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Random thoughts from SeattleLiving the American dream |
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August 22 Summer Fun
Wow, what a great summer we had. The main theme was busy, busy, busy. Between home projects, vacation, work and the kids summer camps we were always busy. Teri has been working as a contract Pharmacist this summer and that has worked out pretty well other than she has to fill in for what's open. She's been working at the hospital in Kirkland and she's enjoyed it. Projects. What did I do on my summer vacation? I did several home projects this summer starting after the kids finished softball and baseball in June. I put in a larger retaining wall behind our home and filled it with crushed rock to make a great patio. I also covered the front gardens with bark dust and installed an in ground basketball hoop. Pictures below.
Back yard retaining wall. I spent the 4th of July weekend working on this to build the wall and weekend after that to fill in the gravel. You can't see it but under the gravel are several drain lines. When it rained in the past this area was always wet. Now that we have the drains we should have a much drier area even after heavy rains.
Basketball Hoop. I spent a weekend digging the hole and another weekend pouring the concrete for the base. I'm still trying to get the hoop mounted. It's heavy and takes 3 people to lift it and secure it to the pole. Camps: Danielle and Ryan have been attending a local Taekwondo camp that teaches them the sport and has daily field trips. Danielle also attended a weeklong overnight horse camp at Warm Beach Resort. Ryan participated in a golf camp so he's slugging away. Both kids attended the local VBS camp where Danielle participated in Basketball and Ryan in mixed sports.
Vacations: Danielle and I attended the annual Father/Daughter camp in June and we took our annual trip to the property in the Columbia River Gorge at the end of June. Teri and I took the whole family to Silverwood theme park in Idaho in early August for 3 days and we had a blast. The first day was cold and overcast but we made the most of it by hanging out all day by the wave pool until later in the day and then hitting the amusement rides. I took the kids one at a time on the Tremor roller coaster. Ryan and Danielle both enjoyed it. Teri hates roller coasters so she waited for us. The second day at Silverwood was much warmer although much more crowded. Ryan and I are getting ready for our Father/Son weekend getaway in a couple of weeks and we're planning on going to Great Wolf Lodge at the end of Sept so Teri can attend a scrap booking conference while I take the kids to an indoor water park at the lodge. June 04 Father Daughter WeekendIt's that time of year again; time for Danielle and I to take our spring trip to Warm Beach for a long weekend of spending time together playing basket ball, shooting arrows, BB guns, riding horses, kayaking, swinging on the tire swing and drinking hot chocolate. We've gone for the last 3 years and really enjoyed it. We have another Father/Daughter team that we pair up with; we've been doing that for the last couple of years. Let's hope the weather is nice, it isn't much fun riding horses in the rain. They setup a new minature golf course last fall and Danielle and I are hoping to try it out. The only downside is having to drive through Everett on a Friday night. March 25 Winter is nearly overSpring is in the air... It's getting warmer every day. Just last weekend it was sunny and warm and I enjoyed working in the yard without it being cold and rainy. The kids and I spent a lot of time skiing at Snoqualmie this last winter. Danielle and Ryan are now skiing blue runs and by next year will probably be ready for black runs. It's amazing how quickly they picked it up once we started going often.
Danielle and Ryan started Softball and Tball recently. It's Danielle's 3rd season and she attended a clinic last Saturday and is really improving her hitting, catching and throwing. It's Ryan's first year doing Tball so he's learning the basics. He and I played a lot of catch before but this is more fun for him because he gets to do this with a bunch of other boys his same age. He's doing great hitting and throwing and we're working on his catching.
For Easter Danielle received a basketball and whistle and ever since it's all she wants to do. She wants to shoot, dribble, pass and blow the whistle. We've played basketball in the past and I'm surprised she all of a sudden enjoys it so much. For the last 10 years it's been my main way to exercise so I'm glad that she likes it too. Now if I could just get Ryan to learn to dunk..... December 21 The digital revolution is upon usIt's amazing how quickly we are moving towards a digital society. These days it's hard to find someone in the US who doesn't have a PC, HDTV, Digital Camera, or GPS. Many of the Gen X & Y group have the full compliment of digital gadgets and don't understand how they could survive without them.
I recently picked up a GPS on Woot via a great deal. It just arrived via UPS yesterday so I'm just starting to put it through it's paces. For those folks that are location challenged it's a god send. No more printing out paper maps and trying to read these in traffic. I'm trying to convince Teri it's worth it to learn how to use the GPS. It doesn't have a steep learning curve but it does have a few quirks like needing line of sight to the Satellites before it knows where it is (no kidding). I'm pretty good at finding my way around and on occasion print out a paper map from Live local when trying to find a new resturaunt or friends house. When it comes to high tech the kids pick up on it so much quicker than adults. I'm fortunate that I work in high tech (and I'm accused of being a geek) and can figure out how the latest gadgets work, otherwise I'd be at the mercy of my 9 year old figuring things out for me.
I wonder what it will be like when my kids are grown, will we even have paper any more? Sure for packaging and other uses but not for carrying information with us. Considering how much things have changed in the last 20 years I expect many revolutionary changes over the next 20.
December 13 Is it really 2 weeks to Christmas....It's amazing how quickly Christmas is upon us this year. It seems like just yesterday I was cooking the Turkey on Thanksgiving day. Last weekend I put together and printed up our annual Christmas pictures. Now I have to scramble to collect all of the addresses of folks we send these to. For some reason my contact list has old addresses for some people that I know I changed. I rebuilt my home PC last year and must have grabbed an old copy of the .pst file when I backed up.
For some reason this time of year tends to be more stressful than the rest of the year. I guess it has something to do with the amount of preparation required to do Thanksgiving and Christmas. At least we aren't traveling this year. It was a bit stressful last night when I took a call from Teri telling me that she had just gotten home from work and found our 8 ft tall christmas tree laying on the floor of our living room, wet carpet, broken ornaments and all. I was just leaving work and had found a large backup on I-405 that meant I wasn't going to be home anytime soon. An hour later I was pulling into the driveway. When I got inside I found that the tree was still turned over, apparently my 5 ft tall wife couldn't lift our huge tree. After mopping up the carpet as best we could I put the tree back in place and tightened down the base. We believe that our cat was climbing the tree and toppled it. I had found the cat tree climbing the previous evening; maybe we had a spider or something else of interest to a cat in the tree. Let's hope we're done with that. I don't want to be spending any more time drying wet christmas presents.
I'm looking foward to this weekend as it's going to be crunch time for sending out the Christmas letters, picking up Christmas gifts, and trying to plan Christmas dinner. I'm not a last minute kind of person and I feel the stress rising.... |
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