Book Tag

My friend Cat did this tag the other day and I had a free moment so I thought I'd do it too...

Here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open to page 56.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 2 to 5 sentences, along with these rules.

5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual book. Pick the CLOSEST!

6. Tag five (or more) other people to do the same


My book is:

".... I come to a stop against a brass rail and straighten up, looking back at Earl in shock. Then I see the rest of them.
"What is this?" says Uncle Al from the depths of a winged chair. He is seated at a table with three other men, twaddling a fat cigar between the ginger and thumb of one hand and holding five fanned cards in the other. ...."


I tag: Lydia, Kristen Butler, Courtney, Mel, & Tif.

and the fog is back

seriously.... i'm starting to lean towards the aliens.

Inauguration Morning

This has nothing to do with the Inauguration.... but the sunrise was beautiful this morning.... so I had to go out and take some pictures...

This one is shot towards Mt. Baker...

and this one is towards the Canadian mountains... (Notice the fog. Yeah. at the moment i took these pictures the fog was down low.... but that didn't last long... soon enough it was back up above our level, and this stuff is THICK. It's like driving into a wall. Right now it's receded from here a little, but it's still down in the valley. I feel REALLY bad for the people who live down there.... for a while (because it stayed foggy for so long) i thought that maybe the aliens were doing something and they didn't want us to see. it may be true, but probably not... just funky weather.)

When I was out taking the pictures i took this one of the grass all frozen and crispy with ice.... it reminded me of how the grass might just be in "charlie and the chocolate factory".

fog

it's lifted. i saw clearly for the first time in days. oh how i missed the sun, the sky, and even at times our neighbors house. i dont like the fog.... and i like driving in it even less!!

Happy Birthday Grandpa Toyk

On my Dad's Birthday he didn't want cake, but we did have chocolate Costco muffins..... and we managed to put 37 candles in that little sucker..... just couldn't quite reach 50. Happy 50th Dad.

Space Needle Noodle and Meatball Soup

This is what we had for dinner last night (and leftovers for lunch this afternoon). Marco and I picked up the noodles when we were in Seattle last August.... it took us that long to FINALLY make soup with them. It was nummy too. kind of a hamburger soup with noodles (and celery and onion and carrot and diced tomatoes and seasoning) I just wanted to share how cute the little needle noodles were!!

Once there was a snowman....

On January 1st we got more snow..... and this time it was really good snowman snow. So Marco made is first ever snowman with the help of my mom, and yours truly...

My mom rolled the middle ball...Marco rolled the bottom...

and i took pictures..... I also helped lift the middle ball, it was a little heavy...

trying to get rid of the brown spots...

marco made a head

and then it fell apart...

so he made another head...

this time it stayed together...

smoothing him out and finding his "best side"...

adding the snowman's face...

photo with the final product...

then marco decided to go "hunting for snowman" with his paintball gun...

he accidentally hit the neighbors motor home...

here he is with his "kill"

and then there was the suicidal snowman that we made behind the hummer.... he didn't last that long.

Baby's First Flood

.... and yet amazingly there aren't any pictures with the baby.... it might just be because she was sleeping

Here is a lone van that wouldn't start in the parking lot of Samuel's Furniture.... Here's the train bridge in Ferndale.... definitely not a day to go tubing down the river

this "street" goes to the park. that is now under water.

I remember when these houses were built on stilts... i thought they were cute, and it would only be a matter of time before they were practical. The people who live in this house are still hanging out.
this house, kitty corner from the stilts house wasn't so lucky when the floods came.


Here's Zach and Julie's place.... not normally waterfront property.

Here's Zach & Julie's back yard..... i believe that the river really starts behind the first trees.

Gall Bladder

Ok so I posted earlier about having my gall bladder removed because of gallstones.... well I didn't really know much about gall bladders before i went into the hospital, and i still don't, but i came across this quote when researching

Diane Fahy of Sacramento, California, compared her pain to that of childbirth. "I thought that I was dying. It hurts as much as childbirth, but unlike contractions, the pain doesn't go away," she says. "It continues and continues. There was excruciating pain in my stomach region that couldn't be relieved."

i have to agree with the -"...it hurts as much as childbirth, but unlike contractions, the pain doesn't go away..." i'm glad i can laugh at that now..... it's good to know that i won't have that pain again... at least until another kid comes, which won't be for a while.

Maria is 4 months

We went to the doctor for Maria on January 2nd. She is growing up so much. She has grown so much over the past 4 months. This month she is up to 14lbs 14oz and she is 26 1/4 inches tall!! she has more than doubled her birth weight, and has grown 6 1/4 inches in 4 months!!

She is also learning so much. She's getting that hand eye coordination thing down.... she loves to play on her little mat and reach for the plastic chain dangling!

She has become quite the little smiler, and some days its my goal to make her smile over and over and over again. she is also discovering more of her hands... they make it to her mouth really well. at the beginning she would suck on her thumb with all her finger spread out, but now she's gotten the hang of making a fist so she doesn't poke herself (one day in church she actually poked her eye and started crying).

In the morning she is quite the talker and she is always full of smiles, that is once she wakes up. First thing in the morning she will have her eyes shut and cry and cry and cry, but once you can get her to open her eyes she's all smiles! she still enjoys watching tv.

Her favorite toy is the one that Nanna got me for Christmas last year, an orange lion that has a bell in it's head, a squeaker in it's stomach, a scratcher in it's mane, and a couple of chew toys on its paws. she loves sucking on the lions mane.

At the ward Christmas party Maria got to sit on Santa's lap which was so fun!!