Weekend Musings

Yesterday, we went to friends' property to get our Noble Fir Christmas tree. It was a gorgeous day and we could see Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood from their yard. I silently prayed for the 3 mountain climbers who were still missing on Mt. Hood. There have been other times people have been missing on the mountain and it is always so weird to be so close to the mountain, to see it's majestic beauty and know that at the same time people could be suffering that very moment - very tragic.

Then we spent several hours at the house cleaning, packing, ripping up carpet that got flooded again with the most recent storm. There must be so much water beneath our house. It stinks very badly now. I dislike being there.

We returned the the apartment and heard a bang. A ball of fire shot up in the air and then all of the power went out. Turns out there was an explosion at a substation and the power company shut off the electricity to about 50 thousand customers. The kids were very excited to see the fire, so the older ones took off down the block to get a better glimpse of inferno. Dh and I followed behind with the little ones. We got back to the apartment realizing that we could be wtihout power for days since there were already still thousands without power from Thursday's storm. Of course we were not prepared for no electricity, so we went to the store for candles, flashlight/batteries and breakfast before church. Can one have enough excitement in a week? Thankfully, power was restored around 12:30 am.

Sadly, after church today, we found out that one of the climbers had been found dead. This is so sad - along with the recent tragic story of the Kim family.

On a lighter note, here is the first of our baking - molasses cookies. They are/were wonderful. More to come. And on this day, I became the mother of a 20-yr old. Is that even possible? Surely not.