of it! |
See how happy it made her? |
Dad and I had fun too... well I had fun anyway... |
Well at least Dad had fun letting the lift cable haul him to the top... |
But Mom had to keep showing how tough she was by climbing the hill repeatedly... |
The next day we went snoeshoeing on Mt. Bachelor. Dad showed off his ability to run downhill... |
My technique was a little less graceful! |
Can you believe that Dad actually participated in a selfie? |
At least when I got overheated I was able to cool off! |
Can you tell these trees are ~450 years old?! |
I don't know about all of these, but it sure was pretty out there! |
Mom developed pretty good downhill ability too... but mine stayed pretty much the same! |
See how flexible the trees are? This one bent completely over! |
Mom jumped! |
I jumped! |
Even Dad jumped! |
But none of us felt like showing off like Courtney... |
Mom tried to avoid the big birthday, but Dad made "grumpy cake" when we got back home so party on! |
Then Mom (and Gill and Melinda) went and got their painter on... |
Well, I did finally figure out a new look for the website. I ended up going old school and creating the pages from scratch so they aren't particularly fancy, but maybe I'll keep tweaking and make it more interesting as I go along... probably not, so get used to this look. :-)
In case it isn't obvious, just click the left and right arrows to scroll the pictures... Or go to the January 2017 gallery page and you can see the thumbnails like the good old days.
What else can I say this month? We just kept getting snow, so there are a lot of those pictures. We had the usual birthdays. This year it was Caroline's turn for a nice round number, while I got a seemingly uninteresting one. But you can look up anything now, and it turns out that 51 is a pentagonal number and a centered pentagonal number (one of only a few), a Perrin number, and it is the 6th Motzkin number... but don't think all Caroline got was a round number... 50 is the smallest number that is the sum of two non-zero square numbers in two distinct ways: 50 = 1^2 + 7^2 = 5^2 + 5^2. It is also the sum of three squares, 50 = 3^2 + 4^2 + 5^2, and the sum of four squares, 50 = 6^2 + 3^2 + 2^2 + 1^2. It is also a Harshad number. So there's that...
At work this month was, of course, review month so I got to write my own review as well as 19 more and evaluate 37 more beyond that. Do I know how to have a good time, or what?
Of course, the real news this month was the swearing in of our new president and the appointment of all his new cabinet members. Hopefully the internet still works so you can actually see the website...
Welcome to 2017.