Monday, January 24, 2011

Thank you Eric!

Ever since I stopped working, almost every day I've been wishing we had an instant hot-water dispenser. I finally got one for Christmas from my parents, but since neither Keith nor I are super-handy, neither of us were real eager to start gouging a hole in our granite counter tops.

Fortunately, my brother-in-law Eric is both super-handy and perfectly willing to (and experienced in) gouging holes in granite. Unfortunately, they live just East of nowhere'sville Washington, so we've been waiting very patiently for him to come back to this side of the mountains.

So, they came this weekend, and now I have my hot-water dispenser. Words can't even describe how excited I am to finally have this do-dad in our kitchen.
We both thanked Eric profusely when he left last night. Although Keith is excited for the water dispenser, I think he's even more happy that he doesn't have to hear me wishing for this thing every day!


Sunday, January 23, 2011

No Comment

I don't have any clever commentary to go with these (it's been a long week), but here are some cute pictures of Parker to tide you over until we get back from vacation.








Parker loves his Bumbo, but more often than not, after a few minutes, he ends up in this position:
And then when you move him, you discover a large lake of slobber all around the edge of the Bumbo.


Saturday, January 15, 2011

Cousin Fiona's Christening

We went to Cousin Fiona's christening.  This was my first-ever baby christening.  Growing up Protestant I don't really believe in baby-baptism, but I do have to say I appreciated the formality and liturgy of a formal christening.  It beats the 30-second "here's-the-baby-and-why-we-picked-the-name" dedications that we do at our church.





Parker got to interact with his cousin Sarah.  Sarah is about 2 months older than Parker, who is 2 months older than Fiona.

There was a lot of grabbing involved in their interaction.  (Note Parker's change of outfit from the first photo, he couldn't make it through a 30-minute ceremony, guess that's why we bring a back-up)

Thursday, January 13, 2011

MOHAI

We had a rare, free Saturday, so we decided to get out of the house.

We went to our favorite coffee place in Ballard, the Firehouse cafe.

Parker's view of the coffee house:

Then, we headed over to the Museum of History & Industry.  They were having an exhibit on "The Purse and the Person", a history of purses & what we women have been lugging around for the past hundred years, it was really interesting.

Keith tried out his hand at gutting a fish:


Parker's view of the museum:
I had meant to carry him around, but he was asleep when we got there, so he saw the inside of his car seat, again!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Funny Stories I shouldn't forget

Preface: I was flipping through some of my old posts & found this half-finished entry that I started in July and never posted.  So, better late than never...

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We were at dinner the other night with some family friends and our friend referenced a story we'd told several months prior.  I couldn't believe it, but I'd nearly forgotten the story entirely.  Since my memory's not exactally the best (even when I'm not pregnant), I thought I should start chronicling some of my funny stories, before they are lost forever. 

And what better place to start than with the raccoon story that Julie remembered.

About a year ago, when we were still living in our house in Ballard...
We noticed one day that the floor of our kitchen was all sticky with little paw prints scattered about.  Darcy's not the world's tidiest dog, but he doesn't exactly slobber either, so I just assumed that Ron's cat had made it's way into our house (it wouldn't be the first time).  I cleaned up the floor and moved on with life.  This continued for several days, until one night we heard a loud thumping in the middle of the night.  Being a somewhat naturally neurotic, I tried to convince myself that I was imagining things and to go back to sleep.  Until I heard Keith get up & go downstairs.  He's not the natural worrier that I am, so if he heard something, I clearly wasn't just making things up.

So, I wait, and I wait, and I wait for him to come back upstairs and tell me it was nothing.  But as the thumping continues, it's clear that it's not nothing and it isn't just going to go away.  At about this time I come to the realization that we must have a raccoon in the kitchen.  So now I'm waiting with ever-increasing visions of my battered and bloody husband coming up the stairs.

Finally, he comes back upstairs (neither battered nor bloody, thankfully) so I can hear his side of the story.  He went downstairs and the raccoon has his head & half his body sticking through the doggie door.  His face is burried in the box of dog food and he is trying to pull the box through the doggie door lengthwise (hence the thumping).  Keith turned on the light & went after the raccoon, who barely even paused in his bingeing to notice Keith's presence.

At this point, you have to understand the layout of our kitchen.  On one side of the door you have Keith, along with our kitchen, all our food, and the front-half of a raccoon.  On the other side of the door you have our garage, all our mops, brooms, the lock for the doggie door, and the back-half of a raccoon.  Getting the front-half to join the back-half could prove tricky.  Especially since the back-half was also judiciously guarding all the long-handled items one would usually use to shoo a raccoon out of your dog food.  So, Keith went after him with the only thing we had available...the ironing board.  Eventually, Keith prevailed and the racoon fled the scene of the crime, but not without dumping our garbage down the stairs and scattering trash throughout our entire garage as his revenge.

The doggie door stayed locked after that.
We later heard that the racoon had gone up our neighbor's cat ramp and ransacked their kitchen.  But even after that they still kept the cat ramp out and the window open, now that's just asking for trouble.

Friday, January 7, 2011

I love my new camera!

Okay, I promise this is my last post bragging about my new camera, but it's amazing!  I had to do a little side-by-side comparison between my new & old camera:

Old Camera Shot 1: Darcy's Fault, although I think Parker might actually be in-focus
 Old Camera Shot 2: Out of Focus
 Old Camera Shot 3: Out of focus
 Old Camera Shot 4: Still out of focus
 Old Camera Shot 5: In focus, but dark
 Old Camera shot 6: Well, it's in focus, and the lighting is okay, but...
Guess that's the best we're going to get.

Now...
New Camera Shot 1: Super Cute & Smiling ...my work here is done.
One more for good measure:

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Parker's new diapers

One of Keith's favorite nicknames for Parker is "Punkin' Butt", since up until now, all his diaper wraps have been bright orange (they are from Costco).
They recently came out with some new prints, so I had to get a few sets for Parker.

How cute are these!?!?

Parker likes them too

Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day

For Christmas, Denise got me a cookbook titled "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day".

It's a great cookbook, and I've already tried one recipe with great success.

But 5-minutes might be an exaggeration.  I think they might get close, but only if you're assuming that:
1. You first spend 30 minutes making the dough on some other day
2. You still need to remember the bread 2 hours (not 5 minutes) before dinner.
3. You want to make a fresh loaf of bread every day (heaven help us, I'll be 400 pounds)
4. You have a huge amount of refrigerator space you're willing to devote to bread dough
5. Someone else is cleaning up after you.

But that aside, it's a great book & I'm looking forward to trying out more recipes and perfecting my crunchy crust with chewy insides.

Parker likes helping out too.

And Denise, I don't know if you remember my explanation on Christmas Eve of why you have to score the top of bread?  I got a good answer last night, I didn't score my bread well enough, and our loaf ended up with a tumor coming off the side:
Lesson learned, I guess.



The mantel

We have a lovely, if slightly awkward mantel in our living room.  I think it was designed to hold a large-screen TV (as evidenced by the cable jack & outlet prominently displayed in the middle).  Seeing how our not-so-large-screen TV lives downstairs, it's become something of a holding place for a hodge-podge of photos & knick-knacks.

Once the Christmas decorations were down, it was my goal to make this area a little more elegant, and less hodge-podgey.
So, I re-distributed most of the photos throughout the house, and consolidated some candle holders and a few new decorative pieces together.  I had the idea to make an antique mirror like this from Martha Stewart, but hopefully in a way that wasn't quite as complicated as Martha tends to make things.  I bought a cheap plastic poster frame at Target because, let's face it, the chances of this project being successful are pretty slim and I don't want to sink a ton of money into it.

I went for the spray adhesive, because I wanted to get this whole project done during one nap, if possible, and there's no way that would happen going the Martha way.

The final result, although far from perfect, turned out better than I had expected: 
Of course, I learned a lot through the process, and if I were to ever do this again (which is unlikely), my next try would be much better.