Toby, Max and I visited Mt. Hood for a day of playing in the snow on Thursday, 28 Dec 2006. The start of the day was pretty rough, but God worked it all out in the end and we had a great day. We left later than I wanted and so we got caught in traffic on the way up, adding an extra 45 minutes to our 1 hour drive to the mountain. When we got to Summit Ski area (where we had gone tubing previously) we found out that they were sold out of tubes and there was a waiting list. We waited about a half an hour and the rumor was that someone had reservation of 30 tubes. Toby called another tubing place and found out that they had about 10 tubes left. Unfortunately, we didn’t know exactly where Ski Bowl East was located, only that we had seen a sign for it on the way up. Toby and I spent some minutes yelling at each other about where it was before we were able to follow the signs over. When we got to SkiBowl, we were told that the parking was full. Undaunted, Toby drove forward and dropped me and Max off to get the tubes. The official line at the rental area was that they were out of tubes until 3pm (it was now noon). Toby found a parking place and came over. She was not happy when I told her that there were no tubes to be rented. She walked around and saw a big pile of about 25 tubes and talked to the employee standing next to them. That guy said he didn’t understand why they weren’t renting out the tubes. Toby grabbed 3 of them and sent me to buy 3 park tickets. The guy behind the counter told me that there were no tubes to be rented, so I yelled to Toby to make sure she already had tubes. She did. The guy still was hesitant to sell me the tickets. I finally was able to browbeat him into selling me the tickets. We were set. After that the day was great. Max spent a good deal of the day just climbing up and down a small hill with another little boy while Toby and I tubed down the adjacent hill. (After all we had been through, we were determined to get our money’s worth of tubing.)

Max in snowsuit

Happy Parents

Happy Famiily

Max and his new friend Devon

I previously described one ceiling step-through that was traumatic in the immediate time frame, but there was another that was less immediately problematic but more destructive a bit later. As you will remember, showers were forecast for Saturday after we put on the tarp. We got the tarp up and thought we were set. We went to see one of Toby’s performances in the Living Christmas Tree. It poured while we were gone. When we had returned from Toby’s show, we came home to a soaking wet kids room. Examination of the problem showed that one of the holes that we had diligently taped up had thoroughly leaked. It also was at the bottom of a ‘valley’ in the tarp, between the trusses. So all the water that collected on that section of tarp funnelled right to the hole, and it drained down onto the ceiling drywall. Now that might not have been *so* bad except that the hole in the tarp was nearly directly above the spot where the ceiling had been stepped through in the kid’s room. If the ceiling had been intact, the water might have spread out over a larger area, and been absorbed by the ceiling drywall, maybe. Maybe not. As it was, the plywood that I had attached to the inside ceiling to keep out the attic insulation served to direct the water into the center of the kids room, away from Lucy’s crib (small blessing). The kids slept in the office that night and the next and the next and the next… There was no standing water, the water had soaked into the carpet and the padding. Over the next few days, we worked on sopping up the water with our little hand steam vac, towels, and we even rented a full size steam cleaner thinking that we could suck up the water. In about 3 days the carpet dried to the point where it was nearly dry to the touch. But the room stank. It reeked to high heaven. I made the decision that the carpet had to come up. I cut out a 10′ x 9′ section of the carpet and pad. Although the carpet was mostly dry to the touch, the pad was still soaked. I was able to wring water out of the pad. Once the underfloor was cleaned and dried (I used vinegar), the smell went away completely within the hour. So now the oak floors are exposed in the kids room.