New Years eve was fun. Max and Gabe woke early and headed back to Portland. They had big plans for the evening.. First we took apart the poster.. a nice symbolic end of our retreat to the cabin
Diane and I stayed behind at the cabin.. We took a hike out towards Ramona falls.. it was raining pretty hard.. so by the time we’d made the 2.5 miles to the trailhead by the closed off park road we were pretty wet.. We pushed on and walked about 1 mile through the really beautiful albeit rainy woods.
we turned around and headed back to hang out at the house.. hot tub , reading and napping.. can’t ask for more out of the last day of the year.
Diane and I made a beautiful meal of leftovers and Mac and cheese.. yum.
I’m proud to say that we managed to stay awake to see in the new year.. but were asleep about 10 min after..
It has been an interesting and fun year.. Lots of family, some interesting travel.. and some cool projects,.. all that I can ask of the calendar !
Monday was a super fun family day.. we enjoyed being together without phones or internet to get in the way..
we spent a good deal of the day working together on the puzzle of Vermont. it was s such a strange and wonderful thing to do together.. so satisfying when we finished it !
we slept late, hug out in the wonderful hot tub.. ate well, played with our gifts and took an Awesome hike up the McNeil point trail. It was raining down where we started.. but by the time we got a mile or so in, we got above the clouds and it was sunny and snowy.. The forest is so beautiful..a nd so different than ours at home>>
we had an amazing view of mt hood. This is where Gabe’s very cool picture of a bird landing on his hand happened last summer
As planned, we’d delayed our family Christmas get-together do that Gabe could get off the river and get home .
It was worth it..
the cherubs slept late .. so Diane and I lazed around in the hot tub until they woke. We’d decorated the hose with lights we brought with us.. and improvised a tree by wrapping lights around a small totem pole carving we found in the house..
the kids woke up around 10ish.. then we spent a lazy day in our pajamas opening present, playing, eating , hiking, decorating a tree outside for the birds, and napping as is our custom (ok.. the napping part is only MY custom 🙂
we also started putting together a 1000 piece puzzle of Vermont that we gave to the kids. That turned out to be an awesome family thing to work on
Max and Gabe had some really cool creative gifts for us.. like socks with our dogs pictures.. and a giant steel candy skull that max cut out on the laser
The boys made an amazing Peruvian dinner for us.. Peruvian checkin for them.. Peruvian scallops for us
and it was the last night of Chanukah.. so a mixed ethinic, mixed cultural bash as always
Days like this are always wonderful.. also bittersweet for missing Sam.. He was defiantly with us in spirit !
I’m just returning from a wonderful late holiday break with family out in Oregon. Most of the time we were off-line so I could not blog.. now I’m gonna try and catch up 🙂
On Saturday the 28th Diane and I spent the morning shopping for our stay in ZigZag.. around 3 we left Gabes with a car full of supplies and headed for ZigZag on the slopes of Mt Hood.
The airbnb cabin we rented was up on a long driveway off a country road.. we tied a ribbon on so Max and Gabe could find it when they came later in the day
the cabin we rented was so awesome.. it was a simple a frame with a big fireplace in the middle. it was on 5 isolated acres of labnd on Lolo pass road. We were under the snow line.. so had intermittent spitting rain .. but snow was always only a 15 min walk/drive away.
Max picked Gabe up from the airport about 5 pm. Gabe had been on the Colorado river rafting for the last 2.5 weeks and needed to go home and dump out his gear and pick up his clothes for zigzag.. They managed to get to the cabin by about 9 pm chi was really great.
It was the 2nd to the last night of Chanukah so we gave them a gift.. iI gave them each a bag of plumbing parts for them to make their own menorah’s.. its all 1/4 and 1/2″ black iron pipe and fittings, which brass adapters as candle holders.. works nice. They put one of them together and we lit the menorah as Diane made Latkes !
