I just added (hopefully all, at the least most) all my old posts from both of my old blogs. This means I added all my entries from when I was on the ship! I added a category titled “Adventures on the high seas” where all those posts are contained. Additionally, I now have 8 months worth of posts up so the calendar feature is now activated to go back a month at a time to peruse the old entries that way, as well.

Unfortunately, none of my comments came along, which disappoints me because those comments really made my day when I was out there! Oh well…

Enjoy!

After our closet-cleaning exhibition, we went to Niki’s house for yet another fun sleepover. We barbequed chicken last night and ate it with some semi-charred corn on the cob and blackened sliced potatoes. It actually all tasted very very yummy despite its somewhat scorched exterior.

Our appetizer was really good caramel corn that we made ourselves (OK, that Niki made herself; I just popped the kernels - over the heat, which I haven’t done in about 15 years!) and dessert was an interesting chocolate cake that fortunately had delicious frosting on to munch on. This was followed by a more successful, alebeit store-bought, pumpkin pie with Cool Whip.

The kids were exhausted and fell asleep as soon as they laid down (so what if they didn’t lay down until 11pm?) and I, unfortunately, fell asleep soon after, crushing all plans of a rollicking good time with the kids in bed. So long, tequila! Maybe another night…

7am greeted us with shrieks of “THERE IS A HUGE SPIDER COMING DOWN FROM THE CEILING!!!!” Ahh, morning. Niki and I took a quick morning/early afternoon excursion to Snoqualmie Falls, which I’ve been wanting to visit but hadn’t made it to yet. We stopped along the way to drop off some of the bags of clothes to Goodwill and got to the waterfall at about 10:30.

The first thing we saw before even crossing the bridge to the side of the road the falls were on was a beautiful patch of green and red dew-covered ivy along a wooden fence (it sounds so rural, doesn’t it? We were right along the side of a relatively busy highway). I was captivated by the dew on the colorful leaves.

On to the other side of the highway, where you first come to see the falls from way up above…it was very pretty, much bigger than I was expecting it to be.

The next stop is a little lower, a wooden gazebo overlooking the falls. We stopped there for a while before making the descent to the bottom of the falls. It was a quite steep path and it hurt my feet! (I wasn’t wearing my own shoes; I’d worn flip flops for the weekend so I had to borrow B’s tennies). On the way down was an incredibly beautiful patch of dew-covered leaves and a dew-covered spiderweb. The dew was incredible! Some leaves had fine drops of dew all over and looked like they were dipped in silver; others had large orbs of dew sitting on the tops and edges that caught the sun for some dazzling pictures. The spiderweb was covered in millions of teeny-tiny dazzling drops of dew, everywhere!

The spiderweb:

Some of the big drops of dew:

But at the bottom of the path when it finally leveled out, we ended up on a wooden platform looking straight out at the waterfall - it was gorgeous.

And on the way back up, we stopped briefly where I took some pictures of some really intricate tree roots criss-crossing on the side of a small hill.

A beautiful outing as a great end to a fabulous weekend.

Sunday morning had me cleaning out our closet. We have two places in our house that are completely out of control - the “magic room” (where everything ends up never seen again) and our giant, walk-in closet (where everything that doesn’t make it in the magic room ends up).

I hate having stuff that I don’t use, especially clothes. Clothes that are too small, worn out, out of style, not my style, etc. are so irritating to me. I keep up with the kids’ clothes quite well, bagging stuff that they’ve outgrown and giving it to either friends or thrift stores. Our own clothes we seldom get around to. So it was my mission to get rid of EVERYTHING I don’t wear regularly, or that doesn’t fit me right (which is a lot of stuff since most things shrink after their first wear and are too short in the arms or legs).

I got rid of 3 bags of STUFF - not just clothes, but old purses, junk, jackets, etc., and another bag of garbage (cataloges, brochures, sealed but crushed old packages of graham crackers (?), papers, etc.) I took them to the thrift store and came back to organize, only to find that the closet was still crammed full of stuff. So I did the unbelievable: I gently persuaded my forever pack-ratty DH to purge his wardrobe.

GONE are the holey flannel shirts. GONE are the t-shirts with the neckline worn out and the silkscreen nearly gone. GONE are the too-small pants from an era long ago. GONE are the (brace yourself) 4″ long white satin running shorts with the electric blue piping (WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???). GONE are the worn-out underwear. GONE, GONE, GONE!! It only took him 7 years to part with the clothes he’d worn out long before I’d met him. I was so proud. And it even seemed that by the time we were done, even B seemed to feel relieved to have purged his wardrobe, as well.

So finally, we’re down to a realistic wardrobe where we will regularly wear everything we own instead of just hoarding everything. We got rid of another 3 bags of clothes by the time we were done, for a total of 5 bags to the thrift store, 1 bag of hand-me-downs, and 1 bag of garbage. I also found several lost toys, old pictures, knick-knacks, patches for my uniforms, blankets, and a few pair of leather pants.

Not only that, the closet is now actually enjoyable to walk into, we have organizing space, we know where (and what) everything is, and it is so much calmer in our whole bedroom knowing that the closet is spotless.

I’m really glad we opted to get the Scotchgard on our car’s upholstery.

It was really nice out this morning, and I did NOT feel like sitting inside all day. We decided to take a drive up to Leavenworth, about 2½ hours away, up in the Cascade mountains. About halfway there came the infamous Siglet battle cry, “I’m gonna be sick!” Slam on the brakes going up Mt. Baker with about 15 cars trailing behind ours onto the shoulder that wasn’t. Of course, by the time I stopped, Anja had already puked 2 cycles and it was still coming, so she couldn’t get up out of her seat, and so she puked, and puked, and puked…mmm. The good news? We had piece of fleece that I once fancied myself attempting to sew into a pillow cover (shyah, right). She puked right into that, thus saving the back of the passenger seat from being spewed on. The bad news? Fleece isn’t very absorbant.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, gorgeous scenery everywhere. We finally crossed Steven’s Pass, which meant we were close. Around the turn we went and directly into town. Our first stop was for lunch - we were all extremely hungry. We stopped at the first place we saw, Kodiak pizza and burgers…and spent $30 on 3 wussy hamburgers and a calzone that Anja only ate ¼ of.

Next we drove into town - what an awesome town! It was jam-packed with all sorts of really interesting shops and clydesdale-drawn carriages and old men in leiderhosen.

The kids surprised us and were really well behaved in all the shops we went to, full of glass, porcelain, and many other kids-should-not-touch kinds of things. We only bought stuff from one store - a little pouch full of really, really cool glass marbles that the kids got to pick out and a candle holder that B found, black iron with red glass cones that hang from it for tealights.

Was it HOT!!! We were toasting on our walk. We stopped at a store that also sold ice cream and bought the kids (and me, of course) a scoop of ice cream to cool off with. We walked across the street to a large gazebo and sat on the cool concrete in the shade and relaxed over our ice cream while B made the long, hot walk back to the car to drop off our package. What a nice guy.

After ice cream, we walked back to the car and we were really, really hot - the car was 10 times worse. I waited in the shade while B started up the car to let the A/C run for a while. We waited a good 5 minutes but when we got in it was still boiling hot. Ugh! It must’ve been about 90° (32°C)! You can imagine how hot it is inside a dark-colored car sitting out in the sun.

Our last stop was the fish hatchery on the edge of town. They raise Chinook salmon there. We could walk up and see the thousands of little salmon…

… and then on to the pens with the huge Chinooks (king salmon).

We walked onto a nature area that was just beautiful (though we didn’t see any of the wildlife it showed on the sign).

We were going to stop at Wallace falls on the way back, but the kids were starting to show signs of heat exhaustion and we decided against any more activity in the heat. We drove on back to town and got home and had a delicious dinner of enchilada casserole…yum! All in all, a wonderful day.

Isak is such a good student. He does his homework so well, and has improved his school skills over this school year.

It’s so cute to watch him working hard - his tongue goes all over as he focuses intently on what he’s doing.

Poor Anja is sick today. She has a fever of 102.2°F/39°C. She says that nothing hurts, not her head or her tummy or her chest (she’s been coughing for the last couple of days). I got off work early today to come home so B could pick Isak up from school without having to take her out. She’s been sleeping on and off all day long. Last night, she woke up crying and B took her some milk, and this morning she was sleeping on the floor next to my bed. I hate it when babies are sick!

I’m glad I got off work; I wasn’t feeling too well myself. I had a bad sinus headache. I finally took a Motrin horse pill and was almost completely better within ½ hour. I hate having to take so much Motrin, but it’s the only way I feel better. I try as often as I can to not take it but it just gets out of control until I’m throwing up from the pain. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I am going to go out tonight and get some Children’s Tylenol; hopefully it will help Anja feel better too.

Pobrecita!

Rest in Peace, Kwam the Caterpillar.

It was nice watching you climb around our jar, but alas, your time in our home had to come to an abrupt end when I found out that you are (ick, choke, sputter) a (yuck yuck yuck gross) caterpillar destined to become…

…the dreaded…

MOTH

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