Home coming

Madelaine is coming home on Sunday!!! I am so exited!!!

Random facts about life

Sorry we haven't posted in so long. At first there was nothing to post and then, I admit I forgot.

I am really the only one that posts on here and there are reasons for some of them. Madelaine is at college ... enough said. Zack has his own blog so what he post is on it. Rex and Brennan just aren't the blogging sort, unimaginable as that is for some of us. And that leaves spasmodic me :) So I am afraid that regular posts will probably never happen. I will try to remember to post when ever any thing interesting is going on.

We went to Half Moon bay on February 28. It was the best last day of February ever.



It was a mixture of sun, sand, Coke out of glass bottles, Ray-bans (the kind of sun glasses that I am wearing in the picture, for those of you not familiar with the very hippest kind of beach eye-wear:D), ocean air, getting your clothes drenched - and I mean drenched - in salt water (which by the way is the very legitest way of ironing EVER), watching sail boats at sea, and having just plain good old fashioned fun with two extra fun older brothers and the best mom on the planet:)!



Some day, Lord willing, I am going to live in Half Moon Bay ..... Can you see why?

Claire

Travel

I am in Southern California. LA. It is very fun to be with my friends and blog from a mac but this trip has strengthened my resolve to NEVER live in the city. Come fairly often to visit but NEVER to live. But I love visiting, I am having so much fun. I went to the mall yesterday and tried on prom dresses with Juliet. It was FUN!!

We have been watching the Harry Potter movies. We watched The Goblet Of Fire last night and we are going to watch The Order of the Phoenix tonight. I am so exited! I have never seen any but the first three before I came here and I am hooked for life (I think:) )

We are going to the beach on Saturday and I am looking forward to it very much, I love the beach so much and I usually only get to see it once a year in Oregon and that just isn't the same as the California beaches that I hardly ever go to. It is sad, I live in CA and I hardly ever get to go to the beach. It is just wrong! Oh well I get to go on Saturday. YA!!!

Will post pictures later.

Claire

Snow!!

We live at about 15-1600 feet elevation, so we are lucky with a dusting of snow that melts in a few hours. But three days ago, at 11:00 pm, we looked out and it was snowing!!

I woke up at 7:30ish the next morning; it was still snowing and the power was out. The snow stopped at about 12:00 that afternoon, the sky cleared, and it got cold. It got near to zero that night; the pond down the road actually froze. Everything was beautiful.

But there was a down side to it all. Our neighbors had 30 plus trees down, the road was impassible and the electricity was out so our grandmother, who relies on electricity for her oxygen and heat, had to come to our house. Though all she had to cross was the back yard, it was icy enough to make it dangerous. A friend of Dads who has a four wheel drive truck brought some groceries and Dad got a call saying that he had the next day off of work. Things were looking up. From then on we had good old fashioned fun outside. Snow balling each other, clearing the road, building a snow man, clay pipe (made specifically for the purpose) and all, sledding and even skiing down the many hills on our property.

When we woke up the next morning there was a string of icicles along the roof and the power had come on at 5:00.

The snow is melting, turning to ice at night and then melting again, the forecast is for rain and this will soon be but a happy memory, but it has been fun, and we will all remember the December of 2009 for the rest of our lives. And there will be more snow sometime; maybe not this winter, maybe not next winter, but sometime. And, you know, rain is cool too.

Claire

Christmas

I love Christmas; it is my favorite time of the whole year. For us it started on Friday; we headed for Apple Hill and our favorite Christmas tree farm.

It was quick decision weather, aka: dumping rain, and in 15 minutes we had Gram's tree and ours on the roof of our van - named Vincent VanGo - and were off home. We spent the evening decorating the house and tree, searching the attic for Zack's stocking - which we still haven't found - listening to Christmas music and watching The Quiet Man, a great movie but rather incongruent with the rest of the evening as it all takes place in the middle of summer. Yesterday I baked sugar cookies and today I baked two pumpkin pies with Dad, an apple pie and a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

I love baking at Christmas time - or any time for that matter - and it is especially rewarding when you have three very hungry, very appreciative and very non-picky brothers. If you have no brothers - be ye man, woman, boy or girl- I pity you greatly.

Claire

We thought we were worth recording

...that's the purpose of Lunchtime Conversations: to celebrate Wheeler memories and to laugh at ourselves and maybe make you laugh with us. There's been five of us for over ten years, and we've had some conversations (particularly around lunchtime) that some of us want to remember and others of us wish to forget. And we KNOW you would all love to hear about them...we hope.

-Zack, Madelaine and Claire