Arriving in Portland

Our little family of three, plus Brian's sister Lynette, went to Oregon for Christmas 2008. We knew ahead of time that the Portland, OR area had received a record amount of snowfall (it was the worst winter storm in 40 years.) The bad weather had also struck most of the country (but not Virginia.) A lucky change of our ticket resulted in us flying through Dallas instead of St. Louis, where we probably would've gotten stranded at the airport. When we landed in Portland, we were greeted by Grandma and Grandpa who informed us that we might have been the only flight to have landed that day. When we looked around the airport, there were hundreds of people stuck and not able to leave the airport. We were very lucky to not have started our Christmas vacation that way!


There was a lot of snow in Portland, but the problem was compounded by the fact that there aren't enough snowplows to go around. Instead, they make you drive with chains on your wheels and you can't go very fast that way. When we left the airport, we drove to Jonathan and Lori's house (they live about fifteen minutes from the airport) and it took us over an hour to get there. We stayed there for the night, since it might have taken all night to get back to Salem (usually an hour away.)
Uncle Aaron enjoyed seeing Tristan for the first time since he'd been born. Aaron left for Canada when Tristan was two weeks old so at five months old, he'd changed quite a bit. We told Aaron that he had a lot of competition for "favorite uncle" now that Travis was home and that he would need to work pretty hard to reclaim the title.

Jonathan and Lori also got to see Tristan for the first time since he was 2 1/2 months old in Goshen. They were pretty excited and did their best to vie for that 'favored relative' status.




We stayed at Jon and Lori's overnight and enjoyed a good breakfast in the morning. It was nice to have the Nussbaum family all together for the first time in quite a while. It felt good to be in Oregon, even though we were pretty much snowed in.

The next morning, Brian, Jonathan, Lynette, Aaron and Lori ventured out on a neighborhood sledding trip. It was quite fun!