Spring

I suppose I should comment on the seemly never ending volcano excitement, but I don’t find it all that exciting. The light dusting of ash that it distributed over Anchorage only manage to make our beautiful snow dirty and unpleasant.

We did manage to have a wonderful time making snow balls and snow boulders before the ash fell on us.


Now that spring is melting all the snow and “break-up” is officially upon us, I look forward to taking advantage of the ash fertilized mud hole that is my yard. I want to plant a veggie garden and some raspberries bushes, but I will be happy if I just get the lawn seeded and the strawberry hill weeded.

Happy "Geen" Day

Ryvre turned 2 on Sunday and if you ask her how old she is she will tell you “Geen” (green)…we are working on that.

Aunt Rachel brought K and E out to visit and we did the normal Birthday thing… presents, balloons and then a sugar high.

Thanks to the bright idea from K, the 3 girls spend the next 30 minutes in the large bath tube, so at least their energy was contained. I have a get video of this but I don’t want to post tiny nakedness on the internet, so next time you come to visit remind me to show you.

Rachel brought my favorite gift “happy legs”. I think every girl should have these.

CH2MHill

Really?? Really? That is the name of the company that I work for.

I know it stands for something very significant and profound, but I can’t remember and it doesn’t really matter in this industry. I work for the oil and gas industry and that carries enough clout to withstand even a name that’s not really a name.

You can call it Channel 2, like the rest of Anchorage or you can just continue to make fun of Chadd and me and the bizarre company that we work for.

However, they are small and very family friendly and last Thursday night they have a company ski night and we decided to put Ryvre on skiis and see how she did.

Listen very carefully for her deeply happy laugh.

Anything I can do, I can do better...

Thanks to my Mother I was gifted with an artistic passion and some very limited skills. She’s also one of the thriftiest women I have ever known. So when you combine those two gifts/curses I often find myself looking at an item that I like and thinking, “Um, that is nice, but I could make that for half the price.”

So when I found a children’s boutique shop that had very cute T-shirts appliquéd with unique animals for sale for $28… I thought “I can do that and I can make the animals better and I can do it for mush less then $28”

You are going to have to trust me that I was right on all accounts.

However, I probably should have been more careful about my placement. I had my heart broken as I put Ryvre’s new shirt on her and found out that I had sewed the crab on the back of the shirt. Chadd was sweet enough to tell me that he liked it that way and he thinks it looks better there then it would on the front.

However, I am doing a turtle next and it will go on the front of the shirt.

Like me, I think my house looks best in white

Even though it was only 8 degrees today, Ryvre went outside to move snow with Dad.

She also made a point to shake the snow off the trees, that she could reach. It was utterly hilarious when the trees dumped their entire payload on her, time after time, and she couldn't figure it out.

Bunco and Birthdays

Don’t be surprised if you don’t know what Bunco is. If you’re a man or a woman who is under 50, you probably have never played. I was lucky enough to get invited to a game this weekend with my sister Rachel.

It starts with about a dozen women driving out to a very secluded hideaway off the main traffic route. Each woman brings $15 dollars and one or two bottles of wine. We then start throwing dice. You can read all the instructions if you want, but the game is basically throwing 3 dice trying to get one predetermined number. Rachel taught me early, that the trick is to throw one dice at a time then use the other two dice to knock the first one. That way you actually roll multiple times on the same dice.

Needless to say once you start the dice and wine go quickly and the night was a blur of fun. It was also great that Rachel walked away the big winner with $100 in gift cards and I doubled my money. I don’t think they will ask us back as substitutes any time soon.

It was also K’s Birthday. Happy Birthday Princess!

Better late then never

I know it has been a long time between posts and I could give you a long list of reasons why, but I am not going to waste your time or mine. I will just catch you up on what is going on now.

Well, winter is officially here. The sun rises at about 9:45 am and sets about 3:45pm. I try to remember to look outside sometime around noon so I don’t feel like I miss the whole day.

My favorite radio station started playing Christmas music Nov 1st and I love it. I skip Thanksgiving decorations and went right for the Christmas ones. This was easy since we aren’t even going to be here for Thanksgiving. I haven’t, however, started my Christmas shopping. I usually, at least, have my list of ideas created by now. You can just add that to the list of many things that I am behind in getting done.

Ryvre and I did start making Christmas cookies today. We are hosting the Andresen Christmas at our house this year and I wanted to get a few cookies in the freezer and try out a new recipe. The cookies didn’t turn out like I would hope. They are eatable, but not beautiful. I am going to blame Ryvre. She is good at counting, but not so good at measuring and she refuses to follow the directions, written or verbal.