Sssssssssnakes

Jan Michael took today off from work, and when we woke up we thought it would be fun to drive to Snoqualmie Falls and hike around. But then we looked out the window and saw rain, so we hopped in the car and drove to Monroe instead for a visit to the Reptile House. There are lots of lizards and snakes, as well as some turtles and tarantulas and a couple of alligators, so it's a very educational date. They'll let you hold some of the snakes, and I swaggered in thinking it would be no problem and I'd stand there with an anaconda wrapped around me, wooing everyone with my bravery. But no. We looked around and I swiftly changed my mind.
I like turtles. They are cute and they don't strangle people. I was surprised to see how quickly they moved, though.

I was crouched down looking at the snake below when Jan Michael said, "Hey look at this one," and I popped up to see him holding a very intimate conversation with this very active snake. I shrieked loudly enough to be embarrassed. It was so, so creepy because Jan put his face right up against the glass, and whatever direction he would move his face in, the snake would follow. Jan may have found his second calling as a snake charmer :)
This my brave, having-a-fabulous-time face. It's one thing to see a big snake lying still in a big heap, but it's another thing entirely to watch it climb a wall, looking for weaknesses in it's environment which will allow it to escape and swallow me whole.
Notice the snake making his way steadily to the top of the box. Sometime during this interaction, Jan Michael pointed out that actually, the snake would have easily been strong enough to pop the top (or sides) off his house if he'd really wanted to. Even while I type this the thought of that gives me the willies. Blechhhhhhhhhhhh. My lesson for today was this: Feeling a little more brave around garter snakes does not translate into being comfortable around 400-pound pythons, and I am still a big wimp.

Good stuff

The following are the rules my dear father-in-law (as shown above) used as a soccer coach many years ago to lead his teams to victory. We have them on our refrigerator because they're a happy reminder of the kind of person he is, and also good guidance for life in general, I think. And they're worth sharing:

1. Listening excellence
2. Team player-helper
3. Passing accuracy
4. Tight defense
5. Aggressive ball - goal attack
6. Goal setting excellence
7. Recover
8. Stable serious practice
9. Mental alertness
10. Practice practice practice
11. Commitment

Thank you, Dad. We love you :)

Happy Valentine's Day to yoooooouuu

I would like to take this opportunity to say "I love my husband and am glad to have him as my valentine." Around here we've been eating a lot of cake and candy hearts. Also, we have a special treat in that the workers are staying with us. They're helping us eat the cake, which is nice; otherwise, I'd eat most of it myself. I don't have a lot of self-control when it comes to cake.

Just around the bend....

Spring is coming and I can prove it. Today I opened the bathroom window and I could smell spring in the air. I didn't have to wear my parka, gloves, scarf & boots when I went to the store, AND I was able to muck around in the yard because the ground wasn't frozen. Besides that, there are two tulips popping up in one of the flowerbeds. Furthermore, I took a walk with my friends Jennifer & Tara and I did not come home blue and numb from the cold. It's all LOVELY and it makes me give a great, contented sigh.

Right this minute

Right this minute, I....

- wish the weather was warm enough for shorts and flip-flops

- would like to drink some grape juice and maybe eat some popcorn but we have neither and I'm too lazy to drive to the store

- think it would be nice to take a bath, but the bathroom is full of toxic fumes because I just finished painting it

The answer to your Valentine's Day dilemma

I just heard a commerical on the radio and it's too funny not to share. It was for one of the natural, organic grocery stores around here, and it went something like this: Valentine's Day is coming up, and maybe there's someone special you'd like to buy a gift for, but you're not sure if you're ready to give roses or chocolates. How about giving one of our fabulous jars of marinated mushrooms with garlic instead?

Hahahahahahaha. Personally, I don't think you could actually give, as a serious gift, a jar of marinated mushrooms with garlic unless you were well-acquainted with that certain semi-special someone in the first place. What a random, weird thing to toss in someone's lap. It's sends a fairly ambiguous message, if you ask me. And I don't think the commercial was meant as a joke, either. At least, the guy didn't sound sarcastic. I do tend to be on the slow side sometimes, so I suppose it's possible that it's all a farce, but I'm choosing to believe it's validity because it's giving me a good laugh.

I have something to say.

I have a great need to put something new up, so here I go:

- Every time I have to buy dish soap, I decide to save a buck or two and get a cheap-o, generic brand. And every time, without fail, the soap stinks. Actually, it usually smells pretty good, but what I mean by stinking is that it only makes bubbles for about two minutes and then they all fade away, and it's just the same as swishing the dishes around in plain, old water. It's funny how a person can do a certain thing again and again and each time expect a different, better result. That's the definition of insanity, you know.

- By the time January is over, I will have managed to exercise 24 out of 31 days. That isn't quite as much as I thought I'd do when the month started, but still, it's alright. I go to the library constantly now, and I love to be able to get lots of different fitness DVDs without having to pay a red cent. Of course, I've mistakenly checked out a few hum-dingers, but I've also found some really, really good ones. The only bad thing about the library is that I can only keep the DVDs for a week at at time, but that just means I'm always doing something new. And variety is the spice of life, they say.

- Since my last birthday, I've noticed I've become quite concerned with whether or not I look "old." I don't think the way I feel (or behave, half the time) matches the the number that I am, but being young at heart obviously doesn't mean we are young on the outside, and so I think maybe I should start using wrinkle cream on my eyes.

Leavenworth 2003

We have no new pictures to share, so instead I will post pictures of our winter vacation to Leavenworth four years ago. We stayed in a really neat bed & breakfast for a week, which is only accessible by a snow cat during the winter months. We stayed in our own little cabin instead of in the main lodge, and since we were snow-bound for the duration of our stay, all of our meals (very large, very delicious meals) were provided. They even kept the mini-fridge in our cabin stocked with Sprite and Coke, for Pete's sake! We spent a lot of time sitting around in our cabin.... and we liked being lazy, so we smiled a lot. But we spent a lot of time outside, too...
blazing trails in our snowshoes,

and riding our snow-mobiles really fast (really fast for me, at least),
and making snowmen, among other activities. Actually, one of the super fun things they have at the lodge is a huuuuuuge, loooooong sledding hill, and so we soared along on inner tubes at break-neck speeds, but we don't have very many pictures of that, and besides, the ones we do have are all of me and they're very un-flattering, so I'll leave them out. Anyway, it was a very lovely vacation and maybe someday we'll go back, but if they do, I hope they don't serve duck again. Duck is not my favorite.

Sweet thought

"So treat your love like a firefly, like it only gets to shine for a little while... Put it in a mason jar with holes in the top and run like heck to show it off..."

-Miranda Lambert

Back to the drawing board

We went to the library today to pick up Richard Simmons' '80s Blast-Off, the exercise DVD I wrote about earlier this month. Jan Michael was skeptical of my enthusiastic anticipation, and just as he suspected, it's nothing to crow about. I only watched the first few minutes before deciding it's not the thing for me. "I told you so," said Jan Michael knowingly. "You win some, you lose some," I replied.

S.N.O.W

I hope I'm not boring everyone to tears with all of these snow pictures, but we hardly ever get this much, and it's so pretty and peaceful, and I get so excited, and I just have to share it. Also, I was reminded today that snow angels are just as much fun to make for a grown-up me as it was for a little girl me :)

The adventure continues

We decided around 10:30 last night that all of this snow (5 inches - Jan Michael measured with a ruler) was cause for a late-night run to Safeway. It's fun to celebrate this sort of thing with Doritoes and popsicles. But first we had to un-earth the car....
which took some effort. It wouldn't have taken as long as it did if not for my fun-loving husband, who thought an impromptu snowball fight was in order. We wondered coming back from the store if we'd be able to get up the little hill in front of our house (quite a few cars were parked at the bottom), and it did take three tries of backing up to get a decent running start, but we were victorious.
Our front yard this morning.... boo for the blue sky, which means all of this will probably melt away within the next day or so
And the back yard

Blizzard!

If you look closely, you will see a beaming Jan Michael out there in between all of those flakes. We took a lovely stroll around the neighborhood and already one snow plow is out, and one person was stuck at an intersection. Tomorrow maybe we will build a snowman and make snow angels! :)

New year, new project

This is the border that runs all along the wall just below the ceiling in our hall bathroom. Someone worked very hard to stencil all of those little hearts and leaves, but I must say, that sort of thing is not my cup of tea. I've wanted to be rid of them ever since we bought the house, but it has taken this long for me to stop daydreaming about it and actually get down to business. So this morning I forced myself to be productive, and a couple of hours later.....
No more stencils! Of course, what you see here is just a bunch of primer on the walls, and it will probably take another two weeks for me to finish, but it's part-way done just the same. Also, I'm making it sound like I've done this all by myself, but Jan Michael is the one who dismantled the toilet so I could paint behind it without doing all sorts of crazy contortions, and he took the mirror off the wall and helped me take apart the light fixture. And I have a feeling that he'll be the one to put everything back together again. Behind every painting wife is a helpful husband :)

Eye of the Tiger

I have just recently discovered the fun of checking out exercise DVDs through the library. Over the last couple of weeks (this is the time for New Year's resolutions, after all) I've checked out several Pilates DVDs (I am a big, big fan of Windsor Pilates), and have holds on lots of other different fitness things. I am eagerly awaiting the emails notifying me that my requested items have arrived at my local library and are ready to be picked up at my earliest convenience. But today. Today I have found what might be the most exciting exercise tape ever. I have placed a hold on Richard Simmons' 80's Blast Off, which is a bunch of dancing & jumping around to songs of the '80s, which is possibly the decade that produced the greatest music in the history of the world. It's hard to say when I'll get the DVD in my hot little hands, as about a million other people use this library system, but when I do, I'll give a full report.

Happy 2007!

Happy, happy New Year to one and all! Derek mentioned on their blog that he and Sara are an old married couple and stayed home instead of whooping it up last night, and they are in fine company as we did the very same thing. Probably the most exciting thing we can claim is changing some lightbulbs around 9:30 :) Anyhoo, cheers to everyone and very best wishes for the very best year ahead.

Family

One of the VERY BEST parts about losing power and escaping to the south for a few days was having a big family dinner at Derek & Sara's, comprised of the five original Pearsons (as pictured above), plus wives, plus sons/grandsons/nephews, plus Danny's parents, representing the Canadian contingent of the family. We hadn't all been together in one place in a blasted long time, so it was happy for my heart :)

If we want to, we can shake the neightbors' house ;)

Just before the wind storm, we embarked on our latest home improvement project, which was to install surround sound in the study. When we were at the speaker store, the sales guy took us to the room where they keep their "high end" stuff. He showed us a pair of cables that cost $15,000 and a speaker that sells for a mere $40,000. Gasp, choke, sputter. We, of course, are not in this class of sound equipment connoisseur. (Seriously, can you imagine?!)
Step one involved taking the monitor off the wall and removing the speaker that was already attached to the bottom. No more wimpy speakers in this house!
One speaker up....
Three speakers up!
Hidden wires are better than visible ones, so for the two rear speakers, Jan Michael drilled holes in the walls and, for this speaker, ran the cables through the laundry room and then back into into the study. For the speaker on the opposite wall, he had to drill to the outside, run the cable around the house, through a shed that is attached to the house, back into the laundry room, and through the study wall into the receiver. Somehow plans never seem to go as smoothly as we'd like, and when we got to the part about drilling into the shed, we discovered that we'd lost the key to let us in, which led us to buy bolt cutters in an attempt to cut the padlock. But bolt cutters don't work on locks that are hardened, so we tried to take the door hinges off, and discovered that the screws holding them in place were stripped. Finally we cut through the latch holding the lock, and gained triumphant entrance into the shed. We must have really rammed it shut after we were finished, though (to make sure the wind wouldn't blow it open), because now the door is stuck and we can't get back in. Hahahahahahaha. Happy boy and his new toy :)
I'm only pretending to be useful. How wise would it be for me to actually use a power drill on the wall?!
There are about 50 cables that had to be connected to the reciever. Jan Michael spent a lot of time doing this. The end of the job entailed going back to the speaker store, not once, but twice, because the bass they sold us originally was faulty, and then something with the receiver was screwy, but at this point we can say..... All done! Now we can have very loud games of Mario Cart :)

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to Grandma Ruth

Merry Christmas for us because we spent the weekend with our dear family :) Also, Grandma Ruth celebrated her 93rd (!) birthday yesterday, so we had a fancy dinner and very- bad- for- us dessert. We were given some very special, thoughtful presents from both sides of the family, for which we say THANK YOOOOOOU!

Caleb ponders how to steal his pants from his Daddy's head,
and then enjoys a good laugh about it with Uncle JM.
Playdough!!


There should be an award for having the cutest 2-year old nephew. [Because his cuteness is all my doing, of course :) Pbbbbbbbbb]