Over The River & Through The Woods...To Grandmother's House We Go!

Snowstorms all around us, and more to come, we hit the road early this morning to head to Oma's and Opa's for Christmas.

We literally went over the river and through the woods to get there too! First, we went through Portland, and crossed over the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, and drove through snow banks, with cars strewn along the the highways from Portland to almost Olympia.

Once we were over the border, we caught up with Bestema and Judy and Miriam at a rest area (yay text messaging, where we could find out where we were and stop for a minute!) and Nora got to say hello to them!

Then came the "through the woods part". It was so beautiful. It was scary at times, but Brian did a great job driving us through.

Once we got to Oma and Opa's house, we got to listen to Opa practice piano. He has such a talent, and it's so neat to hear him play. I made a little clip of it on my camera, which I'll have to upload to YouTube later...

While Opa played, Oma showed Brian her Amazon Kindle, a super cool electronic book device. It was neat to see one in person!

Oma and Opa's house is full of Christmas trees and decorations, including Nora's own tree, which has a special feature: It turns on and off with the mere touch of the hand! How cool is that?


My Other Julie in the family is here too -- this is my sister-in-law Julia and her son (my nephew) Trevor, who's a student at Georgia Tech.

So I didn't get a lot of pictures of Nora because I found my camera after she went to bed, but I got this one of her during dinner with my phone, as I sang "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" and she just started clapping like crazy.

We're happy to have made it to Oma and Opa's house!

Merry Christmas everybody!