Go Pack Go!

Seriously, the Seahawks won last night. They won. I’m still pinching myself to make sure it’s not a dream.

And why I didn’t make some book on this game is beyond me. The odds were something like 50:1. Dang it. But soo happy. Today is the Packers and the Eagles.

Let’s hope we can have two wins this weekend. I’d hate to see the Eagles win. Not a big fan of Mike Vick, no matter what anyone says, or how much he says he’s changed. Plus, I really like that Aaron Rodgers. I hope he remembers to slide this week.

Cody went back to school last weekend. We did go to Sushi Tango and yum, it was delish. We got another picture in before he left because the picture at the table….not so much.

It’s kinda blurry because Dave took the picture. Enough said.

Blane left the next day, after we watched the Seahawks beat the Rams. I was sad to see them go, but there were some in the household that  were quite happy to see the end of it….

Uh huh. That is not a happy face. (Just to be clear-I am talking about Jack).

Dave turned 50 something on Tuesday. (Not trying to be cute, I really can’t remember and shouldn’t have to think that hard right now).

There’s a bad picture. How about this one

If you click on it and make it bigger, you can read the funny card I got him. We had a nice dinner and chocolate cake.

Cora’s birthday party was yesterday.

It was quite the party. Ali and Chase were there

Morgan was there too, but she didn’t want to be held by us too much.

She did have a good time though.

Cora got some good stuff-

 

But the best thing was the Gator, which all the kids seemed to know about, but I had to Google when Angie told me about it.

Check it out. That thing can go 4.5 mph. Laura (who was also there) and I were all about getting into it and taking off. However, it looks bad when we are shoving little kids out of the way so we can play with their stuff, so we held back. This time.

This party was also all things Dora. Dora is quite the deal. We had Ninja Turtles when my boys were little. Laura was kind enough to sing part of the theme song for me, and to name all the Turtles and ancillary characters. I have go to figure out a way to make some cash out of Laura’s memory for all things trivial. Seriously. It’s a gift.

Dave’s boys were over and I got a group shot of them. Note that when I take the picture, it is not blurry.

On the home front today, it’s cold outside. My thermometer on my computer says 4. That’s 4 BELOW zero.

I am busy working on my Skacel KAL. Got the second instructions, and hope to finish this week’s part during the Packer game. Started a new BOTM at the knitting store-the Wrap Me Up shawl.

I know, the model doesn’t look very thrilled. I am knitting it in Noro silk garden and I think it is going to be very fun to do. Much better than the GAAA. Which, by the way, I blessedly only have two squares left.

So I am off this AM to finish up the a Thimbleberry wall hanging, then I am going to make a Turning 20 to use for a back on a square in a square quilt I made a couple or so years ago.

This will make a good back, the quilt will be two sided, and will use up a bunch of stash. WooHoo.

Have a great week all, and don’t forget-Go Pack Go!

Happy New Year 2011

Happy New Year.

Today I am off to the cities to take Cody back to the airport. We are planning on having lunch here-

In Uptown.

Then, after I drop Cody off, I plan on going here

Which would be Borealis Yarns. I am trying a KAL with Skacel yarns by Knit Purl Hunter and maybe win a prize. But probably won’t win. Sigh. I said I wouldn’t buy anymore yarn for the new year, but New Years is over and now we are into the next day and all bets are off.

I guess I didn’t mention that we decorated the office before Christmas. We felt a little obligated since we were one of the only bays not decorated and there was some sort of contest going on. We thought that the amount of decoration done was inversely proportional to the case load of the workers.

              It wasn’t much, but it was something. You can’t really tell by the pictures.

Christmas was quiet here, and pretty subdued. We were a little sad, what with Cody’s situation and all. But we had a nice breakfast, and I got some nice presents.

The boys got good presents too-but were shy about the picture thing

Cody gave me this card

We thought it was a little like Thanksgiving…I got a good chuckle out of it.   

Dinner was delicious. I tried to get a good Christmas picture but not so much.

 

It’s the best we could do. We played a couple of games of Trivial pursuit-Dave won both times. Seriously, he got the question “What number did Brett Favre wear when he played for the Green Bay Packers?”. Yes. That was one of his winning questions. Completely not fair, and demonstrates perfectly how he was able to win.

We enjoyed some couch time and some Green Bay victory on Sunday.

Our new TV came on Friday. I called it Dave’s birthday present since his birthday is this Tuesday. Then I remembered that  he got his last TV on his birthday. He gets good presents. It sure is a good TV though. Can’t wait to see Seattle lose play on it tonight. I’ll likely miss the Green Bay game as I’ll be in the cities working on breaking my New Year’s Yarn resolutions at the yarn store.

It’s been cold at work, this week between Christmas and New Years. 

       At least it was cold at first. By the end of the week it was rainy, but now it is back to being very cold. The thermometer outside broke, it’s stuck at 27. Which is a nice winter temp. But it isn’t 27. It’s 1. 

So, the TV broke, the upstairs cable box broke, the pilot light went out in the furnace (we fixed that instantly!), the thermometer broke, and the cat broke the torch lamp last night. We are riding a serious wave of breaking and break ups.

Laura was out at the farm and tried to give Twinkles an apple. Of course, there was some grain in her pen so she was interested in the grain, which I think negates the whole apple experiment. I am waiting for the pictures because I know everyone is simply dying to see them. Twinkles is as cute as ever. And so smart-she is now letting herself out of her pen into what she thinks are better places to be in the barn. Both Dave and Laura share the same “Cows do not excite me” attitude, which I do not understand at all.

Anyway, I wish everyone a Happy and Safe New Year-

Welcome to 2011.

Merry Christmas

Twinkles says…..

Jack says too…..

Cat agrees….

Kitten seconds the motion…..

Bodie is wondering why it’s taking so long…..

Trixie and Beta say Get on with it and tell everybody…….

Merry Christmas from all of us to all of you!

 

Winter Solstice

Tomorrow is the first day of winter, which means it is the winter Solstice, or the shortest day of the year.

Time and date dot com says this about it-

The December solstice will occur at 23:38 (or 11.38pm) Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on December 21, 2010. It is also known as the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere due to the seasonal differences. Its date varies from December 20 to December 23 depending on the year in the Gregorian calendar.

I don’t think one should waver when it comes to the Gregorians. Just sayin’

That being said, it’s snowing today. Again. Fortunately, I now have Cody to help me shovel. Which we will have to do in an hour or so.

Is it so different than the last blizzard pictures? No. Not really. Although, this is supposed to be a little heavier snow. Yippee. (Insert sarcasm font here).

Between yesterday and today we have had a bit of a breakdown in systems. First of all, our big TV broke. The color no longer converges correctly. Magic Focus gets stuck on Blue, and we cannot manually align the colors. It does add a lovely jaundiced pallor to the characters on TV. But can get somewhat irritating after a quarter or two of football. So we went online and looked around and found that 1) the TV never had a very good customer rating and 2) average life span is about 5 years. 5 years? Really? Because all of my other TV’s last forever. I probably have one in the storeroom that still has dial channel changing on it.

Oh well, I give up. So off to Best Buy with Cody today, after a massage at the gym. One should always have a massage before spending money on a new TV. Luckily, it’s Dave’s birthday in 3 weeks so Happy Birthday honey. The broken TV was also a birthday present, 7 years ago. I can’t keep this up.

Here’s what we got-it was on sale. I was going to go with a little cheaper model, but, well, Cody was with me and the rest is history.

• Insignia™ - 42" Class / 1080p / 120Hz / LCD HDTV

Oh, and by the way, we got the 4 year warranty, just so you won’t worry

After this, we went shopping a little more but it was starting to snow. So we hurried home after going to Pine Needles Quilt Shop. For some reason, Cody said there was nothing to look at there, and it bugged him that there were no price tags on the sewing machines. Ha. You don’t want to know, honey.

Arriving home, we found that the pilot light was out on the heater, and  the wiring on the kitchen TV cable box was broken. Man. I am almost afraid to be using the computer.

And speaking of which, sometimes certain people complain when there is not a new blog posting in what they consider a timely manner. (You know who you are…..) Maybe this will offer some explanation.

Sometimes I just can’t fight it. It’s like the help I got when wrapping presents.

Yes he is lying in the box I was going to use. And that crappy brown blanket hanging over the door is Dave’s way of keeping drafts out. Ghetto, eh?

Jack was also busy over by the quilting area-

The Chaos theory.

Here he pretends to ignore the mess he made and study his bag.

Jack seems to be getting quite a bit of press in the blog lately. Probably because, as we’ve seen, he insinuates himself into everything, unlike my little Yeltsie, who very politely sits on her cat square and lets bygones be bygones.

Besides all this, last week at work I heard a little buzz from the next cubical over, and look what I saw-

Mary was sewing. Sewing! Yep, that’s what we do at work. Actually, her machine broke, so she was trying to use the machine Laura brought in. It gave me just a little chuckle.

Oh, and speaking of Laura, we like to play some games on Facebook. She has always beaten me at Bejeweled, and now we have found a new game Zuma. I’ll just show you the leader boards so you can see what I am talking about.

Oh, wait. Is that me at the top of the leader board on both games this week? Well, I’d never intentionally post something like that. Dave asked me if Laura and I had a little bit of a competition going, and I said that Laura and I would never compete over something as freaking important as this so trivial. Seriously. I don’t know where he gets these ideas.

So, off to shovel. The weather guy on the radio said that this isn’t going to be another “snomageddon” like the last one. But it looks like it is going to be enough. Again.

Hey-Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a Good Night.

Best Laid Plans

Woody Allen said “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans”. And Julia Sweeney did a stage show called “God Said Ha!”, along the same premise. I like this one “When we make plans, God laughs”. Any way you say it, it means the same thing. And so we experienced this last week when Cody’s fiancé, Kate, decided that she didn’t want to get married right now, or maybe never, taking us all by surprise. We were saddened by the news, but things happen for a reason and hopefully when we figure out what the reason is, it will have all been worth it.

And on the home front, things continue to go along, and along, and along.

Blane moved, and his friends helped out.

Jeremy provided the truck

And Daylen provided the dog

I’ve known those boys for a long time.

So that was successful, and the dog sure is cute.

It snowed about 8 or so inches, and we shoveled.

Look at how good we did

Very professional. Unfortunately, this snow cancelled my knitting Block of the Month, and my massage, because I couldn’t get out in time.

The dogs watched, but did not help.

We put up the Christmas tree. Christmas. I am so behind on Christmas. And truthfully, I didn’t even put up the tree, Dave and Jack did.

Here’s the tree, from the “Jackcam”

Seriously, this picture made me laugh so hard I could hardly hold the camera. And I’ll bet you’re thinking “Really? Am I missing the joke? How exactly is that funny?”. Well, trust me, it’s very funny. Even Jack thinks it’s funny.

I finished this quilt top for the shop

Jack messed it all up and I had to distract him with a large bag. Jack loves a bag. Any bag.

See him? Well, then look what happened-

It’s Yeltsie! Jack is very afraid of Yeltsie (who’s real name is Elvin), who is half his size and has no tail.  But Jack doesn’t see Yetsie, yet. But then, oh no.

Well, that wasn’t so bad, except Jack came out a little and guess what he saw?

He saw Elvin. And then he was trapped in the bag. The only thing left was to escape and run away.

And so ended that saga. Which, by the way, is repeated about 20 times a day.

While this was happening inside, we were having another snow outside. A week after the first snow. Only this wasn’t just a snow, this was an all out blizzard.

Yep, white out conditions.

We did the first round of shoveling on Saturday, and when we got up on Sunday this is what we saw.

More snow.

And more snow. But at least we didn’t have a 5 foot berm across our driveway, like the neighbors. (That’s Dave providing scale) But at least the neighbors didn’t have to shovel by hand, like we did. So it sort of evened out. Sort of.  We moved a lot of snow. By hand.

 

And of course, it was the weekend so instead of missing my crappy job, I missed all the fun stuff-my sewing class and my knitting meet up. Not to mention the Christmas shopping I am now doing on my lunch hour all week long, instead of my gym time. Ok, I am only shopping for two lunch hours, but it seems like more. Especially when I had it all planned out for Sunday. Damn you Mother Nature!

Nothing is scheduled for next weekend, so the weather should be great.

So, as I said life goes on. And we aren’t making any plans whatsoever, because lately it seems that when we make plans, God laughs.