Yard work- ughh

Our computer has had a complete over haul. Better last another 6 years . . .

Things are warming up in Seattle, it's wonderful. Some of the plants in our garden are popping up. The girls are taking swim lessons in Magnolia and doing really well. Odessa is in the 4 yr old class, and Ada follows in the 3 yr old class and they both have the only male teacher- Owen. Ada tells her dad over and over about what she did at swim lessons and that "you know what dad? He's a BOY TEACHER!" She loves Owen. I was thrilled to find that 4 of my friends from my old ward have their 3 yr olds in the same class as Ada. Good times chatting by the pool.

Stephen's parents, Nancy and Steve were here last week/weekend. They helped us haul all the brushes and trees Stephen has cut down since moving here. There were 3 truck loads to the dump! Then there were 3 truck loads to the dump of fencing materials. Stephen is now pulling out the ivy between our backyard and the neighbors and that will go to the dump too . . . the square footage of this yard relative to the amount of plants that need to be constantly removed from it seems impossible.
Stephen, Steve and Brian (neighbor) built the side fence. We still have to finish the back although the posts are in, so technically the hard work is done. I can't believe all the yard work that was done last week! I had no idea . . . . even the old fence had to be cut into pieces to be hauled away . . . . so much work. Thank goodness Steve and Nancy were here. They helped so much. The girls are pretty independent and so they will work and play by themselves, so I don't have much excuse not to join the fray outside. I thought I would love yard work once I had my own place. I think it is a learned love.
While my computer was down, I read some books. I recommend the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Hunger Games. I re-read Sense and Sensibility for various reasons.
I got called (or asked) to be the chorister in my ward (congregation). This is how the conversation went:
Bishop: We'd like to extend the call to you to be ward chorister of the West Seattle Ward.
Me: You're joking, right?
Bishop: No
Me: This is a joke, right?
Bishop: "laughing" No
Me: You realize I have no musical training whatsoever, right?
Bishop: It doesn't matter, I feel very impressed that this is the calling you should have.
Me: Well, ok then. . . .
Turns out I am ok at this calling and even though my knees actually, physically, knocked together during my first time conducting (another "literary" moment), I think I will enjoy it. The organist I work with is the coolest, I couldn't ask for a better partner. She made "bok-bokking" noises at me Wednesday night when we practiced "The Day Dawn is Breaking" and I decided against it for this Sunday. Too chicken. I think it's hilarious that she is already teasing me. I would not even flinch being up in front of my friends in my old ward, I know they would love me no matter how much I messed up. But I hardly know anyone yet in this ward, and that makes it more nerve wracking. Oh well. I am always practicing at odd moments throughout the week, so you might catch a glimpse of me conducting to my dashboard at a stop light or while I am doing the dishes with one hand at the kitchen sink. If my neighbors didn't think I was crazy before, they do now.
Forgive the following LONG series of pictures and captions- I am making blurb books out of my blog, and so it's become more important to me document things I really want to remember.

The grassy patch where we put our garden- after Stephen cleared a ton of holly, a bush and some other tree. The girls were most likely digging for worms- see below. She LOVES worms. Gross.



The grassy patch after digging up all the sod. Now it's a garden and little things are popping up.

Side fence that needed replacing, the huge pile of stuff Stephen dug out of the yard, the back fence with debris also in front. All the debris and old fence is gone now, it's amazing the difference.


The house with the rhododendrons finally in bloom, and azaleas in the back yard, bushes on the side- whoops, double photo. Oh well, I am not doing the collages again.

Afterward: Bushes are gone, side fence is done!

Sidewalk chalk is the new favorite thing. Odessa has got her first and last name, working on her middle name. lol

They are both really into dancing, see Odie's pouty face? She was mad Ada has a tutu


Grandpa dancing with the girls, they love having a prince to dance with!

Computer down!

I have a lot of things to blog about and pictures to up load, but this wheezing dinosaur needs to go in for another check up. It keeps crashing on me. Hopefully I will be back up soon. Ciao!

Bada is 3

Ada Jeanne = Ada Bean = Bada. Such is the progression of Ada's nick name. She turned 3 on Saturday. We had an invitation to a pool party for another friend's birthday and so we thoroughly enjoyed swimming together as a family even if it wasn't technically to celebrate her birthday. lol
She has been dressing herself for some time, and some days she looks really cute! She picked out this outfit and looked so much like she was ready for tennis, I had to take a picture (above).


Early in the morning of her birthday she got a helmet and officially got Odessa's bike. Odessa got a freebie used bike from our friends. Stephen is the diligent one- he worked with Ada for an hour until she could pedal the bike easily. I can't imagine how long it will take for them to graduate from training wheels!
Later in the evening, we had Ava and Ellie (sisters) over for a Princess party and dinner. For the party, we read Princess and the Pea and played a game where they sat on 3 pillows, trying to guess where the pea (ball) was.

After hunting in sand for gems to decorate their crowns with, the girls had a photo shoot. My girls have been wanting fans for a long time, they were a huge hit.

We served them Ada's favorite foods and used fancy plastic goblets. No one spilled! Ellie is only 2, and she immediately held her goblet up and as if to say "I can't drink from this, get me a cup" So funny.
Ada's big present was some other dress up clothes (she wears the Cinderella dress daily!)

She wanted a pink kitty cake

This is Stephen and I's favorite thing about Ada- her moon shaped smiley eyes. She's always turning the charm on, a real princess I guess! We can't imagine life without her.

Vermin and good eats (unrelated)

One night when my parents were here, I was sitting in the living room, looked up and caught sight of a raccoon standing on 2 legs with his paws against the sliding glass doors, looking intently at me as if to say "where is my dinner and why don't you let me in?". I had a totally literary reaction- I wrung my hands and my mouth flapped open over and over- I was speechless. I rarely have those kind of moments they describe in books, but this was one. His masked face in the dark was SO STARTLING, I could not speak. When we all went up to the glass, he did not budge which freaked me out even more. This is NOT a picture of him, I got this off the web- same with the opossum. After the raccoon visit, I had nightmares for the next 3 nights that robbers or vagrants broke into our house.

Then yesterday we caught sight (again) of a opossum. But this time she was carrying babies on her back and she disappeared under our deck. Awesome. Now we have more than one vermin problem. We really want to plant a garden and fruit trees, so I think these animals will have to be dealt with. It's a weird feeling of being invaded, I guess one of the many new feelings I have as a new homeowner.

Last night for Cinco de Mayo I made homemade tamales and some enchiladas verde that were different from any we had tried before. I also topped off the evening with homemade churros. I have linked all the recipes with their online sites, they were all good (well, I would like to tinker with the churros, but who really needs to keep trying fried foods? No me). I do like having some international grocery stores close by, we had Tamarind Jarritos with dinner too . . .
We love international holidays like Chinese New Year and Cinco de Mayo so we have an excuse to eat yummy food! lol

Disaster . . . . averted

Last week was my birthday week! Stephen did a good job of trying to plan a few things for me in the midst of me planning my own birthday. There were just a couple of things that had to be done by myself this year, namely deciding a shopping trip to an annual sale coming up would "the present".

I also decided that I wanted to go on a double date for my birthday. So when my friend and I got to talking about options, she and I planned the evening ourselves. Is this wrong? I think not. Anyway, I digress.Stephen surprised me at home with a cake and card after dinner and then we all got ready to go- the girls were going to a friend's house. I left the keys on the hook for Stephen, he came out the door and locked the doorknob, pulling the door shut with the keys still inside. Ay-yay-yay! He quickly ran around the house, trying windows and doors. Fortunately and unfortunately our house is pretty secure! Finally he found a narrow window in the laundry room where the window was not locked and he slid inside off the top of the ladder. Sheesh. So my birthday date that could have turned into a date with the locksmith was a half hour late, but at least disaster was averted. Whew.
That date was so fun!! First my girlfriend surprised me with 2 items from Trader Joes I have been dying to try (one chocolate item, one salt scrub)! How did she know? She didn't. Totally crazy. Then we went to Chocolopolis in Queen Anne and had some seriously awesome sipping chocolate. I had the Spicy Dark, Stephen had something from Columbia. . . they were so rich, so dark and SOOOOO gooooood. Then we went to Blue Highway Games and played board games! They have like 8-10 tables in the back of the store just for people to play their games- they have shelves and shelves of them that are open. Our friends take their kids regularly for some quality family time. We got to learn Ticket to Ride together and had a blast. Perfect evening. . . . sigh.
Other highlights of "birthday week":
Stephen fixed up my bike so I can take a ride.
He surprised me Wednesday night by saying we would go to this burger place we have been wanting to try near our house, then he invited our friends- double fun! The burgers are very good (they grind their own chuck each morning and have 20 kinds of old fashioned sodas!)

I took the girls to the zoo on my birthday- if I don't get the day off, we should at least have a lot of fun! We met a friend there.

There's cute, and then there's Meer-kute. Ha ha

Yay for birthdays (and on to the shopping trip!) I feel a lot more 30 than I did last year : )

Ernie, Ernie Bo-bernie

This is Ernie- who we dog-sat for the last few days for our friends

• Ernie thinks the girls are unruly puppies who need to be whipped into shape
• The girls think Ernie is part terrifying and part mesmerizing, they were obsessed -which was aggravated by the fact we had to keep them separated from him
  
• Ernie almost gave me whiplash when I walked him
  
• He was a nut in the back yard, running in figure eights and going insanely happy
  
• Ernie worked on the rawhide bone the girls got for him until he swallowed half of it, then threw it back up at my feet on my new rug
  
• After this test run, we know better that a dog is not in our family's immediate future
  

Despite the above, I got a little teary-eyed at the thought of taking him back to his apartment. What a loving, loyal dog and really, he was mostly perfectly behaved and well trained. I loved the long walks and having another reason to stay busy.

We miss you already Ernie

Easter, British Columbia and cheeky kids

Someone found the usb cord to the camera and so somebody is catching up. Oh, and yah I did take those photos at the Zoo since a bunch of people asked and I am prone to downloading good photos off the web when I forget my camera. We have 3 cameras now ranging from "I-bought-this-in-case-it-gets-stolen-on-that-one-trip-camera" to "it's-broken-twice-and-resurrects-itself-so-it-must-have-nine-lives-camera" to "it-costs-a-lot-and-is-big-to-lug-around-but-I'm-happy-with-the-pics-camera". You'll often see a sampling from all 3 cameras here.

Easter Egg Hunt with Viswanathans

Keiran was the cutest as this was his first hunt where he ran around and "got it"- yes we are multi-purposing holiday buckets


The girls LOVE that they can pick as many "flowers" as they want from the yard

When my parents were here, we went to Langley, BC to go through the Vancouver area temple open house- it is lovely


This is a good depiction of the trip- grandma and grandpa are so great to have around! In the gym of the adjacent stake center, they had a huge map of the world with red sticker dots of all the temples and where they are located. Odessa was looking a little too close and I warned her to step back. Later as we were walking around the grounds, I noticed something in her hair.
Me: "Oh no!"
My Dad: "What is it??"
Me: "I just found a TEMPLE in Odessa's hair!"


We stopped in the tulip fields of Skagit Valley on the way home, this has long been a favorite place for my Dad especially






We mostly took pictures from the car. Ada and Stephen were playing around at lunch and she kind-of "dislocated" her elbow. It's a common condition in kids where the joint kind of slides around and pinches a nerve and it's really painful. Thankfully (?) this is a common occurrence in Hunt children and we learned all about it in Chicago from Nathan and Beth and how to fix it without going to the ER. So Stephen and I had both tried our hand at "fixing" her arm and she just SCREAMED bloody murder the whole time and even though I thought I felt a little click (the sign it's back in place)- she didn't show a ton of improvement although she held it in her car seat and promptly fell asleep. When we got to the tulip fields, she started SCREAMING when we tried to get her out of her car seat- someone nearby asked us what we were doing to the poor girl, so I decided we had better find an urgent care rather than try and see all the fields. So we made the circuit while my dad used his i-phone to locate all kinds of things for us including the nearest Group Health urgent care center. I must say I am glad my parents are so much more tech savvy than us. Everyone was a little disappointed to leave the fields and we had planned on having dinner in La Conner, but oh well.
We got to the Everett center, and she again cried when I took her out of her car seat. My dad said a quick prayer at the car that she would be pain free soon. We got to the waiting room and Stephen started the check in process- Odessa raced off to the aquarium and all of a sudden, Ada gets off my lap, runs over to the aquarium and slaps BOTH hands against the glass. My parents and I were stunned. I made Ada squeeze my hand, give me five, pull on my fingers, you name it. I started waving at Stephen "Don't check her in! She's FINE- the CRAZY NUT."
We all felt she had kind of been over-nursing it and freaking out about it since the parking lot at lunch where I am pretty sure it was fixed. I was so glad we didn't have to pay for urgent care services. On the way home she demanded we stop and pee right away - twice. So you can imagine when we finally pulled in the driveway I had had enough of her demands that night! Too funny, we were all so glad she was fine.
Just one of the many adventures with these 2 kids lately!
My mom got them ice cream cones- 2 days in a row and the first day Ada got mint chocolate and the second she got vanilla.
The second day she was licking her cone and I noticed something on her cone, I picked it off and told her: "It's just lint".
Ada: "Hey, I wanted VANILLA".

We also got some cupcakes (early birthday for me) and Odessa and Ada got the mini ones.
Odessa held hers up to me and asked: "Did this shrink in the wash?"