The art of De-Decoring and FFF.

Okay, so after a rather hectic post Christmas weekend (flu, family, travel and guests) we arrived home and got straight to work dismantling Christmas.  Okay, that sounds horrible. I did leave the Creche up with the Three Kings, although I am still debating on whether or not we will do that bit of tradition this year. But the tree was done, not to mention rather fully encased in spider webs thanks to the unseen Christmas Spider we acquired at some point. Sweet little thing, I don't think I have ever been quite so creeped out de-ornamenting the tree...unless you count the time with the cockroaches in Hawaii (full-body shudder).  I was also feeling quite cramped with all the extra in the house so decided to clean up. It wasn't so horrible in the end and I am finding that I may not put back all the nik nacky stuff I had out originally as I am kinda liking the bare spots. Hmm, where is this going, I wonder?

Jeff and his dad spent the day doing the same sort of thing to the shop. Of course, there was a bit of moaning and groaning when I went in and dug out all of the Christmas boxes that they had so deftly stashed and shoe-horned into hard-to-reach, out-of-the-way spaces, but....Oh Well! At least they didn't have to do the Christmas tree lights!  (Ugh, upon typing that last line I realize that we still have the outdoor lights and tree to take care of....poop.)

After all of that hard work I decided it was time for some FFF, otherwise known as Forced Family Fun.  Grandma Kathy gave the family a membership to the Point Defiance Zoo last year and I have to admit that the thing I most looked forward to getting to do (other than visit the meerkats EVERY DARN DAY if I felt like it) was going to see Zoo Lights.  I have wanted to go every year, but the cost as a non-member seemed rather prohibitive for six people. Well this year, I decided, was the year! So, we bundled up in our winter warmest and trundled out to the car and on our way to Tacoma.  Though we have not had any snow, it was kinda fun to cross the Narrows and find a light dusting on the ground. Nothing to play in, but still fun to see.

Upon arriving at the zoo, I have to say I was a bit taken aback.  I have NEVER seen so many people there! The lot was entirely full with at least half a dozen cars per aisle waiting for empty spots. God felt my disappointment, or else noticed the rise in my blood pressure, however, and directed us to the very edge of the lot where a lone parking elf waved us into the employee parking lot, RIGHT NEXT TO THE ENTRANCE! Gotta love Him!

All I can say about the lights is......WOW. I didn't get a lot of pictures due to my inexperience with taking pictures in the dark and also due to the fact that it did in fact start to snow while we were there....well, okay, it kinda hailed, or SN-AILED, as Jeff so deftly described it.


Can you imagine complaining about hanging a few measly lights on your house after this?





The eagle actually swooped down and picked up a fish and flew off. This was a really neat display!




One of my favorite.

 

Not quite sure about the red eyes on the polar bears....





LEMURS!! (nope, no meerkat lights...:-( )



(Big Happy Sigh) 
My new desktop pic, by the way....



Yes, I know, it's blurry. But bet you can tell who is who...

Due to the delayed flash because of the darkness, no one new when to smile or move, thus the seriousness. But we really did have fun!! And it really was cold!!!

Thank you Grandma Kathy!

The Best Gift EVER!

Today is the day! God's greatest gift is remembered today and it is one that will ALWAYS fit, be EXACTLY what we needed, and most importantly is INDESTRUCTIBLE and NON REFUNDABLE!

The quiet before the Christmas Storm!

Christmas robes (and a few favorite gifts)

Floki Immortalized! One of my favorite gifts of ALL TIME!! Thank you Kevin and Kathrine!

Floki loved his gift...while it lasted....

Our budding Liberace.

Notice the tongue, this is serious stuff....

Ditto



Totally immersed. Love this!

Happy Christmas Toes!

Being appreciative and sharing, my favorite gift.

Legos, Legos, Legos...

Trying out the new Wii controllers. Now all four can play!

The Aftermath.



The only way to wake up at 4 a.m.

Surviving the Storm (and I don't mean Thanksgiving)

Well, it was the storm of the year, so far. But we made it through like true Northwesterners, with the Glory of God and the power Yamaha. 

Early Monday morning it started to snow and by Monday afternoon we had an impassable, amazingly scary TWO inches of the slippery stuff on the ground and school had called to let us know they were letting the kidlets out HALF AN HOUR EARLY!! (the END of the WORLD, I tell you!)

Of course, by about 4:30, things had progressed so that we were without electricity and we now had about THREE inches of the stuff on the ground. To be fair, it was covering a fair amount of ice that was making driving quite hazardous and scary. Jeff left work early and it still took him over 3 hours to get home, but with God's blessing, he made it home just ahead of the horrible accidents on I-5 that kept hundreds on the highway and in their cars for hours and hours and hours. I was, and am still, so thankful.  Gary was on the road for over 4 hours just trying to get home from Bremerton, normally a 20 minute drive!  We had a dinner of cheese, crackers and pear by the light of a candle while Jeff hooked up the generator. I don't think the kids thought it was all the romantic.  Things continued to progress and by bedtime the wind was a real distraction. Even over the din of the generator by our back door, the sound of the wind beating our poor house to death and whipping the boat cover against the siding, not to mention the sounds of branches and pine cones raining down, made for a rather sleepless night. About 3 am we were both propelled out from under the covers by a HUGE noise that seemed to last forever and end with a sonic boom. Jeff, being the wonderful caring neighbor that he is, immediately was out of bed, with his boots on and his stocking cap to try and see what it was. He came back in 5 minutes later, defeated by the wind and the noise and the branches flying out of nowhere. But the next morning, we noticed there was an inordinate amount of sky that could be seen over our neighbor's yard.

Above is the new view from our neighbor's front porch.

Unfortunately, the other end of the tree landed on his neighbor's house.

That window looks into their 3-yr-old daughter's room, and this is the amazing part, they had just laid her down on the couch in the living room minutes before this monster crashed through her bedroom ceiling.  GOD IS AMAZING!

This tree actually laid down the full length of their house and no one was hurt. It still gives me goosebumps. I am so glad that no one was physically hurt, though watching the shock on his face the next morning as he surveyed the mess was heart wrenching. It made our mess look much less horrifying though I was still amazed by such scenes of power.

 The branch lying across our back fence was over 20 feet long and 8-9" in diameter. However, no damage to the fence or either our house or the neighbors. This branch, however, had to travel quite distance to land this far from a tree!

This was our first view of our yard from our bedroom door. It is even stranger when you stop to think that we don't have any trees in our yard!

Inside, however, was a different story. Thanks to the generator, we were blessed to be able to run our pellet stove, refrigerator, crock pot and hot water kettle. The kids, Noah and Lydia, stayed busy playing endless rounds of Uno, Go Fish, and Rummy. The trains made it out a time or two as well.  Notice the cords snaking all over the house. Yes, Jeff did attempt to run the router and his computer through the generator. He even had a satellite phone system that he had brought home to work on. Thankfully, things were not that bad.

Manis, being his own cat, had his own ideas about who the space heater was set up for.

When all was said and done, we were without power for three days, getting it restored the morning of Thanksgiving Day. Other than discovering that we were horrendously messy cave dwellers once the lights came on, I was quite pleased with how we did. I am almost ready to move "off the grid"!

HA HA HA

But honestly, we were so minorly touched by this storm. SO many more of our neighbors were quite literally crushed and have many days of struggle ahead and I just pray that God makes His comforting presence known to them. Jeff and I went for a drive on Wednesday and discovered several neighborhoods where giant trees laid across power lines, porches, cars, trucks, barns, driveways and houses. PSE workers were out in full force and that was gratifying to see, even with the upcoming holiday, they were out in the freezing temperatures doing their dangerous jobs as fast as they could.

This storm gave a whole new meaning to Thanks-Giving this year, and for that we are truly thankful.

Man Vs Woman: Successful Work Day

His....

                                       Hers....

Nuff said.

A Change in Me by Mac Washburn

So Mac wrote this great piece of expository writing (?!) for an assignment at school (where else).

I love it.

So I am sharing it (with his permission). By the way, he got an A- on it!

I never wanted this much responsibility.  I didn't have to do as much as I have to do now,compared to when I was 7.  Now that I'm 12, I have to take care of 3 brothers, 2 sisters, 3 dogs, 2 cats, 2 ducks and 5 fish!  When I was 7 I only had to take care of myself.  All I had to do is make my bed, clean my room, and make it to the dinner table on time. Now that I'm 12 I have so many responsibilities it's mind blowing!

First of all, I have to help care for and watch my baby brother and sister.  They could break something, hurt the dogs or hurt themselves. They need constant watching to make sure they don't get into trouble.  Sometimes they need me to change their diapers or put them to sleep.  But even though they give me lots of trouble, they are still cute and I love them.

Then of course there is my little (though not physically a baby) brothers and sister.  They need constant watching too, except for different reasons. If they hurt each other it's not my fault (unless they broke something or there's massive internal bleeding).  I'm supposed to make sure they don't burn the house down in the process.  Also, I have to be a good role model so that they don't grow up to be crazy hoodlums. (though personally I don't think it's making a difference.)

Lastly, there is the matter of my 12 pets.  I have to feed them, clean up after them and make sure they get plenty of exercise (at leas the dogs, anyway).  I also have to pick up their droppings.  For instance, I have to pick up the dog's poop out of the yard and the clean the cats' litter box.  They are a lot of work but they are fun to pet and play with.

In conclusion, I have lots of responsibility that at first might sound boring and aggravating, but they always pay off and make you a better person.  You may like to have no responsibility and watch TV all day, but this just makes you a lazy bum instead of a responsible person.

Amen to that, Mac!

Random

Movie night. Obviously they didn't enjoy the film.

So, I have been getting up at 3-ish a.m. the past few mornings. Note I said "getting up". I have been waking up at around 2ish each morning, spending the next hour getting crankier and crankier and then finally jettisoning myself out of bed with a naughty word left in my wake (sorry, Jeff). But once I am up, I am so much happier! I make myself a cup of coffee and crawl into one of the prayer shawls that a dear lady-friend from church made for Jeff and I, cuddle up with the dog (who would like to crawl into the shawl but who is relegated to a mere, run-of-the-mill blanket) and read Psalms for an hour on the couch. I get the fire going and the cats calm down immediately. It is lovely! Just as I start to feel myself getting sleepy, my alarm goes off at 4:45 in my pocket and it is time to refill the coffee cup, feed the cats (who were hoping that I was going to feed them at 3) and then move into the office to get to work.  The crazy thing is, I have been in SUCH a better mood during the morning hours! Yes, even during breakfast!  I blame it on the prayer time. I tend to crash about noon, but so far I have had the chance to take a short nap to get through dinner time. After three days as such, I went to bed last night looking forward to my early morning time.

Unfortunately, the cats decided to push the envelope and woke me up at 1:20.

He'd better be careful or he will be heading to recycling with the box!

I'm sorry, God, but even with a National Geographic Magazine article on King David awaiting me, I could do no more than grab the spray bottle that I have taken to storing by my bed and send off a couple of poorly aimed squirts in the general direction of the cats.  I think I repeated that about every 15 minutes or so as they would come galumphing into my bedroom, careen across the tile floor and scrabble under the bed. I finally awoke to my alarm going off at 4:45, with the spray bottle still in my hand and crazy water marks all over the walls. Damn. The cats, of course, were curled up in matching balls on Jeff's side of the bed. Double Damn.

Needless to say, today I looked as if I have been getting up at 3 a.m. for the past year. I honestly love that color of deep indigo purple, the exact shade between sundown and twilight...just not underneath my eyes. Ugh.

I had to laugh later though, as the kids came dragging into the kitchen after a restless night trying to brave the wind storm. Oh? Did I not mention the wind storm? Yeah, that would be because I was so tired by the time I went to bed, I didn't give a flip.  The kids, however, must have had a harder time. We all looked like we had gone a few rounds in the boxing ring.

By the grace of God (and His nudging to drink that extra cup of coffee), I was able to safely make it to Montesano so see my Grandma. She is doing wonderfully and it did my heart good to see her finally interacting with the other residents, personnel and office staff.  She even took me around and introduced me to people.   She is so cute motoring down the hall in her wheelchair, just using her feet to propel her along.  From the back, she looks like she is just floating down the hall in her chair, her hands held relaxed in her lap. I thank God and my friends, family and people who I don't even know who have all been praying for her since July 3rd.

With Jeff in Miami this week, I am hoping that if I keep my week jam packed, it will go by quickly, though if I were him, after seeing pics of his hotel room, I don't think as that I would be in all that big of a hurry to come home, especially as it is right on the beach, and we are getting forecasts of snow for this weekend!

JOY!!!

Ft Worden 2008

I obviously have to get a better system of picture organization. Lost these on my computer and had to have Jeff download them for me, but look how much they have grown!

Frankly, I though this is what they looked like just about a week ago...

On top of the battery.



Ghosts in the Graveyard




It was a much prettier day that year....



Ft Worden: Replay

So this is the third time that I have taken the kids up to Port Townsend to run around the Kinzie Battery at Ft. Worden. They absolutely love it, which kinda tickles me because I remember running around similar places when I was growing up in Astoria. They are dark, dank, and terrifically scary. SUPER fun! This time they wised up and brought flashlights and the makings for a game of Capture the Flag. I don't know that a single flashlight was used and the game was so strung out that it was hard to follow, but they had a blast. So did the dog. In fact, I would hazard to guess that this is probably one of the best field trips I could hope to conjure up as far as they were all concerned. We were only there for 45 minutes due to an open drawbridge on the way up and then we had to be in Pt Angeles on a time schedule, but thankfully, Lydia and Ben wandered into a rather deep puddle, soaking shoes, socks and pant legs just before I called time. Sigh, I think I had just as much fun watching them!





Mac's impression of the Hunchback of Kinzie Battery




Floki's "I'm King of the World!" pose. It was COLD!!

 

The culprit for our delayed arrival due to the open bridge. (Psst! its a submarine...)





This reminds me of a U2 album cover. I just told them to line up, they created the poses...and no one was allowed to look at me (Mac's rule).




I love these two pictures



Notice the brown blur in the foreground. He was having SO MUCH FUN just being one of the kids!

Yes, blurry, but I just couldn't delete it. This was as we had just gotten out of the car and he wanted sooooo badly to run off with the kids.