Lights Out!

Apparently, if we receive two tenths of an inch more in snow before the end of the year, we will have broken the record for the snowiest December in the Portland, OR area!

Last Sunday brought snow atop freezing rain atop snow, canceled church services, and fun nighttime adventures. If you have never experienced freezing rain, you are missing out. It is beautiful and dangerous. This happens when it warms up enough in the clouds to produce rain, but the ground is still so cold that the rain freezes on contact, leading to an ice frosting on everything it touches. Consequentially, church was closed and we stayed home all day.

(we are going nowhere!)
Freezing rain is beautiful, but it makes tree branches very heavy...and we have a lot of those in Oregon. Sunday evening this led, as it often does, to a power outage. Alex already had a nice firing roaring in the fireplace, so we lit some candles, were joined by our friends from upstairs, and enjoyed the rare treat of a cozy night with no electricity. Brian brought home some hot deli food, and we all cuddled up in front of the fire while Alex read Price Caspian aloud.

I'm married to a 30 year old man!

Weird.

Yes...I've been a slacker about blogging! I'm sorry! I've got no good excuse.

Well, life is good. Last Monday was supposed to be my last day of work (before the Christmas Break...not my last day before baby comes...) but--Hooray!--we had a week worth of snow days!

NW Oregon doesn't get much snow. So when there is snow, everything stops while we play in the snow and avoid driving on the roads. Last week Alex either worked from home or walked to the bus stop on a more main road and took the bus in to work. I could think of no good reason to leave my happy nesting projects...so I stayed inside and worked furiously to get our house back in order. It's not done yet, but it's getting closer.

So...Alex is 30! Yikes! But, he did get in some important things before he left his 20s:

He skied down the hill that we live on.

The snow was starting to melt a bit, and the road had been gravelled, so he didn't make it very far!

For his last dinner of his 20s he chose...

Yup. Fruity pebbles with whipped cream and a Mountain Dew. That's my man--father to my unborn son!

He had a fun birthday. We lit a fire in the fireplace and the weather calmed down just enough that some friends were able to come and celebrate. I made some yummy chili and guacamole for dinner and we watched The Christmas Toy (best Christmas movie EVER).

I made a Banana Cake with Penuche Frosting (YUM!) and Alex managed to blow out all 30 candles (with a little help from neighbor-David).

Alex got some fun new toys:

• A Transformer (from Vince and Christi)

• A Spice Girls doll (thanks to Adam and Candice)
• A silly picture of neighbor David so he can look at it and laugh when he is at work
• 5 lift tickets to Hoodoo Ski Resort (from his parents and myself)
• And.......drumroll........our nephew Garrett gave Alex a guitar!

Not just any guitar--THE guitar that Alex has been drooling over for 6+ years. Garrett made this custom pick guard and then let Alex babysit his guitar while Garrett was serving a 2-year mission for our church. Alex was very sad to see it go at the end of those 2 years and hasn't found a guitar with the same sound yet. And now--it's his! It didn't leave his hands the rest of the evening. Believe it or not, but in this picture he is actually still playing the guitar while mostly asleep!

In other news, my tummy is getting bigger and our baby boy is very active in utero (= Although, he always stops moving as soon as Alex puts his hand to my belly! Speaking of this kid...I need to go eat some breakfast!

slacker!

Jen needs to blog. She's a slacker.

[from her husband, who does not have a blog, so that he doesn't have to feel bad about not updating it]

More Recording

Okay! 3 posts in one day! I finally have the time and space to blog a little...so I'm playing catch-up.

We have started recording again with Eric Lovre. We are working on a full-length album. Most probably to be released on cd sometime next Spring / Summer. Recording is going so much better this time around. In our first 4 hour session we recorded basic tracks (drums, guitar, bass) for FIVE songs. (Compared to taking 3 or 4 months to get basic tracks on our first 3 songs last year).

Our friend Jeremy Rice is playing drums for the album. We are super excited about what he has added to these songs.

Alex and I went in yesterday and laid down 2 flute tracks, a violin track, and a bowed-guitar track, and tried a few takes on some vocal tracks. We are having a GREAT time recording and are hoping to finish up recording the album tracks by December.
So...here are a few pictures from the first session!

Jeremy set up in Eric's tiny studio

Alex and Eric engineering

Alex and Jeremy recorded "Spinning" in one take. This is the song where they start slow...and speed up until they are playing as fast as humanly possible. See their hands? No? Then they are doing it correctly.

Alex--passed out after a long hard day of recording.

Halloween

Alex as Robert Smith from The Cure
Jen as the Gothic Cure fan that Alex-as-Robert-Smith knocked up

We ended up spending Halloween with friends Vince and Christy (Vince is behind the camera, Christy is back/center), Shalese (front center), and their friends. We ate food, handed out candy to trick-or-treaters, and watched the Garfield Halloween special. (candy, candy, Candy, CANDY!)

Remodeling

We're still working on the apartment. We have new kitchen/bathroom floors, we are finishing the last of the painting today, and the carpet will be in Monday. Yeay! After a few days for the toxic carpet fumes to dissipate, we can move back in!

A little worn out
Alex painting the baby's room (=

Yup. The toilet is in the shower. It's a time saver, really.

"The brown wall" in our new bedroom/office/music room

The beginning...this is how the apartment looked the first few days after the flood. The getting-rid-of-the-mold process required these ET-ish plastic sheets quarantining the room.

Boy, Oh Boy!

Yep! He is definitely a baby boy! I considered posting the "gender" photo...but it is a bit graphic.
I'm not yet sure how I feel about exploiting my child on the Internet...

So, here he is! I've finally started feeling him move. The first moment where I was certain it was him (and not just gas!) was on Tuesday. Then Wednesday, the day of the ultrasound, I felt him move lots (= Probably I'm just now figuring out what it feels like.

It was so fun to watch him wiggle and squiggle around on the ultrasound. At one point he scrunched up and bonked me with his rear-end...and I could totally feel it!

He was very sweet, a little camera shy (didn't want to show us his face), and had all of the important parts (4-chambered heart, arms, legs, brain, spinal cord, kidneys, stomach, etc., etc.).

I, on the other hand, am not camera shy. I will comply and post some preggo Jen pictures as soon as life makes it a little easier to post (like having a computer set back up in my house).

The measurements were on par with what we were already certain is the right dates. So, baby boy Carmichael should be joining us sometime mid-April. Yeay!