Fun With Grandkids

This week when I went up to Kari's, I took my friend Mary Beth and her grandson, Zeke. Mary Beth wanted to talk to Kari about gardening in boxes, so we decided to go Monday and let the grandkids play together. Zeke brought some balloons with him, so that set the theme for the day. The grandma's spent a lot of time and breath blowing up balloons. Then Kari got out her package of long balloons, called "rocket balloons", and the 3 kids had a lot of fun with them. I'm not sure if Zeke is trying to help blow this one up from the wrong end, or if he thinks, it looks good enough to take a bite out of.

After you blow up the rocket balloons, you let go of them, and they zoom around the room. Obviously, regular balloons do the same thing, but the rocket balloons are much more impressive, as you can see from the looks on Saben and Zeke's faces.

Zeke and Annika, who are 3 1/2 months apart in age, did very well playing together. They even did pretty good taking turns putting the shapes in the right holes. It was fun seeing my friend's grandson play with my grandchildren, and Mary Beth got alot of helpful ideas from Kari about growing veggies in box gardens.

I hadn't been down to see Seth in several weeks and had been trying to figure out a time to go again. I had thought about going Thursday, but had something I had planned to go to at church that night, at 6:30. Since they live in West Seattle, I have decided that it probably works best for me to go to their house after lunch, stay until after dinner, then head home when the traffic isn't bad. Luckily for me, the thing I had planned to attend at church was cancelled because the leader was sick. So, I grabbed the chance to go see Seth. I enjoyed getting to hold him again and Betsy, Seth, and I took advantage of some sunny weather and took a walk around their neighborhood and a park that is close to their house. Seth fell asleep very quickly once we got outside and enjoyed a snooze in the fresh air.

Excitement and Celebrating

I think I was just having a down moment when I wrote my blog last Friday. I still don't think that it is really possible to have "exciting" things to do each day, unless you have a low definition of what is exciting. Life for the most part is not exciting, it's enjoyable, fun, boring, tedious, and once in awhile some excitement comes along. As I read the quote in my last blog again, I think it is just saying that you should be excited about your day and what it holds, whether it is cleaning house (blah) or going to Hawaii (yeah). I think looking for something special or exciting each day could add some fun to your day. With that thought in mind, as I drove to Marysville today I noticed the big fluffy clouds with the sun shining on them, (like the picture above). I love seeing those kinds of clouds because that is the type of clouds I like to imagine Jesus and his heavenly hosts coming back to earth in. Seeing the clouds was a great reminder of Jesus imminent return, something I don't think about very often, and was an encouragement to me today. I'm going to try to find something that is special (at least to me) each day to make my days more exciting.

On to the other subject of today, celebrating. The speaker we had in MOPS yesterday, spent some time talking about celebrating the little things in life. Things like: your child being potty trained, (a biggie for most Moms), the beginning and end of school, even something small, like your child helping pick up toys if that has been hard to get them to do. Any way you can give positive reinforcement is important. Our discussion group had some interesting ideas also for celebrating and giving positive reinforcement to their children. One woman said that she put a piece of paper, that the kids could easily break when running through it, across the door at the end of the school year. It was a simple way to celebrate the end of school and the kids loved it. I love the idea of finding things to celebrate, although it wouldn't need to be a daily thing, finding things to celebrate with your kids could be a lot of fun. Celebrating seems to be the word of the week for me, since the pastor on Sunday talked about it also and pointed out that God is a God of celebrating and referred us to Lev. 23 and all the Feasts of the Lord listed there.

Blog Bog Down

It's funny, when I first started doing a blog, I wondered if I would have enough things to say to make it worthwhile doing a blog. I think at first, since it was a new experience, I wanted to put down all sorts of things and was often surprised that I had so much to write about. Now, several months down the road, I've run out of things to say. (Unless I have spent time with the grandkids, gone on a trip, or had an adventure like last Sun.) I don't know if it's the time of year, January has usually been a kind of depressing month for me, with the letdown after the holidays and the weather usually being cold and rainy, with lots of gray skies and not much sunshine. Or if it's just that there is nothing to exciting going on, just the same old stuff, which I still enjoy doing, but it is the same old stuff and doesn't need to be written about again.

I read a quote this morning that has made me think about this issue. The quote was "Each and every one of us should have something we're chasing every single morning, to be excited about the day, and then go after it." I don't understand that statement. I don't think that the day to day things that we each have to do every day are exciting, they often times are pretty boring, but have to be done. Again, I want to state that I enjoy the different things I'm involved in, they just aren't exciting. To me, things that are exciting are things like going on a trip or doing something special, out of the ordinary, not the every day things. How do we make every day things exciting or should we even try to make them exciting?

Sunday Afternoon at Alderwood Mall

Usually a trip to the mall is pretty boring, right? Not today! As I drove into the mall parking area, I noticed that one of Penney's parking garages had a lot of police cars and ambulances with their lights flashing, so I decided to go park in the other parking garage. Ken and I were in separate cars because he was heading to the airport after the mall. I had lost him at a stoplight after I zoomed through a yellow light, so when he got to the same spot he went the opposite direction and found a place at the other end of the parking garage where all the flashing lights were. We met in Penney's and shortly after we got in, there was an announcement made that no one was being allowed in or out of the store until further notice. Rumors started almost immediately as to what had happened. We heard that:
1. It was a drive-by shooting.
2. The person shot was all right, someone saw her sitting up in the ambulance.
3. The person shot was dead.
4. The person was an older woman.
5. The person shot was a teenager.
6. I just looked for a story on google and KOMO says that Penney's was evacuated temporarily, which it was not, just locked down.
7. Gangs were involved.
After we finished our shopping, Ken was ready to go to his car and head for the airport. After he got to his car, he talked to someone who told him that he wasn't going to be allowed to take his car from the garage even if he had a plane to catch. We were about ready to switch cars so he could get on his way, but he talked to a different policeman who said that he could leave, they just needed his name and address before he could leave. He called me and said that as he was talking to the policeman, that he looked over the policeman's shoulder and noticed someone covered with a white sheet lying on the ground with their feet sticking out from under the sheet. The policeman he talked to said that it looked like it was a suicide, not a drive-by shooting. Which is a relief, but brings up the question of why someone would go to a mall parking lot to shoot herself. You just never know what is going to happen when you head to a mall.

Baby Holding Monday

Since we took care of Saben and Annika over the weekend, I decided to go to Todd and Betsy's house on Monday instead of going to Kari's. The only hitch was that I've never driven to T&B's house by myself. Ken printed up a google map for me and tried to explain it to me Sunday night, but for some reason I didn't comprehend what he told me and I managed to get very, very lost. I finally figured out that I had turned left instead of right at a very key place and ended up on the other side of the freeway from where they live. I called Todd and he was able to figure out where I was by looking on his computer and gave me directions back to their house, (at first he didn't know where I was either), and I finally made it.

Seth was not in a very happy mood yesterday, but I still enjoyed getting to hold, jiggle, bounce, pat, and do whatever I could to quiet him. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to keep him quiet enough so his Mommy and Daddy could take a little nap. However after dinner, when I headed home, I was able to get back to the freeway without getting lost again, so I did accomplish one thing yesterday.

Babysitting Weekend

We got to take care of Saben and Annika this weekend while Kari and Kyle went to Portland. They dropped them off about noon on Friday before they headed on their way. We spent several hours on Saturday at the Children's Museum in Everett, which in my opinion is the absolute best place to go with kids on a rainy day. They both found fireman's hats to wear and cell phones to talk to Papa on, in the 5 years old and under section of the museum.

Saben probably spent close to an hour in the water room trying to connect pipes and make the water flow through them. Even with the plastic smock on, he got quite wet, which didn't bother him until he went to do something else and decided that he was kind of cold. Unfortunately, I thought about bringing extra pants and underwear in case of a potty accident, but didn't think about bringing an extra shirt because of getting wet in the water room. If you look closely in the picture below, you can see where the wetness was on his shirt.

After lunch, we discovered a fun room next to the eating area where you could build houses, forts, etc. out of these blocks. Ken and Saben built an igloo, then a house.

Annika helped with knocking down the house after it was built. She actually was very good about not knocking it over before she was told she could (unlike one boy who walked in and destroyed a structure some other kids had spent a long time working on and the parent did nothing to stop him). We had a lot of fun and didn't even get to all the areas during the 3 1/2 hours that we were there. On our way out we decided to buy a Grandparents pass for the year, so we can take them and Seth, when he gets a little older, whenever we want to. With all the rainy days we have, I'm sure we'll get to go a few more times this year.

Flooding

Well, we had record amounts of snowfall in December, so I guess it makes sense that in January we would have record breaking flooding. Actually, the amount of snow we had here, has nothing to do with the flooding going on right now. It's a result of lots of rain and warmer temperatures in the mountains, that has melted the snow up there. These are a few pictures I took today after the flooding had passed it's highest point. I went to the food bank (white building on the far right) this morning to see if I could help with anything. There was nothing to do at the time because they were still wating for the peak of the flooding. The river crested at almost 21 feet, at that time it was only a few feet from the food bank doors, but the water didn't go in. I had to climb over a pile of sand bags to get into the food bank this morning, a first for me. The building in the middle of the picture is the bathroom for the park and beyond it, towards the food bank is a totally covered parking lot.

I had to drive through water that covered Highway 9 in one place on my way to town, but was able to get through OK. This is the view down Highway 9 where there were fields on either side of the road and now we have a lake on both sides of the road.

We are located high enough above the river that we don't have to worry about flooding, but I sure feel sorry for people who live in places like this.

Parade Day - Jan. 1st

This is a view of the street the parade would go down in a few hours. Us and a few hundred thousand of our fellow-parade goers were heading for our seats. The parade started at 8am, but we were supposed to be in our assigned parking place no later than (groan) 6am, which meant leaving the motel by (double groan)5am (to avoid the traffic, which was virtually non-existent at that hour), which meant getting up at (triple super duper groan) 4:15am (after getting woken up at midnight by a Happy New Year! text message from Meera). Once we got parked, Mary Beth and I stayed cuddled up under a blanket in the dark in the car, while the guys went out to get coffee and tea, so we could face the rest of the day.

Before the parade started a plane wrote this in the sky. We thought that was pretty cool, but then he started writing advertisements for TV shows in the sky and it ceased being cool and became annoying instead.

This guy was supposed to fly down the parade route at the beginning of the parade, but didn't show up until the parade was half over at 9am. Just running an hour behind schedule for some reason, but he was still awesome to see. We actually saw him again in the afternoon at the Santa Anita race track, where we went to watch some races after lunch. I was afraid the noise he made would scare the horses, but it didn't seem to affect most of them.

I wanted to show what this float looked like once Big Bird had his head on and the sign was upright. It was a cute float with a couple of the other muppets on separate smaller floats and surrounded by a band.

Mix-ups and Look Alikes

As we wandered among the crowds and floats, we heard about some famous people being on some of the floats. We heard that the one above had Jack Hanna on it. I was familiar with his name as a wildlife TV personality, but I didn't really know what he looked like. I don't remember if someone said that it was the man with the falcon or if I assumed it, but the man with the falcon was the one I concentrated on taking pictures of. After we got home we looked him up and Jack Hanna is the man in front seat, not the one with the falcon. Mix-up #1.

Later, we were told that Steven Spielberg was on a different float. I was pretty sure that I knew what he looked like, so I started taking a bunch of pictures of him. After the judges went on, everyone got off the float and people took pictures of the 3 look alikes that had been on the float, Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Mix-up #2.

As I mentioned before, there were people inside the buildings, trying to move people along. In this building, one of those people actually told us that Cloris Leichman, who was the grand marshall this year, was in the car on the float. Again we started taking a bunch of pictures and were feeling lucky that we got to see her before the parade. The more we took pictures however, the more we thought, she doesn't look like Cloris Leichman. At least we realized it this time on our own, but we couldn't believe that the worker had lied to us to get us to move down to where she was. Mix-up #3.

Now, is this the real Ken or is it a look alike?

Float Decorating - The 2nd Day

Our second day in Pasadena started out with a search to find one of the decorating places. After a lot of wrong turns, we finally found it just as the float judges were coming by. One official decided that the people (including us) that had just arrived needed to wait until the judges were done before being allowed to proceed past the floats. One guy was left to try and maintain crowd control, with no barriers of any kind. He tried to get people to wait, but people kept slipping through and I assume he finally gave up. (We don't really know, because after seeing numerous people slip past him, we joined the slippees. Mary Beth and I were the first two of our group to go on and the guys reluctantly followed, so they wouldn't loose us in the crowd.)

The fun thing about being there during the judging was that people riding on the float were in position and any extra things like water, moving parts, and music were turned on so the judges could observe how everything worked. This was one of my favorite floats with all the African animals.

This is a view from one of the walkways, where you could see 7 floats at once.

We went over to the parade route to see where our seats were and discovered that we were way up on the bleachers, and I'm not standing at ground level to take this picture.

Float Decorating - The 1st Day

After spending an hour and a half waiting in line to get into the building where they were decorating some floats (there were 4 different buildings you could go to and see the floats being decorated), we finally got to see the floats. Out of the 4 places, only 1 place allowed you to really get close to the floats, by walking down on the floor where people were working. The other 3 buildings had a walkway above the floats where you looked down on the workers and floats. That was disappointing because we got to be down on the floor more last time we went. This turtle was made from 2 colors of split peas and walnut shells, I'm not sure what the black is, some other kind of seed probably.

This picture is from the place where we could be on the floor. The girls in the front were decorating the bumper cars that drove in front of the Cal Poly float. (We are always interested in the Cal Poly float since that is where Ken graduated from.) There were 3 cars, an orange one decorated with oranges, a green one decorated with limes and a yellow one decorated with lemons (see the close up below). Also notice a headless Big Bird in the picture above, his head was laying behind him, along with the Sesame Street sign, which was raised up for the parade

I thought the lemons, oranges and limes were such a clever thing to use to decorate with.

This is just a small group of the millions of flowers used on the floats. They are all in individual vials with some water to keep the flowers fresh until the parade. Cal Poly does a fun thing, they let people write their names on a vial that will be used to put flowers in for the float. We wrote Seth Ari Voelker on one and Saben & Annika on another one to be put on the float. We only had to wait a long time at 2 of the 4 places we visited, so that wasn't to bad. The thing that was annoying was that after waiting so long to get in, there were people trying to get you back out as quickly as possible. They kept asking everyone to "move along" (again that was at only 2 of the places, the ones with the longest waits), so that more people could come in. There is so much to see and to take pictures of that it is really hard to "move along" once you are in there.

Meeting Seth

Way back last summer, before we knew about Seth arriving in December, Ken and I planned a second trip to the Rose Parade for this year. Our friends, Tim and Mary Beth were going to be in Arizona and would drive to Pasadena to meet us on Monday, Dec. 29th. We had a layover in San Francisco that day, but since Seth waited until Dec. 24th to be born and didn't make it to our Christmas get-together, we decided to go see him before heading to Pasadena. We flew to Santa Rosa on Sunday, made our way over the crazy winding roads between there and Kelseyville, ending up at the home that Todd, Betsy and Seth were staying at. We had been trying to surprise them with our visit, but we had contacted Gale to let her know we were coming and Todd figured out we were coming, see this link.

It was so good to see them! We loved getting to meet Seth, and spending some time with Todd and Betsy. It was also nice to get re-acquainted with those of Aria's family that we had met previously and to meet her Dad and Ethan.

Even though we were in Kelseyville less than 24 hours, we got lots of chances to hold Seth before we headed to San Francisco to continue our trip to Pasadena. Now that they are all in Seattle, we'll have plenty of time to hold and start spoiling our 3rd grandchild. Yeah!!

Christmas Day

I know, I know, it seems like a long time since Christmas to me too, but since I didn't have a chance to do a Christmas Day blog, I'm going to do it now and you can skip it if you are way past Christmas and don't want to think about it for another year. Kari and Saben arrived first because Annika was asleep in the car and Kyle was trying to get the car up the road to our house. Kari and Saben walked the rest of the way, so they got to get in out of the cold while Ken and Kyle worked on getting the car into our driveway. I loved Saben's coat and cap, he looked so debonair!

Annika woke up, the car made it into the driveway, and we got started opening gifts. There was even time for a little hug.

Annika got a bean bag chair and an outfit with a fuzzy vest that she insisted on wearing most of the day.

Saben got a pair of "Lightning McQueen" slippers that Annika loved. She wore them more than Saben, but he was able to get one slipper away from her, so they both wore one for awhile. We had a great day, but missed Todd, Betsy, and Seth, who came home from the hospital on the 25th after Seth was born on the 24th, and had a special Christmas in California.