Christmas in the Northwest...

I'm taking the title of the post today from a song familiar to our friends and family in Seattle. A sampling of the lyrics...

---
The wind may not blow,

Might not even snow

But there's nothing like Christmas

Right here at home.

May not be white,
Might be a rainy night,

But there's nothing like sharing

The sounds and the sights

of Christmas in the Northwest

---

Well, it certainly was white this year! For the first time in as long as I can remember, we had snow for Christmas in Seattle. Although we didn't make it out in time for Christmas Eve, we arrived by Christmas afternoon with plenty of daylight to spare. They even said we "had to fly first class" because that was all they had available. How sad for us :) And now for the photos...

Stretching out in 1st Class...

The "Breakfast Quesadilla" we were served on the plane. We joked that if we had paid for the 1st class upgrade, this breakfast would be costing us about $400....

The table set for Christmas dinner at my parents house, with the tree in the background...

I got to visit with Marissa at her baby shower. Her baby is due February 24th.

We also got to visit Uncle Dick up in Mill Creek...

Dad decided to drive us all up to Mt. Rainier National Park...

The Visitor Center at Longmire (check out those icicles)- closed for obvious reasons...

In this shot out the car window, you can see a traffic sign and note the snow is almost to the top of it. Note also the amount of the snow on the trees here, part way up the road to Paradise...

Now look at the trees here, right up near the top of the road to Paradise. They are so snow covered you can hardly see any green.

The snow was up over our heads!

Here we are (Jim, me, Mom & Dad) posing (or huddling rather) in the new Paradise Visitor Center...

The outside of the Visitor Center, with snow drifts nearly up to the 2nd floor...

The conditions were so bad at Paradise that you could not even see the mountain, even though it was huge and right in front of our faces. It was still fun though and the most snow that any of us had ever seen in one place. We grabbed one more photo op before hitting the road...

We returned safely home on Thursday morning and were greeted by Bear and Bailey at the door. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and we wish you a Happy 2009!