14 posts tagged “family”

We played with the kids at home for a while. E got out some of his treasured childhood tools - little animal guys. Leonard had the best time putting them BACK in the bag, and Leah tried to keep hers close so Leonard didn't grab 'em.

Then we walked down to the park. Leah and E ran around and Leonard and me climbed and swang. I accidentally got a picture of Leonard's shadow while swinging and it actually was a fun picture for having my camera backwards!

When we came back from the park, the kids helped E sweep the back porch (it's just a teeny cement slab with our swing on it). They were happy to be helpers while I cooked in the kitchen. Periodically, they'd sit on the porch swing and they could see me when they got to a certain place in their swing and would yell "hi"!

Leonard said something that sounded like our names for the first time, which is def a milestone!

It was a fun morning, and we shared lunch with them and their dad afterwards.

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We got back from our trip to California last night.  We had a simply wonderful time!

It was great to see the family, and sit and chat and just hang out together, since we hadn't had a chance to do that over the holidays.  I attempted to teach E's cousin Juanita to knit, and ended up with his Aunt Bonnie picking it back up instead.  Family time is fun.

The play we went to see was "The King and I" and it was a really great experience - I loved the story (hadn't seen the movie or anything previously) and our friend Greg who was the King did a great job.  The singing was really nice.  I enjoyed the way the stage was set up to rotate for the different rooms, that was really interesting to watch.  It really was a highlight of our trip and something I'll remember for a long time.

A big part of the trip reminded me how much I love *our* friends.  At the beginning of our relationship, I thought of them as Eric's friends... but I feel so much a part of the group at this point, it's a big blessing to me.  We don't have close friends up here besides my family, but our California friends are so amazing and really, who could need more than that?  Even meeting a new friend of the group was really nice and I feel like I walked away with one more super cool person that I know.  These guys are people with withstood a trip from down south to up here for our wedding squashed into a little car listening to crazy music almost 8 years ago and still are be-moaning it but still like us!  These girls are so sweet to me, make me blush, and I feel like I could tell them anything.  They are all a bit geeky and crazy, just like E and me.  They laugh with us and at us, but it's all in good fun.  Many of them drive a long ways each time we come down just so we can all meet up and spend an evening and better parts of the night together, laughing and talking and of course, gaming.  I just came home feeling so blessed.

The weather was fabulous the whole time we were there, and we got to do a lot of great things the whole time we were gone, including a date afternoon with just me and E (and Cheesecake Factory and Ben & Jerry's and the outdoor mall, woo!).  The flights were okay (ok, the second one was not as good as the first but whatever), and we weren't delayed in Ontario this time for a change.

I've got a bit of catching up to do now that I'm home, with piles of mail and newspapers, as well as a ton of digital catching up with my Vox reads and my newreader (yay, the strike is OVER!), but that'll come.  We grocery shopped tonight so we actually have food again, and I took an extra nap this afternoon, so that all helps with catching up.  Happy trips are GOOD!

I woke up the first day of the year, really wanting to write a recap of my year.  I skimmed back through the first months of last year because I thought I would have done something in a small way then, and I didn't.  So next year, I'll have this to look back on and see where I've grown.  Anyhow, I fought with myself on how to present it.  I fought with myself to sit down and actual type over the course of a few days it so that I had this remembrance to look back on.  And then I fought with myself on how to end it because there's so much to it, and so much more in my life I could be introspective about...

The biggest things that I am proud and/or excited about of this year are my reading, cooking, listening (music/podcasts), knitting, gaming, and watching.  So much that I wrote whole posts on them.  Some of the other things that I did this year were also very fun or important to me, but they weren't worth a whole post!

I blogged this year.  

After knit

This was done mostly here on Vox.  Sometimes, my blogging just took the form of updating my media lists for books and movies, because I just didn't have the time or energy to write real posts.  I also added some delicious links to my main blog (automatically), got a facebook account to track friends there, and did private posts on my livejournal.  

I also moblogged this year, continuing to carry my camera phone with me everywhere and taking random pictures to remind me of things we did.  Even though a lot of these turn into self-portraits, I don't mind.

I took pictures with both my phone for easy moblogging and my camera.  My camera photos are mostly of family events or special things, and many of these are not in Vox yet, just iPhoto.  But there are a lot of knitting photos in that pile, as well.  Those, I used the FlickrExport to send to my Flickr account (which I've by now caught up with the limitations of a free account) so I could use them both on Ravelry and pull them into Vox as needed.

I dealt with my health this year. 

I made conscious decisions to do things to reduce my stress level and help my CFIDS/Fibromyalgia.  Even though this was one of the worst years in the last 5 years for my health, I feel slightly better at the end of the year.  I also made a set of visits to the dentist to have fillings done, even though it's still very scary to me.

I traveled this year.

Ca trip palms

We started out the year in California on our trip last Christmas and so we had a long drive for that trip.  Then in June, I went to San Francisco for work.  Also in June, we visited the beach with the whole Locatis family.  In July, we flew down to California for a friend's birthday and had a wonderful time with friends and family.

We also did exploring local places.  We spent a bit more time learning what was here in Vancouver that we hadn't seen, and went to the Farmers Market many times over the course of the late spring-early autumn, which is also a nice chance to walk around Esther Short Park.  We visited new restaurants in the area, which is very adverturesome of me because I  usually stick with the same things I know.  And we went to the fancy theater, Cinetopia, several times as well.  Some of this, I got a chance to Yelp about, and other things I just read reviews before visiting to see what other people thought.

We went down to our favorite outdoor mall, Bridgeport Plaza several times, and once down to the Woodburn Outlet mall.  At least one time to Washington Square in Beaverton, as well.  We enjoy window shopping the most out of going to these places, and usually my reasoning for going has to do with the food that's nearby.

We even ventured into Portland more than we have in the past!  We visited the Pearl district a number of times to go to PF Changs and surrounding area including Powells, and made it to the Saturday Market further down from there.  We made it to an outdoor art show at one point, too.  And multiple trips to Pioneer Place were nice for going to the closest Apple store and more.

I spent time with family this year.  

We participated and helped with Megan's wedding in February, and that was a big wonderful event.  Our trip to the beach with everyone on the Locatis family side was a good chance for us to relax together.  We spend many weekends getting together through the year, with dad or one of us (usually dad) cooking for the whole group.  We visited with E's family after the new year, during several trips when they came up to visit at the beginning of the year, and then when we went down in July.  One of the fun things this year has been to watch Leah and baby Leonard (my niece and nephew) grow, and do fun things for them.  We've also had a lot of fun playing games together throughout the year with both sides of the family.

I met up with friends this year.

I have a really hard time reconnecting with people from my past.  This year, I took time to meet up with a friend from college, and even more amazingly, a friend from high school.  Even though I was super nervous, both meetings went so much better than my nightmares lead me to believe they would.  It makes me think I'm not as awful with people as I think, and maybe I'm starting to heal from past situations a little too.

But mostly, I've just learned how to be Kristine.  That's always a challenge, to be myself.  And this year, I grew more comfortable in that, even though it was another year where I had to say that I was in the 30-40 age range on questionaires.  I embrace my ISTJ-ness and do things consistent rather than trying to be something I'm not.

Thanks for bearing with me through this series of posts, even as the days of the month moved faster than my typing.  

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials Book 1)

Eric's birthday is tomorrow, but we are celebrating with the family today with a big birthday party!  I told him Friday was the beginning of his birthday celebration and he keeps laughing at me.  We went out and watched the Golden Compass on friday and had Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch, and it was a really nice date.

E's mom is actually coming, because she flew up for a funeral in Walla Walla yesterday.  We're sad for the reason, but it will be great to see her, since we aren't flying down this holiday season ourselves.  Of course, as we get closer to the event, people are dropping off of the list, which does tend to happen because E's bday is so close to Christmas and people having other responsiblities.  But it will still be great, we'll have somewhere between 9-14 people I think!

I've been doing a bunch of cleaning throughout the week and yesterday, we finished up most everything.  How does dust and dirt get on ever surface of the house?!  It's sure shiny now at least.  A few weeks back, we rearranged the couches, and even though the couch sitting area is a smaller area now, I think I'm going to leave it this way even with company and hope that nobody feels like there's nowhere to sit. (we are only one chair short because it was Megan's and she needed it).

For dinner, we are going to have fabulous food.  I created this recipe for Pasta Bake (theredkitchen) a few months back when I didn't have any lasagna noodles, and have perfected it and then added a vegetarian version.  I've never made it on a bigger scale than single-service+leftover, though, so this ought to be exciting.  We'll also be having yummy dinner rolls (theredkitchen), which I love to make because they are all yeasty and fresh tasting.  And then broccoli with butter and mizithra cheese (like Spaghetti factory) and Apricot Glazed Carrots (allrecipes) or something like that - I didn't get an orange to zest. 

The Cake Mix Doctor

Yesterday's cooking prep included a new recipe for snacking on, Peppermint Cookie Brittle (bettycrocker).  This looked like an easier version of peppermint bark that I made last year because the base is cookies instead of chocolate.  We still need to break it up into little pieces, but it's done.  E picked a cake out of the Cake Mix Doctor, and Almond Chocolate cake that smelled SO good last night and I can't wait to eat it! :)

So today will involve a bunch of cooking to try and be done and ready to bake it before people start coming early to gather and play.  I'd rather not be stressing about finishing anything but the vegetables once people get her, truthfully, because that's a little more anxiety-inducing!

Along with the birthday party planning, I finished Christmas decorations, and started wrapping Christmas presents (E's mom may be able to stick a few in her suitcase, otherwise we'll bring them to the mail on Monday).  This coming week will be mostly relaxing because gifts are almost all done and just waiting to be wrapped.  And Christmas cookie baking will happen towards the end of the week to bring them for Christmas Eve with the family.  We'll go to church on Sunday with Leonard and Sarah, which really gets me in a good mindset for Christmas (speaking of which, I dreamt last night that I found an adventist church I actually wanted to attend and didn't have people who I'd rather not see at it.  I wish that was true!)

Ohhh, and E found a cable for the entertainment center downstairs to plug my iPod into.  Now we can listen to the 8 hours of Christmas music on my iPod instead of having to use the CD rotator and be limited to 5 CDs and listen to the ugly noises it makes when switching between ;)  I ripped his Mannheim Steamroller to alternate with my regular Christmas Music.  I can't help but sing along, even if my voice leans towards singing the harmony too often!

Have a beautiful day, friends!

I'm always a bit busy, it seems, but this week has been a compartmentalized kind of busy!

On last Friday afternoon, I slept the entire afternoon away.  E had the afternoon off, and I was just exhausted, so I laid down for a short nap.  I didn't mean for it to turn into a 4 hour nap!  But it was good, we ended up babysitting Leah and (for the first time) baby Leonard.  They are such fun.  Funny thing, my bookshelves that store my decorative things and china in the dining room only have stuff on the top 2 shelves now, that's how tall he is!  We kept moving stuff up as he noticed he could reach it :D

On Saturday, I finished a knitting project, we went out for lunch, stopped at Jo-Ann's to get me some yarn, and then had a meet up with an old friend from college.  That was really nice.  On Sunday, we had dinner with my family, everybody but Matthew was there, and we played with the kids and played San Juan with Sarah, and planned Thanksgiving , and had delicious baked potatoes.

On Monday afternoon, I worked on meal planning.  We hadn't shopped for 2 weeks, and so a lot of staples were low, and we were out of real meal ideas.  Plus there was a HUGE pile of coupons from the papers to go through.  I like to go hrough the ads and coupons and try to come up with meal ideas based on what I can get a good deal on.  And it paid off, I had $7.35 of coupons off this time!

On Tuesday afternoon, I sorted mail and did laundry.  Both projects had been waiting for too long, and it took 4 loads of laundry to finish it all up.  It is nice to have everything I want to wear actually clean. :)

On Wednesday afternoon, I recorded books and worked on more knitting.   The knit-in was again this week because we ended up with weird weeks in November.  I was hoping to start on some new projects, but the yarn didn't get here until 4:15, too late to swatch and finalize the plans.  But I did figure out the basic pattern on one with existing yarn, so I got closer to being ready for that new yarn!  I had a giant pile of books to put into Vox, and I finished one I had in process so I could take it back.  I could see from the library's online display that I had a lot waiting for me (sometimes, my requests come a lot quicker than scheduled), so I wanted to have as many to bring back as possible!

And that's been the fun of late. :)  I'm still reading and knitting and watching TV and working and cooking every day, as normal, but these were the other outstanding things.  :)

I had a very nice weekend.

It started out with E having a half-day on friday, giving him a chance to work on a web project for much of the afternoon while I did menu planning and knitting and tv watching.  He's got a small contract with a friend to do updates to an existing site, and it seems like it's a fun challenge for him.

Saturday, I had good plans, and they all worked out, and that's always nice.  When I was at the library on Wednesda for the knit in, there were some projects in the work for knitting donations to benefit the library.  They mentioned needing someone to put together baskets for this auction, and I said I was good at making things look pretty (yes, I'm crafty!) and they were excited for that and suggested I should just join the Friends group to make it official that I was helping out. 

Side note: The Friends of the Library are a group of people who help in fundraising for the library and assist in book sales and do other activities to promote the library.  I always figured that when I got older, I'd be most excited about helping the library if there ever was a chance.  I mean, hello, it comes full circle because I was the youngest volunteer in the system when I helped in Washougal (from ages 12-15).  :)

So the first monthly meeting was going to be on Saturday morning, so I planned on that.  It was a nice meeting, even though 2 of the 4 people I knew in the group weren't there.  I got to take home all the current basket auction stuff they had so far, and it was really nice to meet all the other people who were involved in the Friends group.  I was the youngest there this time, but I didn't feel out of place, people made me feel comfortable right away.

After that, I was excited about going to the Farmer's Market again - the last time we went, we didn't see many fruits or vegetables we really had to have, and this time, I planned it so we'd go here before the grocery store, and that was much smarter.  We walked all the way through and then decided what to get.  A beautifully shaped butternut squash, a couple ears of corn to eat that day, fresh from the garden red peppers, a nectarine, and some apples.  There were so many other things we could get, but it's definitely a case where we didn't want to get them and have them go bad, with just two of us to eat produce.  It was very successful!

Then we drove up Main street, where E thought he'd seen some restaurants.  We went to an area of the city I don't think I've ever been to, they call it Uptown Village.  There were a lot of interesting shops and a Subway, so we parked and figured if we didn't see anything else, we could always go there.  We ended up finding La Bottega, which was a wine store with a deli/cafe in it.  The garlic smell was really good, with a small but interesting menu, so we decided to try it out.  That's where the Strawberry Coke was from. :)  We had fun looking in the windows of other shops, too.

While at the restaurant, we finished our grocery list and went off to Safeway to finish off the plans for the day.  We went home and rested and relaxed and cooked dinner and watched TV and it was a nice finish to a day full of great things.

On Sunday, we went to a double birthday party for my sister Megan and her husband Andrew.  Their birthdays are 2 days apart, so we are destined to always have joint parties!  It was a delicious birthday dinner my dad cooked, steaks and barbeque chicken and my favorite pasta salad and veges in cheese sauce, and of course, a cheese cake for desert (this is the sister who had cheesecake for her wedding!)  We played with Leah and Leonard and sat and chatted, and it was a nice afternoon.

Today, I'm a little sore still from all the activities, but it was a great weekend, so I can't complain!

This weekend, we did a lot of stuff.  This was good, and we had a super time.  I'm taking it a little easier than some mondays to get back my energy!

Saturday, we celebrated my sister Lisa's 22nd birthday at my parents house.  We had delicious sandwiches and cake and ice cream, and it was the first time in a while that we actually went to my parents house, we've been visiting all the other family houses more lately.  It was a nice party and we had fun together even though some of the family wasn't around.  Last year at this time, we were getting ready for Lisa's wedding, so it sure has been an eventful year!

Afterwards, Lisa and Jon wanted to go to IKEA, and I'd been wanting to go a lot too, so we decided to do that together.  Portland's IKEA is brand new, it opened the middle of last week, and the parking lots are still really full!  It was super fun to see everything, what an awesome store.  Definitely my kind of place.  I'd like a big pile of money to redo some rooms in my house (or better yet, an even bigger pie of money to get the next better house and then set that up perfectly! :D)  We came away without buying anything, but I'll definitely go back and dream s'more (maybe during the day instead of a weekend evening with so many people!!)  We finished out the evening with some games, I've been really excited over Ticket to Ride with E lately, and that seems to be my first pick when we decide what to play; even when I don't win ;). 

On Sunday, we got up and went to church with Leonard and Sarah and family.  They just started attending a new church, and it was nice.  We heard the head pastor speak and it was a good sermon with some Bible stories I hadn't heard the background too, and really interesting tips for being bold.  One of my favorite parts of going to church is usually the music, and they didn't disappoint.  They were having a cowboy theme and led into the service with Steven Curtis Chapman's Saddle up your Horses; an oldie of his, but I can't help but like even his old stuff.  (Ahh, he's got a new album coming out this week!  It's been a long time.  Check out the single on his site.  And dude, he has a TypePad blog! :) )

After church, there was a big giant summer festival going on for church members and friends, so we went over there.  They had entertainment, food,  a TON of blow-up bouncy things, and even ponies and camels!  We played with the kids and E ran around going with Leah to the blow-up things (her favorite was one that was Noah's Ark, it was a nice size.  Baby Leonard tried several times to try and grab other people's food (mine included), but one was hilarious because he just jetted (he crawls fast) to another person's blanket and Leonard grabbed him JUST as his hand was almost in their food!

We came home and I was tired so we sat and watched part of our next Netflix tv show, and then played another game (Thurn and Taxis this time) and I made some nice long routes and won.  Oh, and then we watched Feasting on Asphalt, we are so glad they decided to make another season.  It's such a cool concept and beautiful camera work and photography.  I'm hoping that one of these seasons, he'll make it up the Northwest, since he did the South, and now Mississippi river.

At the end of the day,I went to brush my teeth and noticed that the top of my forehead was a little red.  Oops, I guess I did get some sun.  And then I looked down, and ohhhh no, my arms are red too!  I'll have a bit of a farmers tan for wearing a t-shirt yesterday.  But for now, they are pretty red.  I'm usually the queen of sunscreen.  My face had some because of my day solution (Mary Kay, I think it's spf 15), but I'm a dork and didn't bring my sunscreen or bother to use Sarah's.  I guess it wasn't that HOT out, and the sun wasn't shinning directly, so it didn't seem as obvious to remember.  Ooops.

It certainly was a weekend of fun, and the memories will last much longer than the sunburn arms and sore legs :)  It's so nice to have family members to hang out with for a variety of things!

We had a nice array of done to munch on at our park outing yesterday, yay for Sarah!

Park picnic

We took a trip this weekend to Southern California for a friend's 30th birthday.  It was a great reason to go down, even though I do usually try to avoid going in the summer months during the heat! 

E took off Friday and Monday so we had a little more time to be down, and it really did make for a nicer trip instead of rushing.  It let us be a little more relaxed on friday for the flying (I'm always pretty nervous, this time was no exception, but once I get through security, I get a little more relaxed)  Security wasn't too bad, in the past I seem to have been flagged as someone who looks dangerous and needing a pat-down, but today they put me through a fluffing machine.  I have no idea what it was for, but it burst air from the feet upwards for a few seconds and then I had to stand still for 15 seconds while it did something. (I searched google to see if I could link to something about it, but I can't find anything.  bizarro!)

We went out to dinner with the whole family once we got down there, at a place called Isabellas (or was it Isabelles?), a really nice italian restaurant, and that was fun.  E's mom made some delicious orange cake out of fresh oranges that we had to try at home for desert.

Then on Saturday, we watched sabbath school and some of church on TV.  That's always a nice alternative to going to the huge church. :)  Plus, I could knit while watching that way, hee hee.  E's aunt and cousins came over for lunch and we had a nice big family meal.  I always like getting to see them, they are such nice girls.

Then we headed out for Gabe's birthday party and drove a few other friends (Robert and Sarah - Bert was in our wedding and E was in theirs) with us.  They are always trying to get us to play World of Warcraft.  My general excuse on that is that that "yes, I'm sure I would like it a lot.  I think I'd like it too much and get too addicted" :P  We laugh a lot when we are with them and that's really nice.  The party was great, they came up with little rebus's for everybody was was attending and had them on poster board on the various walls for people to figure out (I wish I had taken a picture of the one for E and me, it was quite fun).  They did some other trivia quizzes too, and we had fun trying to figure out the answers.  There was a ton of greek food, but I didn't really know what much was!  It was really nice to sit and chat with friends all evening.  I'll share pictures once I get them uploaded.  Once it got late, we moved the party over to E's house - and actually had ALL of Gabe's many games (like 5 gigantic bins and 2 smaller ones).  These are the awesome kinds of games you'd find at boardgamegeek, so it was a bigger selection than our local game store has!  The guys stayed up most of the night playing, I only made it to like 2:30 :)

The next morning, the games were all still there and so I did some looking for ones I might want to own (I'll have to do a geeky post about games sometime later) and played some with E and Craig before brunch... and most everybody showed up again for the day/evening of playing and visiting and even working on the Portland puzzle we got E's dad for father's day.  We hung out and ate together again (E's mom is so cool, letting everyone hang out at the house and then feeding us all too!).

Then Monday morning, we got up and ready to go and played a little more with Craig while waiting.  We made it to the airport in plenty of time (phew! we've missed our flight before, but traffic wasn't bad this time).  We finally decided to get some food at Carl's Jr/Green Burrito so that they we wouldn't stuff ourselves before the flight and could sit down to dinner when we got home.  When we got back down to our end of the terminal (still like 1 1/2 hours until take off time), they informed us that our flight was grounded due to communication errors in Portland still (later we heard there was a power outage at the Portland airport that caused this) and we'd have to wait for several extra hours.  So almost 3 hours late, we left Ontario.  Ugh, we've had the worst luck at this airport, definitely spent too much time waiting around.  But I had knitting, we played Mario minigames on DS, E read, we walked through all the little shops (there's like 4 in this terminal, not *too* exciting).  They gave us $6 vouchers because we had to wait and we went and picked out a fun selection of candy and nuts and magazines and then the lady said that they were only for food.  Well doh, it said "magazine concessions", that's retarded.   So we went and got danishes and muffins we didn't really need (the blueberry muffin is on the counter here, all squished in a funny shape from being in my bag!)

But we made it back on the ground, found our car in the lot, and went home.  And rested and watched some TV and went to bed.  It was a good trip, and even though I'll do more resting for a few days to make up for the late nights and walking, it was super, and we have great memories!

I woke up and looked at the clock to see if it was time to get up, like I always do (if it says some crazy thing like 6:45 on a weekend morning, I try to fall back asleep).  It was 8:11, and I thought, "Oh Yay, I slept in!"