Oh, gee, it's up to my knee

We got another 6-8 inches today, on top of the (now thicker) layer of ice, that's on top of the 6-8 inches of snow from 2 days ago. I actually had to go out and...*gasp*...shovel it. I haven't decided if it was punishment for being a homebody for 10 days or if it was exercise. Either way I wasn't liking it.

I didn't really have to shovel it. But it was almost too deep to walk through and it is probably going to get worse over the next week. So I figured I might as well start eating the elephant.

Snowed in!

We've seen some crazy weather the past week. Last Sunday we got our first snowfall...and much more than we're used to getting here. Portland is not well prepared for getting this much snow, so usually even a little bit will cause school delays or even closures. This was supposed to be the last week of school before winter break, but the weather caused school closures for the entire week!

I also wasn't able to make it to work for several days. Fortunately I'm able to remote into work and still get things done. So I ended up working from home most of the week. (And as sweet as that may sound it's definitely a distraction when the kids are home too.)

Yesterday and today got even worse though. We got much more snow yesterday than we had all week. Then overnight and this morning we got a freezing rain. So there's about a quarter-inch of ice on top of about 6-8 inches of snow. Just a few minutes ago we were back to snowfall, and as I look out the window right now we're back to the freezing rain.




The kids were picking up great sheets of ice and trying to make an ice fort.


That bush was standing upright yesterday.


Stuck.


We don't get snowplows. I don't think the city even owns any snowplows.


An "ice flower."

Orlando Adventures - Day 14 Finale

Well, that's it! We flew home today. No incidents at the airport or en route. Fun was had by all, but we are also glad to be back home. I'm sure this feeling of "glad to be back" will last until tomorrow when we all have to go back to school and work. I predict that around 11:00am tomorrow we'll all be wishing we were back at Walt Disney World or sitting by the pool in the sun. Oh well, it all had to end sometime.

I've finished editing a couple videos of Epcot and Hollywood Studios. Not the best videos as I didn't get a whole lot of video footage. Also, these were shot using my digital camera with a primary purpose of still photos. But, you get the general idea.

The video of Soarin' flashes because I'm using a video camera to record film. Video and film rates are not the same, so you get a strobe effect. Anyone who's ridden the ride knows that it doesn't really look like that.

Epcot:


Hollywood Studios:

Orlando Adventures - Day 13

Click on the photo to be taken to the first in the set of today's photos.

Much better weather today. Just a little bit chilly, but sunny and clear. We spent the morning playing on the beach and in the pools then came back to the room for lunch.

No Cape Canaveral today though. We decided we had already spent enough money so we went to some cheaper (or free even) local attractions.

After lunch we headed out to Angell & Phelps Chocolate Factory and got the free tour and bought some yummy chocolates. The tour was much smaller than I expected. It's not a very big factory. Nothing is automated accept the chocolate dipping since they can't really hand dip as effectively as they could when they didn't need to wear rubber gloves (the gloves now make it difficult to feel the temperature of the chocolate). Everything else is very manual from the mixing of the chocolate, making the cream centers, and even packing the boxes...all done by hand.


Can I please eat my vegetables now?

Then we went south to the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse. The tallest lighthouse in Florida (second tallest in the US). It's a pretty cool place. It was my first visit to a lighthouse. They have museum exhibits in all the houses used by the keepers. Some showing how they lived and others showing about the lighthouse, the lenses, and the kerosene lantern. It's still operational, but is electric now of course. They allow visitors to go all the way up and out on to the balcony. You can't go up into the lamp house at the top, but they have a window you can look through to see the lens and lamp.



This is our last day. We fly home tomorrow. We've got lots of packing to do tonight to get things ready for our early morning trip to the airport. It's been a really fun and adventurous vacation.