Mo' Sno', Mo' Belly

The winter solstice has arrived indeed in the Seattle area. It's 9 pm and its still snowing after a full week of true sub-freezing, no rain winter. The forecase is for snow until tomorrow morning, then letting up for about a day and a half before the next storm hits on Christmas Eve. I don't think I'll be riding to work. We have 9 inches in the front yard, measured, not guestimated like the rest of the dumbasses around here claiming a foot-and-a-half at their house (heard at the grocery store an hour ago). The whole area is nearly incapacitated since there just isn't the infrastructure to move the snow. Fortunately, the wind storm predicted for last night didn't turn out as bad as predicted and we didn't loose power.

First order of the day was to get some more pictures of Trina and her ever growing beautiful belly. At 30 weeks, I'd say she's full blown pregnant. :) She's finding the simple little things hard to do, like tie her shoes, pick up a pencil, get out of the chair, and is even getting the waddle. I'm starting to get pretty excited, and we've been discussing names pretty regularly.

The baby's room is pretty much ready. We now just need to compile all the every-day goods such as diapers, bottles, wipes, and that is just for me!


After shoveling the walk and drive way, today we ventured out to the town of Snoqualmie to pick up a crib that Trina found on Craigslist. The roads were quite snowy, even the main freeways. I was surprised that there aren't even enough plows to clear the 3-lane I-405 (pictured below). In the 45-mile, each way drive to Snoqualmie we did not see a single snow plow. It's obvious that most people aren't leaving the house, but enough have been to make for some pretty entertaining attemts - like the guy across the street with the rear-wheel drive Lexus and fancy street tires. I think we've been lucky that it has stayed below freezing, rather than the usual freeze-thaw cycles that turn everything to ice. That will be later this week.



While we were out in Snoqualmie picking up the crib, we stopped by the 270-foot Snoqualmie Falls. The wind storm had hit Snoqualmie, and although it had largely subsided, it was still quite breezy and snow drifts abound. The Falls were spectacular to say the least. The broken icefield in the tail end of the plunge pool was larger than a football field, and the ice around the whole basin formed by the mist was beautiful. Perhaps an iceclimber's paradise, if you could get to it. We didn't linger long since it was about 26 degrees with wind gusts hard enough to blow my hat off my head, and the hat was already turned backwards. The rag wool sweater just wasn't blocking the wind.