Two More Snow Pictures

Another picture of my frog rain gauge, I thought it was funny that one day the umbrella was covered in snow and the next day the frog is covered.
Yesterday, it started snowing really hard again, I was afraid that we were going to get several more inches, but it quit after a while, so no more snow for now!

February Snow

We got more snow on Tuesday night and most of Wednesday, ending up with a total of 7 inches. This first picture is my frog rain gauge holding an umbrella of snow over his head.
A winter wonderland in the backyard!
Ken got to try out his birthday present, a snow shovel/blower, and it worked great! It shot the snow higher than the garage roof!

Thursday morning with the sun starting to come out.

A snow covered tree in the front yard...

...and the lollipop tree on the deck.

President's Day

Ken had Monday off, so we both went up to Bellingham to see Saben and Annika. When we arrived, both of them were hiding in this fort they had made from the cushions on the couch.
Making funny faces for Grandma's picture.

A friend of Ken's that he works with, told him the other day, that he had been teaching his 5 year old grandson to play chess. Since we know Saben is such a smart boy, brag, brag, and I'm sure it's not just because we are his grandparents, Ken got a chess set and started teaching him the game. Ken said he did really good for his first time, trying to remember the moves of the different pieces can be confusing at first, and he had to be reminded of what the pieces could do several times, but he was catching on by the end of the afternoon. Part of the problem was that he had learned to play checkers last summer and had a hard time shifting gears to chess.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, Annika and I played several rousing games of Hi Ho Cherry-O. I think we were able to play 5 or 6 games of it, plus put a puzzle together in the time it took Saben and Ken to play one game of chess!

After spending the afternoon in Bellingham, we arrived home in time to meet Betsy and Seth at our house. They had asked us to take care of him overnight, so we got to spend time with all our grandkids in one day. Seth is talking so much now, he can practically say anything and be understood. I was telling Betsy about trying to get him to say, please about something and she said that although, he does say almost any word, he still uses sign language for please and thank you. He likes to help and when we started cleaning up after dinner, he ran to get the little stool we keep in the bathroom for the kids to use to wash their hands, to help with rinsing off the dishes.

Tuesday morning, when we woke up, we had about an inch of snow on the ground. Seth got very excited and wanted to go outside, even though we were both still wearing our pajamas. When we did go out, I got our old sled down and took him for a ride on it. He wanted to ride the tractor also, but we didn't get that out.

One of the things Seth really wanted to do was eat some snow and he got to have some as you can see. Two funny things Seth said while he was here, that made me laugh are: #1. While I was getting ready and putting on my make-up, Seth was in the bathroom with me. When he saw me get out my blush and start to put it on, he said "Gamma, painting!" My Dad always used to call make-up, war paint, so I guess make-up is kind of like painting, especially putting on blush which is put on with a brush. #2. We have some sticks in our window sills to keep the windows from opening very far. Seth grabbed one of them and walked out of the bedroom with it, calling it a "walking stick" and used it as one. This visit was the first time he actually called me by a name and he is saying "Gamma". Last month, Saben and Annika started calling me Gram as a joke, but I decided I liked being called Gram and decided to see if we could get the kids to change from calling me Grandma to Gram. The problem is that all of the adults, including myself are having a hard time switching the name, plus now that I want to be called Gram, Annika doesn't want to call me that. When they were doing it as a joke, she wanted to do it, but not when someone wants her to do it.

Seth and Gamma's footprints in the snow.

Weekend Activities

Last weekend we had another busy, but fun weekend. Friday night we went to Taproot Theater in Seattle to see a play, called "Odyssey". We had a certificate from them, because of the goof-up on the tickets for the play we were supposed to see on Ken's birthday, and this was the one they gave us tickets for. They did a funny rendition of the stories from "Homer's Odyssey". The 2 funniest stories were the ones about the cyclops and the one about the "sirens" trying to lure the sailors. One of the men playing a cyclops had a big styrofoam head with one eye, the other 2 men who were cyclops, just had on a snorkeling mask with an eye glued to the mask. We also, learned what the "sirens" said when they were trying to lure the sailors, things like, "You're wonderful", "You're so strong", "Let me take care of that", and "Sit down, relax, let me do that". All these statements were done tongue in cheek and were hilarious!

Saturday, we spent the morning doing a few chores, then went down to Todd and Betsy's new house to see them. This was our first time to see their new house and we were very favorably impressed with it. When Seth woke up from his nap, he took each of us by the hand and showed us around his new house. He showed Papa his new closet, then decided that they should hide in the closet from Daddy, who looked hard for them and eventually found them to Seth's delight.

Time for a cookie break!

Masada

When we went to Israel last year, one of the places we visited was Masada. I didn't know a lot about it at the time and, though I learned a lot about it while we were there, I was interested in knowing more. I mentioned to Ken that I wondered if there had ever been a movie made about it, so when we got home I looked it up on Netflix and when I saw that there was a movie about it, I added it to our list to watch someday. It turned out to be a made for TV movie with 4 parts, that were 2 hours each. We watched it 4 different evenings over the past month or so. At times it seemed to drag on a bit, but overall, it was amazing to watch the ramp being built from the rocks and dirt in the area. Since it was a movie, I don't guarantee it's accuracy in the details, but the movie showed lines of Jewish slaves carrying a big rock or a basket of dirt up the ramp over and over to dump over the side. It was unbelievable the work that went into building that ramp, so they could conquer the last Jewish hold-outs from Roman rule. Then, after all that work, the Romans enter Masada and discover that the Jews living there had killed themselves to prevent being conquered and forced into slavery or worse. If you enjoy movies about history, add it to your queue!
The remains of the ramp today.

Things That Are Discontinued

I get so frustrated when companies that make products that I have used for years, all of a sudden decide to stop making them! There have been several instances in the last few months, but the one that hit me the hardest was not being able to find my favorite lip gloss. I have been using it for years and whenever I try something else I never like it as well, and go back to this one. I usually keep several on hand and last week, I discovered that I only had one left. I headed to the store where I usually find them and discovered that they were no longer carrying that lip gloss. I didn't think that much about it, until I started looking for it at other stores. I've tried to locate it in 7 different stores and only found it in 2 of them. Both of the stores I found some in were Albertson stores and it looked like they were just selling the tubes of lipstick like this one until they sold out. I bought up all they had left, so I now have 8 tubes of it. I don't know how long they will last before I have to find a replacement. (I even checked on Amazon and they only had 2 tubes left and they were more expensive, so I didn't buy them.) I suppose the companies stop making things because they aren't selling very well, or they think they've come up with a better product, but it's still frustrating to me to have to find a new product to take the place of whatever it is.

Teeth, Finally Done?

After 13 months, I finally have a new tooth in my mouth. As is usually the case, if something could go wrong, it did. It took 4 appointments for me to get fitted for the new tooth and crown, when it usually takes 2 appointments. The first time I went in to be measured, the piece that was supposed to fit onto the insert was the wrong piece, so they had to call the lab that made it and have them make another one for me. When it came in, 2 weeks later, they did the mold for the new tooth and told me it would be ready a couple of weeks later. When I went back 2 weeks later, they spent 75 minutes trying to get it to fit, then decided that the lab needed to make it again. The part that fitted onto the insert was to tall, even without the crown on top of it. So, home I went again, without the new tooth. Today I finally went back in and everything went pretty well, the tooth part was put on the insert and the crown placed over the top of it. The crown had to be taken in and out several times to grind it down enough so my bite matched up, but hopefully, I'm done for awhile! The only danger is that the crown is put on with temporary cement, which is how they attach it and the crown can come loose and need to be re-cemented. With my track record, that will probably happen to me and at the worse possible time. We'll have to wait and see!

Another Busy Weekend

This weekend was busy for both of us. It started out Friday afternoon with a baby shower for a guy (and his wife) that Ken works with. I went to the shower also, since I knew the couple. It was a typical baby shower with games, gifts, and food. What made it interesting is that it was a bunch of electronic engineers attending, along with a few wives. The guys had a harder time with the games, trying to over analyze their answers! For some, I think it was their first baby shower or at least one of the few they had ever attended. After the baby shower, we wnt out to dinner with a couple that we have been friends with since we lived in Loveland, CO. We went to Ivar's in Mukilteo and had an excellent meal. I tried something new, which was very yummy, very, very rich and had tons of calories, I'm sure, but it was worth it! I had macaroni and cheese with lobster in it, and a little bit of spinach on top to make a stab at being healthy. It was very good!

Luckily we didn't have anything going on during the day on Saturday, since we had things going on both Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. I had won a certificate at the MOPS auction last year for 4 tickets for an Everett Silvertips hockey game. I realized a week ago that there weren't many home games left in the season and Saturday was one of the few dates that Tim, Mary Beth, and us had free to go to a game. We parked a couple of blocks from the arena, then started looking for a place to eat dinner on the way to the arena. We ended up looking at a menu for an Indian resturant. Everyone, except Ken, wasn't sure about eating Indian food, but Ken convinced us to give it a try. We ordered 4 different dishes plus an order of naan (bread) and shared the dishes, so we could all try each dish. We made Ken order all the dishes to be mild tasting, so we liked most of them. The only dish none of us really liked was a chicken dish that was really dry. All the other dishes had nice sauces which were very tasty. After dinner we went to the hockey game and I decided that hockey, to me, is a lot like soccer. The players go up and down the playing field, occassionally scoring, but mostly just going back and forth. I don't really enjoy sports like that I decided, I prefer sports where there is more scoring going on, like basketball. Even low scoring baseball games are boring to me, I have always liked the ones where there is lots of hitting and runs scored. I doubt that I'll be interested in going to another hockey game (even though Everett won by scoring 3 goals to the other teams 1 goal), at least not for a long time. We have friends that have season tickets to the lacrosse team in Everett, maybe we'll have to try that some day. Our friends say there's a lot of action in lacrosse, so maybe I'll enjoy it.

Sunday, as everyone knows was Super Bowl Sunday, and our life group from church got together to eat snacks, have dinner, and oh yeah, watch the game. A fun, busy weekend!

Lots of Rain

The new rain gauge I got for Christmas.
I was updating the records I keep about the amount of rain we have each month and each year this morning and I discovered that 2010 had more rain (according to my rain gauge) than any other year since I've been keeping records. I have been doing this since 2002, so the 58.2 inches of rain in 2010 is the most in 9 years. I don't know if having a lot of rain the first month of the year is an indication of the year to come, (I really hope it's not the case) but the amount of rain we had last month, also set a record for the month of January since 2002. We had 12.8 inches in January this year, twice as much as last year when we had 6.2 inches in January. February usually doesn't have as much, so hopefully we can look forward to a few more sunny days this month, I sure hope so!