Fun in the tub!

Thanks, Brian and April, for the awesome bath crayons and bubble bath. Charlie had a very fun bath tonight!

Slumber Party!

Well, folks, something that you are probably figuring out about us Fletchers is that we don't learn things the first time around. For the second time in this past week, we ventured out in the blizzard and got trapped at the Miller's house. Yesterday (Christmas), Shawn's older brother Mike picked us up at our place in his 4-wheel drive Subaru. He drove us over to the Miller's for a Christmas celebration. Because of MORE SNOW, we all ended up stuck there having one big slumber party involving 7 adults and 5 toddlers in a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house! :)

Here's the kiddos opening their presents: Eli, Charlie, Jasmine, and Ellie (Blake was crashed out sleeping already).

Charlie opening his new fish aquarium. This has got to be one of my favorite presents that he got! It is magnetic and it has these little fake fish that "swim" around because of magnets that move them around in the water. Awesome! It's like pets without any of the annoying maintenance!

The adults playing backgammon (sp?). We had a little tournament...I didn't even make it up one bracket. Darn!

Charlie got to have a slumber party with the girls - can you tell he was excited?

We thought for sure they'd NEVER go to sleep...but they did. Aren't they sweet?

Blake woke up at about 11:00pm, ready to go!...oooops. But he was excited to open some presents from the cousins. Plus he got all the adult attention to himself for a few hours. :)

Eventually everyone found a place to konk out for the night - even Blake.

This morning the girls had to try out Ellie's new make-up, with some help from Aunt Katy.

The the kids (minus Blake - he doesn't like the cold!) headed outside to de-construct the snow igloo.

Eli

Jasmime

Ellie

And Charlie!

Going backwards, Christmas morning back at our place.

We got him a Dora "hippity hoppity" ball. I was tempted to get him a helmet to go along with it - man, that thing can get dangerous - especially with all of Charlie's massive weight on there!

Some books - he loves Berenstein Bears.

Oma, Opa, and YaYa all came over for apple pancakes. Charlie made YaYa a little "nest" in his room because her neck was hurting. It was very sweet. He even brought the table over for her so she could color with him.

Oma and Opa opening their presents from Charlie. They are keychains that hold digital photos on them. Pretty cool!

What Christmas morning would be complete without a little time spent sitting on the potty?

Okay, I know I keep going backwards here, but on to Christmas Eve!

We had Mike, Christine, Ellie, Blake, Katy, Melissa and Ivan over for some Scum of the Earth.

The kids watching a video.

Hope you all had a safe, warm and fun Christmas, too!

PS: We just made it back home again. When is this weather going to end?!

Happy Christmas Eve!

We made it home! It was a funny feeling being trapped just 1/2 a mile from home for 3 days. But, I can't think of anyone we'd rather be snowed in with than the Millers. :)

Here's Shawn attempting to shovel a pathway just so he could park the car.

Our neighbor's motorcycle - almost completely buried in the snow!

Here's what's up right now at the Fletcher house. Shawn and Charlie are sequestered away in Charlie's room with the wrapping paper, doing something very "top-secret". It's got me very curious, but I'm not allowed to peek. :)

Our snowy little world...

The City of Gresham just declared a state of emergency.

If we call 911 from here, the emergency people will literally have to "pack in" to get to our house. Yes, they will have to leave their vehicles and WALK to our house to save us. Yikes. This is nuts...and I'm going STIR CRAZY! Anyone want to bring me a Starbucks? :)

TRAPPED!

Okay, a confession. We did something really stupid yesterday. We drove. We wanted to come over to the Miller's and bring stew for dinner. So, after about an hour and a half of digging our car out of the snow, Shawn got behind the wheel and drove us through the treacherous weather and we made it. But here's the problem - now we're trapped! Don't get me wrong, we love it here, this is our second home. But now we are trapped here, literally snowed in, for who knows how long...

Here was Mike this morning, thinking he could actually shovel outside the garage and make it to work - yeah, right!

The view from INSIDE the garage: All I can say is, WOW! I've never seen so much snow in my life!

~ Reporting live from the Miller home in Gresham, Oregon. ~
We may be here a while!!!

Snowed in and cheating

I'm cheating. Go over to the Miller's blog to see what we've been up to the past few days. :)

For Amaya

Thanks, Amaya, for the yummy cupcake. It made Charlie very happy!

Aftermath: cupcake

Aftermath: Charlie

"Arctic Blast 2008" ...and catching up

What is up with the news? Come on - are we gonna have an epic proportion snow storm, blizzard-like, "Arctic Blast" weather event, or not? I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little weary of all the weather-hype and no action. We're ready for that blizzard now, so bring it on!

As promised, following are some pics from our first-ever Black Friday experience. We are definitely NOT your typical "consumer-minded" folks. More than anything, we just went along for the fun of watching all the crazies come out before the sun's up just to fight over electronics and socks. But we managed to score a few cool things, while we were at it, too.

Thursday night, we set our alarm for 4:30 am, planning to meet up with our "crew" outside the Miller house at 4:45 am. Well, Shawn had to get up to go potty (I know, too much information) at 2:15 am and decided we should just get up and hit Best Buy - because maybe we'd get a shot at one of their laptop deals. Ha ha.

Here he is outside our front door, sporting some of our coupons, at 2:25 am:

And, here's what we found when we pulled up to Best Buy at 2:30 am, this was the end of the line wrapped around the side of the store...

So, we stood out there for about and hour and a half, then realized the futility of what we were doing, and left. I can think of other things I would have rather been doing at 3:00 in the morning, namely SLEEPING, but it was an exciting start to the morning.

Next, it was off to Kohl's. We got there a little before 5:00 am. Here's part of our group waiting in the line that wrapped around the entire interior of the store:

Here's a little video clip of Andy (and a whole bunch of people standing in line, looking really irritated with Shawn for video-taping them at 5:00 in the morning...)

We scored a set of Crayola markers for 2.99 at Kohl's. Big spenders, I know.

Next it was on to Fred Meyer for free coffee and donuts:

And...let's see...we bought...nothing, at Fred Meyers. But the coffee was good. :) And the people-watching was even better.

Next stop for Shawn and I was Office Depot, where we were actually able to get in on a laptop deal - which is what I'm using right now to post, and it's AWESOME. :) Stood in line for over 2 hours to get it, but it was worth it.

Next stop, IKEA:

And more free food:

And we got the bed we were already planning on getting anyways, for half the price.

Here it is getting all loaded up in the car for the ride home - yes!

Some pics from tree-hunting with the Miller clan. Here's Ellie and baby Viola:

Ellie and Charlie hunting for sticks:

Charlie picked out a sparkly reindeer ornament:

This is the only shot I got of Charlie and Shawn checking out the geese - because I was too afraid of them to get any closer. Those guys are MEAN.

Blake and Ellie enjoying hot chocolate and cookies:

The whole group:

Making peanut butter balls for various holiday parties, etc:

Aren't they cute? I think they look like little bitty caramel apples:

Success on the potty, finally!!!

Hanging out by the window, enjoying the snow outside:

Putting the snow tires on the car - let's get this blizzard going!