ZOOM INSTEAD for Dec.2. - Coeur d'Alene/Spokane Travel Group

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This will work for me! But how am I going to check and see if Woops has Red Velvet cookies??

This will be the week they have them. One of these days, I need to find a recipe for them.

Pam, maybe I should start a batch of croissants at home on Friday and pause for a moment during the Saturday meeting to pull them out of the oven! Paris, anyone? LOL!

Leslie,

Sally’s Baking Addiction has these:

White Chocolate Dipped Red Velvet Cookies
Cream Cheese Stuffed Red Velvet Cookies
Red Velvet Kiss Cookies
Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies

I just added 500 calories writing this reply!

So far we have regular attendees: Leslie, Pam, Robert &. Brenda, Aimee, John & Cathy.

Guest regular attendees from the Seattle area now: Sterling & Mary! : )

Guest attendees: Janet, Mardee, Lynn, Jil, Heidi

You know Pam, I'm a great cook but a terrible baker because you need to measure stuff. But I might have to try them someday. Jean, I would love for you to bring out a pan of croissants. Maybe we need to get a hold of Cathy, as she is wintering in Arizona and see if she can join usl

Good idea, Leslie. I will send them a note.

Hi guys! Not in Arizona yet (not really a long story…let’s just say I spent waaay too many years at the beach and I’m paying for it now!)…Zoom is a great idea! And Jean, we’ll all be able to smell those croissants, so not fair!

I can do huckleberry muffins…not international but very local!

Oh boo! I will be in Bruges- I might be able to pop in for a minute to say hi, though. Jean , can you send me the link via my email ?

A

Oh yea! But...yikes....you all are making me step up my game! We have been "notified"/asked to babysit the grandkids/great nephews Saturday night but they are not usually dropped off until mid-afternoon so I'm still a go for Saturday morning.

Let's see...I've got "Whomp Rolls" (you know? those cinnamon rolls in a tube that you whomp on the side of the counter to open?? lol!!) or maybe I will make oatmeal chocolate chip dried cherry cookies on Friday.

Cathy!! My word...you all have had the worst luck this year with health issues disrupting your travel!

I would love to join you but the timing is bad for me. Hopefully there will be another opportunity in the future.

Chef Pam, you need a French word for “whomp”, and you’re ready to go! LOL!

I also contacted Sterling & Mary, and they’re planning to “come”, too! Yeah!

Andrea, since you travel up to Seattle, you’re almost in our Eastern Washington/North Idaho region to stop in and surprise us some month! ; )

Uh, lets see:

Je Whompe
Tu Whompes
IL Whompe
Nous Whompons
Vous Whompez (my favorite because it’s kind of onomatopoetic)
ILS Whompent

And Yea to everyone coming! Tonight's weather said 30-40 inches over Snoqualmie but of course not nearly that here!!

Gosh that forecast for Snoqualmie has worsened, it was 19 inches by Saturday last time I looked, now I see it's 52. And on the webcam I can see they have had their first proper snow of the season now.

All last week I was planning a short notice trip to the PNW for a Church service on Sunday evening, but had to cancel it as something totally unexpected cropped up on Sunday night which I couldn't get out of- hours before I was going to book airfare and hotels, to land at Seatac a couple of hours ago.

I would have been going east over Snoqualmie on Friday morning, and west before breakfast on Sunday morning, after a quick trip up to Cle Elum/Roslyn to totally and utterly surprise someone. Shows why I would never normally contemplate such a trip in the winter, having been seduced by a good fall season.

Hope it's nothing like that bad for you in Idaho.

Jean, I just might do that some time if I can make the timing work. We’re flying up in January because we have limited time and it’s too dicey driving over the Siskiyou mountains that time of year. We will be back up in March for our grandson’s first birthday in late March and we plan to drive, so maybe we can figure something out. It’s about a 5 hour drive from where we stay in Washington to Coeur d’Alene, so we would obviously have to stay the night. Maybe Darcy could make the drive up, or we could stop to see her on our way home. I don’t think I’ve seen her since we met up in Italy in 2016, although it’s possible she came here a year or two after that.

Isn31c, we’re watching the Snoqualamie Pass forecast, too. My husband is supposed to have a golf tournament on Saturday north of Seattle. He might need to take an extra suitcase!

That’s too bad that you weren’t able to come & also surprise your friend! Hopefully you can do it around Easter, instead.

My Facebook history popped up a video from one year ago. Our dog was running a loop in the snow our backyard. We had lots of snow, so I shoveled out an oval run with some center segments for her exercise.

Andrea, that would be fun if you could join us for our April 6 travel group meeting! Easter’s the week before, so more hotel rooms would be available again. We have so many people who made the move from California to CDA that you might run into some acquaintances, too! : )

Jean! I hope he's headed over today and yes, he knows to have supplies in his car and a full fuel tank.

I see now on the National Weather Service Spokane FB page they are showing 2 different models for the amount of snow we are supposed to get in CdA ranging from 3 to 7 inches. Yikes. I did just unearth my snow shoveling boots, hahaha!

Stuart, if you do make a surprise trip over to see your friend, I hope it's on a 1st Saturday so you can come east a little bit and join us for our normal in person meet up. And yes, I hate to plan anything on the West side for Thanksgiving thru end of Feb.

Andrea that would be so cool if you could come!

I don't do surprise long haul trips normally, let alone long distance flights booked at 48 hours notice- even when I was flying for work.

This week was very hurriedly extracted and heavily revised/condensed from a plan which is labelled late September to early October 2025.

The whole of 2024 is ruled out due to a mammoth ongoing house clearance by my friend. There are lots of thoughts about the right time (and many conflicting thoughts), but September is where it rests for now.

I will be watching this weekend closely.

First of all, I’m so excited to be coming, even digitally! But I’m bummed, because I don’t get to try Woops! baked goods! 😩 However, Jean, since Sally‘s Baking Addiction is one of my favorite websites, I very well may bake up a batch of something. I’m salivating already!

Well, you all have shamed me into making cookies for tomorrow's meeting! Oatmeal-chocolate chip-dried cherry-walnut cookies and they are vegan.

I had to decide if I was going to help shovel again or if I was going to bake and baking won out. Brother said not too much snow had stuck thru the day so it was not arduous - just a skiff after about 1.5 inches this morning.

It's supposed to be 50° in Spokane on Wednesday. No need to shovel.

Pam, it’s always surprising to me how much the accumulation of snow varies around here! It’s been snowing all day here, and I went out three times to clear the snow.

Your cookies sound tasty!

Jean! My word...yes is is so different just over a few miles. I was up in Hayden on Wednesday and it was snowing hard there but not a flake at home. This morning it is all slush as it is raining with a little snow mixed in. I'm sure the roads are an awful sloppy mess so Zoom was a great call!

Leslie, yes, can you believe how warm it is supposed to be?

Rog is out pushing the slush around to make sure the downspouts are draining but really he just wants to be outside, hahaha.

I hope Jean's husband makes it there and back. The I90 is looking a lot better now than it was a couple of hours ago up at the Summit.

In my part of Cumbria we had that nasty type of slushy mix this morning after an early morning sleet/snow mix. Very tricky, I took a tumble on black ice while doing round 1 of 3 today gritting local pavements. Mercifully no injuries.

And we are forecast 4 to 6 inches of snow overnight. I doubt it'll happen that badly, but if it does it'll be very unhelpful tomorrow morning.

People often talk about web site clocks doing funny things across time zones. WSDOT does that- the written road report converts to UK time, but the adjacent web cam view correctly shows PT!! Whereas IDOT has both in the correct time zone.

We had a dozen connections on our Zoom meeting and so nice to see Sterling & Mary again, along with some guests from other states! We will plan to do another Zoom for our January 6 meeting and then back in-person at Woops Bakery for Feb and the rest.

Leslie, thanks for mentioning checking flights! I was able last night to switch my seat to the next level up for the same flight AND receive some miles refunded back to me! A win-win!

Jean, thanks for hosting! I had a great time and it was so good to see everyone! I would definitely be interested in coming to the January meeting via zoom as well.

Jean, glad that worked for you. I used to buy and then never check again, but they have made it so easy now to make changes.
Pam, we decided to brave the airports and fly to Biarritz. Hopefully that was the right decision, lol.

Jean, awesome you got miles back and a better seat!

Leslie, flying directly will work great!

Sorry I didn't reconnect on Saturday! I thought it was me/our internet that couldn't reconnect, lol. I'll do better in January.

Jean, thanks again for setting this up and hosting. It was so good to see Mary and Sterling and yea that Cathy was able to make it. I also enjoyed our out-of-towners, lol!! Fun!!