Working on Christmas due to Snow and Outages

So this Christmas was different than any I have ever had. This was the first Christmas that I was ever stuck at work and away from my family. It just didn't feel the same. It sort of felt like just another day.

Andrea and I worked a lot of hours this week due to the Level III Outage (over 50,000 customer without power) that we had. I worked 6:30-6:30 on Sunday, 7am-7pm on Monday, 5am-5pm on Tuesday, 7am-7pm on Wednesday, 5am-5pm on Thursday (I mean Christmas). Being at work and fielding escalated calls from customers who were mad, angry, and frustrated that they didn't have power tends to wear down a person after 60 hours in 5 days. I found myself rolling my eyes, getting defensive, as well as getting utterly annoyed.

However, working on Christmas Day while my wife was at home, was something different - it stunk. Not being able to spend time with my beautiful wife, in our beautiful home, with our great Christmas decorations and our dog Payton, added to my deteriorating mood. Add complaining customers to that and it's a volatile mix of emotion. It was a freakin' pity party for poor ole' Ben.....

...for the first couple of hours.


Then I began thinking. God is awesome and he looks out for His kids. So awesome that He sent His only son to Earth, FOR US! Talking to these people on the phone, I realize that they are talking about their power being out and Christmas being ruined, and no Christmas dinner. Of course, it is inconvenient and a drag - but it could be worse. I started thinking how fortunate I am that I have a beautiful wife to miss, and great house that I wish I was at, and that I HAVE Christmas decorations to miss and a dog that is thrilled to see me whenenver it is that I make it home. I am so thankful for my life and the things that God has provided for me and my family. I am thankful that God sent his son to us to forgive us of our sins by taking them from us and dying for the wrong things that we have done and continue to do. Putting things into that perspective, allowed me to create a more positive attitude while at work, and do my best to empathize with those customers that continue to call in. Don't get me wrong, there were some calls from folks that were very thankful that our crew were out there and that our people at the center were there to talk to them.

I hope that folks were not inconvenienced too much for the last few days while they were stuck in the snow, or stranded at home, or without power. No matter what mindset you're in, it's still kind of a pain. I think it's a great opportunity to reflect on the blessings that we've been given. Things will get back to normal before we know it. I am just so incredibly thankful that the Whitaker's have a "normal" to get back to.

Merry Christmas to everyone and I hope you had a great Holiday Season!

The First Snow at The Whitaker Pines

Well, as everyone is probably aware. It's snowing outside! This is bitter-sweet. The weather is great to look at, and it makes everything look so fresh and clean. However, it is usually coupled with outages - meaning that I'm sitting here just waiting for my phone to ring to head into work. We'll see.

After church, we decided to take some quick pics of the house, and of Payton - with the new covering of snow.

Ben's Blurb - Gospel Christmas

Andrea and I took my parents out to the Gospel Christmas. (If Andrea were posting this, I'm sure she would be able to put a cool link to The Gospel Christmas website or something, but since it's me - you'll unfortunately have to look it up on your own.) It was a good time. We went to The Melting Pot for dinner and then walked to The Arlene Schnitzer.

This is the second year that we've gone to the Gospel Christmas and it is such a great time. It is definitely refreshing to see all types of folks coming to experience such a great Christian program. I would highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Ben's Blurb - "Can they see us from space yet?"

Christmas season is finally here! This by far is my favorite season. I love the music, the weather, the hustle and bustle, the giving nature of people, and of course being able to celebrate Christ's birth. What a great time of year.

I also love the lights! I've never really been in a neighborhood where the neighbors also like to decorate their houses as well. Now that we are, the competitive side of me is starting to take over. Of course I am more than cordial as I'm telling the neighbors, "Your house looks great". I am, however, secretly hoping they blow a breaker and their house goes dark. Yikes, that's not very nice. It is cool to see everyone celebrate though.

This year, I had the lights up on the house about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. My strategy has always been to wait for the first halfway decent weekend of weather in November and get the lights up. I don't turn them on until after Thanksgiving though. I'm not THAT crazy. It's fun to strategize the light placement, and which breakers I think are on the verge of being overloaded. So far we haven't had any major incidents. (fingers crossed).

Here are some pics of the house. I think next year - I'll be able to fit some more on the house. I mean, look at all of those empty spaces. And there is all kinds of room on the lawn for cryin' out loud!

Athey Creek Turkey Bowl - 2008

Well, after taking last year off due to a bum ankle, I decided to take the field this year in the annual ACCF Turkey Bowl. I've been playing football on Thanksgiving since the 9th grade (1991). When we would play, every once in a while, a guy would show up who was quite a bit older than we were, thinking he could still play with the young kids.

I am now that guy.

It was a good time this year. It's great to get out there and run around and hit people, and get hit. Playing with a group of guys that want to play for the fun of the sport and not to kill someone is a nice change of pace. :) I played Quarterback all day and took my share of some hits, but that's what keeps me young I guess.
I was able to escape without any major injuries this year. Of course two days later I'm hobbling around like I'm 70. My legs hurt, my ribs and abs hurt from the punishment, my ankle is killing me, my neck is sore, and I'm pretty sure I have a deep thigh bruise. (I'm itemzing this part so I might remember why I shouldn't play in 2009) :). All in all though, it was really good time and my Dad showed up, like he always does, and was able to take some pics of the game. What a guy.

These are pics of some of the action. You can see our Pastor, Brett, in a couple of the shots and the other guys that were there as well.

Athey Creek Turkey Bowl - More Pics

Here are some more pics of the fun that was had on Thanksgiving.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ben is off at playing football at the annual ACCF Turkey Bowl while I am getting ready to host our first Thanksgiving. It's actually not as frantic as I thought it would be since I did everything I could ahead of time. The house is clean, the table is set and the turkey is cooking. I'm sure I am forgetting something, but thought I would take a few moments to blog. Seems we have neglected it most of this month.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! And once you're done with dinner take a look in the direction of Sherwood, because you just might be able to see our house gleaming with thousands of Christmas lights!

Happy Halloween!

We had a fantastic first halloween in our new house. I wore my wedding dress because I love it so much, and there is no other day that it's appropriate to wear it. Ben got a tuxedo t-shirt to match me and Payton was a bumble bee which was not in theme, but he was really cute. We had 190 trick-or-treaters! We could hardly believe it, but it was super fun.

Our neighborhood is really festive so we followed suit with lots of lights and HAPPY halloween decor - I refuse to have scary, dead decorations around. If they are this many decorations for Halloween, we can't wait for Christmas! In fact, Ben is already strategizing the light situation.

We still have plenty of candy around the house, so if you need a chocolate fix, please stop by!

It wasn't from me!

If you received a random email in your inbox from my hotmail account - it was not really from me. Sometime this morning, an email was sent from my hotmail to EVERYONE in my contacts list talking about some website with good deals. When I got an email from Ben saying "how do you know these are good deals when everything is in euros?" - I knew there was a big problem. I went into my hotmail to see what was going on, there was dozens of undeliverable messages and ALL of my contacts were deleted! Please don't open the email or go to the website. I'm still not sure how it happened, but it's a little disturbing. And as a side note - I probably don't have your email address any longer. Hopefully no real damage was done.

Michael & Lisa get Married!

Our last stop on vacation was Bend, Oregon where we stayed the weekend at the Inn at Seventh Mountain with the Gellners. It was a weekend wedding extravaganza for our friends, and fellow Disney fanatics, Michael & Lisa. The weather was GORGEOUS and Michael and Lisa looked so happy with one another. We're so very happy for you guys and hope you're enjoying the honeymoon in Disneyworld!! (Well, you're probably back by now since I'm so late in posting this)

Vacation Part V - Hello Hotlanta!

My good friend Misty took us to all the touristy spots in Atlanta and we had such a fun time hanging out together. We toured CNN Center, World of Coke, and walked Olympic park. We hit the Hard Rock Cafe for Ben (because he NEEDS another t-shirt). The other sites I wanted to see were a little more retail related. There's lots of stores there that they don't have in Portland so I came home with a few things. Just a few. Here's some pics of our last couple of days of vacation.

We love you Misty! Thanks for being such a great hostess. We hope we can visit Lionsgate again one day.

Vacation Part IV - Go Bears!

Exciting game today! We thought the Bears were going to win it in the last few seconds but it just didn't happen. In the end it was still worth it. Ben said the Falcon fans were WAY friendlier than the Seahawks fans he has encountered at the games in Seattle. They harrassed us, but in a friendly joking way - not the totally rude, spit on your car kind of way. Fun day!

Vacation - Part III Layover turned Destination

Did I say we were on our way to Atlanta? Somehow we ended up staying the night in Chicago. There's a long story behind that - the moral of the story is that American Airlines is lame. So, we called upon a former Chicago local for some tips on how to make the most of our unexpected stay here. We braved the train and found our way to Giordano's for some world famous deep-dish stuffed crust pizza.

We're back at O'hare waiting for our re-scheduled flight to Atlanta. From the Atlanta airport we will be going almost directly to my first NFL football game to watch the Bears play the Atlanta Falcons. Ben will be in heaven.

Vacation Part II - Welcome to Louisville

We arrived in Louisville around 1:30 am on Thursday morning. Ben's mom and the kids were waiting there to greet us. The kids were pretty happy that they got to stay home from school because they were out so late. We were all pretty wiped so we mostly hung out around the house. Guess we were preparing for Friday where we packed as much in as we possibly could. We started with a big pancake breakfast in the morning. Then we all went to the cemetery to visit Candi's grave (Ben's sister). Afterwards, we headed to Kart Kountry for some amusement. They rode go-karts, played video games, and a round of miniature golf. They had a great time. In the afternoon we took them to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The adults all agreed it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. The kids thought it was hilarious. Friday evening the kids had a soccer game, and the day was done.

This morning we got to surprise the kids with early Christmas presents from Grandma and Grandpa Whitaker. We took them to the Super Walmart pretending that we needed to do some shopping for ourselves. When we got there we told them each that Christmas arrived early and they could spend $100. Before the words were out of our mouths those kids were literally running down the aisles to the toy department. It was really fun.

As I type this we are already back at the airport on our way to Atlanta to visit my good friend Misty for a few days. Yahoo! Pray for no more delays!



From left to Right: Brianna, Edie (Ben's mom), Dimitri (Michi), and Creed.