Wild Week In Oregon

This has been a wild weather week for the Northwest. We have had everything from high winds, torrential downpour, sunshine and snow! If you watched the national news the beginning of the week you probably saw that parts of the state are underwater. Tillamook is flooded as well as the Vernonia area (about 20 miles from us) Thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Wilkes who called to check on us to make sure we were fine. Other than one downed tree we survived just fine and so did the beach house. The area where the Wilkes men/boys went fishing last summer had 45 foot high waves and 125 mile per hour winds- bet that would have been a really bumpy ride!!

Today, Sunday, we had some light snow flurries.

Monday the girls were off school so we had a field trip to the IKEA store that opened here in Portland this summer - we had fun wandering the huge store and ate lunch in their cafe. Cali decided she needed to redo her room so we picked up a few things for that.

Tuesday the girls had another trip to the doctor for more shots - only two each this time! One more trip and they are done.

I had some fun shopping this week for one of my "Beach Babe" friends whose daughter is getting married between Christmas and New Years and she needed some new Christmas decorations so she hired me to do it for her - so much fun! We got her all new tree ornaments and some fun things for her mantels! I didn't know it could be so much fun to spend other people's money!!

Wednesday was a trip to the Temple with the Stake Relief Society and lunch together afterwards.

The holiday activities are in full swing this week:

- Cali and her Cantores group sang 3 different nights - one for the Hospice Care at the hospital, the local Presbyterian church and an LDS ward for their Christmas party.

- The Mia Maids came over for some holiday cookie baking

- I spent one day sewing a Wise Man costume for the ward Christmas party (which we won't even be at!)

-Went to the Angel Tree Project with American Mothers - they buy and wrap presents for children of prison inmates. We had a nice luncheon and board meeting following it.

-Attended the Padbury's annual Christmas Party and White Elephant Exchange. I ended up with some Mt. St. Helen Ash and I don't remember what Jim got???

-Cut down a real tree for the family room on Friday afternoon - had to pull the girls out of school to do it because we only had one hour all weekend when everyone would be home and it would be light so we could get a tree

-Cali and I decorated the family room tree (see picture) The house is now fully decorated and ready

-Wrapped presents!

-Drove Tessa back and forth to ballet rehearsal for the their holiday ballet - a total of 13 hours of rehearsal just this weekend!

-Attended Bethany Ward's Christmas Party to hear Cantores sing.

-Did my Visiting Teaching and delivered Christmas gifts to those families.

Now I just need to work on digging out the Bonus Room before the boys come home - it has turned into Santa's Workshop.

The Car Saga - as a continuation from last week - Leigh Anne's car was finally freed from the garage on Tuesday. Jim's car will be in the shop for at least 8 working days (and lots of money). Thanks to neighbor Debbie and the use of her Yukon we were able to get everywhere we needed in the meantime!

Boy Update:

Logan had a busy weekend with a quick trip to Idaho for a Young Ambassador performance - got home at 2 a.m. Saturday night - just in time for his 6:00 a.m. Elder's Quorum meeting Sunday morning.

Clark had a date to the BYU game in SLC Saturday afternoon, dinner with her parents afterwards and then a romantic carriage ride around Temple Square (without the parents!)

Jim is headed out of town tomorrow for the entire week - back to Daily Access headquarters in Mobile Alabama. I am flying in to Mobile on Friday for the companies Christmas Party - yes they are flying me back just for the party! I figure I have never been to Alabama - so why not! Anybody know of anything to do in Mobile!!!???

Thought I'd share a couple of pictures of our trees -and yes the one does have a TON of ornaments on it but I love it. The other tree (the family room one )needs more but I could only fit so many in my suitcase and in my carry on when I visited TaiPan Trading last month! How I wish we had one in Portland (Jim is glad we don't!) It is my Joy tree!

We are off to dinner at our Home Teacher's house and then to Tithing Settlement.

Boy Update

Oops - guess I forgot the boy update for the week - sorry! Thanks for the reminder Emily!

They flew back to school on Monday morning - their flight left at 6:00 a.m! Thanks to Aunt Teresa for picking them up at the airport in Salt Lake! Thursday night we got an excited call from Logan. He was standing in line to go to the Billy Joel concert in Salt Lake. Shayla had surprised him with an early Christmas present. They loved the concert. Logan sings a Billy Joel song in the Young Ambassador show this year.

Clark and Logan had a double date on Friday - they decorated gingerbread houses - aren't they cute! Both boys are gearing up for finals. Clark enjoyed a little boy bonding Saturday night with a few of his roommates and Halo! Oh yeah - and boys watch for a package from mom in the mail!

The Holidays Begin!

We are in full holiday mode here at the Wilkes house! The house is decorated and most of the presents are bought and we had a week of fun holiday activities.

For Young Women's this week we put together a 12 days of Christmas for one of the inactive girls in our class. Thursday and Friday was my Creative Memories holiday Open House. I turned the house into a Creative Memories store. Jim was out of town for two days and came home to find his office taken over by my Open House. We had snow warnings all week and had a few flakes on Saturday morning but it was all very disappointing. Supposedly a big wind storm was on it's way too but so far all we have had is ALOT of rain and I mean ALOT!!

The girls both had several babysitting jobs this weekend so were kept busy. Saturday was a crazy day! As soon as my Open House was over Friday afternoon we put everything away and I started cooking. I hosted my annual First Line Creative Memories brunch Saturday morning - with raspberry cream cheese coffee cake, cinnamon coffee cake, a chili egg dish, spiced bacon and baked grapefruit! (I'll post recipes on my other blog later this week - www.yourhomebasedmom.com) It was a fun morning with my team. As soon as they left we cleaned off the table and reset it for my Beach Babe Holiday tea that afternoon. I started cooking again - tomato and basil soup, tomato tarlets, ham and cheese palmiers, banana bars, and pecan tassies and more. Let me tell you that was a lot of cooking! We enjoyed a nice tea and book exchange and had fun catching up with each other - we have known each other for 18 years so have a lot of history together. Jim was my expert dishwasher and there were a lot of dishes to wash.

Tessa had a mega dance rehearsal on Saturday - she was there from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and was a tired little girl when she got home. Jim, Cali, Jameson (cali's friend) and I went to the BYU/Univeristy of Portland Basketball game Saturday after all the parties. 90 percent of the fans at the game were cheering for BYU. It was fun even though it wasn't much of a game - BYU won easily.

On Friday our garage door decided it was tired of going up and down and decided to stay in the down position - with the car inside! Jim called the garage door repair people and they said they could fix it but not until next Tuesday - 5 days later. Well - we still had two other cars so we were o.k. but then Saturday during my tea party Jim was backing his car out of the driveway and didn't see my friend's car parked to the side, he turned out of the driveway a little too soon and hooked his bumper on her wheel well and proceeded to rip his entire front bumper off his car - so two cars down!! The tow truck will come tomorrow to haul his car to the body shop. So 3 drivers - 1 car, should be interesting......

Today after church we went to an Advent service at one of the large Episcopal churches in town. I think it was the first time the girls had been to any other type of church service. They have a wonderful choir and the acoustics in their church are incredible. I only recognized three of the carols they sang and the girls weren't sure about all the standing and sitting through the service. We went with our home teacher Gary Nees who had told us about it. We really enjoyed it, even though 4 1/2 hours of church in one day was a lot!

Happy December everyone!