The End of an Era

My dad is moving to California tomorrow after 32 years in Richland. We're pretty sad about it. Even though he was only a Richland "part-timer" since we moved this summer, it was nice to be able to count on seeing him every once in a while and hitting up Granny's buffet. Now we have no fall-back excuse when we go to Granny's...Dae will have to admit that he indeed loves it (craves it even!) and is not just going because his Chinese wife and father-in-law appreciate the economics of a good buffet!

We had a Granny's farewell dinner on Sunday night. Olin got his own little ice cream cone to mark the occasion. He likes to stick his tongue way out when he's licking things and flick it back in. I never knew he had such a long tongue!

So we'll miss my dad and the last real family we have here but at least he's onto bigger, better, and sunnier things in California!

Granny's in September

Ski Bluewood

 

Bluewood is the local ski mountain located a little under 2 hours east of here that we used to go to when we were young. Dae and I figured we better get in one good day of skiing before we hit the Switzerland slopes in February so we got the babysitter to come over for the entire day yesterday and set out. As it turns out, we got on the mountain at 11am (!) after a few wrong turns around Dayton, Dae snowboarded one run and went straight to the rental shop to pick up some skis, and the main lift was a little on the slow side so we spent a majority of our time on the chairlift (Bluewood is no Whistler - it was like 15 minutes of chairlift time per 1 minute of skiing down the mountain). However, we had a lot of fun...Dae is a good skier, it wasn't too hard on his bad knee, and the weather was really sunny and not cold. The snow conditions were also really nice. I attempted a few black diamonds because I want to get better at moguls, while Dae stuck to the nice blue Huckleberry run. We were joking that he was
like the old grandpa who took the easy green runs (and I was the young rebel seeking the adrenaline rush!)

Today, Dae trekked back into work to catch up on 3 weeks worth of notes, so I took the kids to church, coffee, recycling, the carwash, Goodwill, and the local "museum" called Crehst. Crehst was a bust. There weren't really any kid friendly exhibits (like OMSI in Portland) so we actually ended up spending the majority of our time at the pamphlet kiosk, where Olin was totally absorbed in a Schweitzer ski resort pamphlet and Leelee pored over a Polar Express pamphlet. Oh well, at least it entertained the kids for more than 5 minutes...no complaints there!

Baby taking a self-portrait.

Animals

After visiting Trena's, we started playing a simple animal game with Leelee "Guess the animal". I think he understands the concept, but the following excerpts from our game this morning suggest otherwise:

Example 1
Me: The animal I have in mind lives in the ocean, is huge, and has a spout
Leelee: Um, is it a teapot?

Example 2
Leelee: Ok, my turn. The animal I am thinking about has 5 legs.

Example 3
Leelee: The animal I am thinking about is yellow and white. It has 2 legs, and says "Oink"

We've got some work to do in the animal kingdom! To his credit, he did guess kangaroo, penguin, and giraffe correctly.

Sunsets and other Miscellanea

Eastern Washington sunsets are absolutely gorgeous. This one was captured a couple nights ago and doesn't even display the full spectrum of pinks and other colors that were in the sky.

These days, Olin's hobbies of choice are:

1) Vitamixing

2) Hollering at me to let him press some buttons on our appliances...any appliance will do.

3) Hollering in general to let us know he wants something. This guy needs to talk, asap.

You'll notice in the last couple of photos that he got another home haircut last night courtesy of yours truly. Dae is really into offering his (unsolicited) assistance on haircuts these days. He seems to not learn that, in his hands, the clippers are a dangerous thing and again, he cut the sides too short. So Olin is now sporting a military style cut. Meanwhile, Leelee's hair emerged relatively intact since I didn't allow Dae to put the clippers to it. Only my expert hands were allowed! ha!

Another note: Leelee's 'private' swim lessons are over. A little fella named Wade joined him on Tuesday so it's a 2-man lesson now.

Arts & Crafts

My sister is talented. I got a little package in the mail yesterday containing this:

My mom and I have discussed the fact that the artistic gene skipped us, and went straight to Ev. Oh well, at least she's generous with her talents!

Today, Leelee was drawing up a storm. Out of nowhere, he drew several airplanes, and recognizable ones! I was very impressed. Olin also got in on the action with his own artistic interpretations:

Other random notes:

1) My dad babysat the kids Friday night even though he had been knocked down with a bad cold this past week. Thanks a lot, dad!
2) We saw Les Miserables yesterday (matinee) and it was awesome. I'd say it was Top 5 movies all-time.
3) I got another job! I applied for a job with the county (public health) and was granted an interview last week. I thought I botched it when the interviewer asked how many days I wanted to work per week and I essentially said one. However, they called last week and offered me the job, and I was really excited. They definitely pay less than the average position, but I think it might be a good experience and a way to get out a little more here in the Tri-Cities.
4) My random cute photo of the week. Leelee in his Scott ski goggles from the ski swap, eating canned apricots from this delicious cannery in the Dalles called Muirhead/Hood Crest.

Weekend Update

I came to the realization that these kids of mine are enrolled in very little extracurricular activities and perhaps that is why I feel like I am going nuts half the time. So I made a phone call to the good old Racquet Club, my childhood gym, and enrolled Leelee in swim lessons (starting that day)! He is in the "Jellyfish" class, which basically means no prior water experience. As luck would have it he was the only one enrolled in his class so he essentially gets a 1/2 hour private lesson at a group rate!

Olin was making a run for it every chance he could get, dipping his shoe into the pool, trying to reach for the floats, rooting around in the swim toy bucket. It was exhausting and I may ask if I can take him into the pool next time. Fortunately, I think Leelee enjoyed it. He dunked his head and swam around with the teacher for the entire session. (It probably didn't hurt that the pool area is like 100 degrees - I was sweating bullets)

Last night was date night with Kelly and Al. We had a really fun time eating sushi, drinking sake, going for frozen yogurt and bowling.  Speaking of bowling, since we moved to Richland, Dae and I have gone to the bowling alley (as well as Granny's buffet) an alarmingly high number of times.

Dae, Al and Kelly all scored in the 100's. My high was a dismal 92, but it's all relative. See, my last score was a 62 so I see that as a 50% improvement!

And here is Olin wedged in the trunk between my recycling, which has been in my trunk for a week, and the Bob stroller. He's offering me up a Cheerio.

Smarty & Walker

Leelee surprised me the other day when we were driving. We were headed to the babysitter's house but from a different direction than usual. I was about to turn left, and he said "No, Mama, that way!" and pointed right. Turns out, he was right! I wasn't quite sure where the entrance to her neighborhood was with relation to our current intersection, and he was right. So in summary, Leelee's big talents we have uncovered thus far: 1) ability to identify car models. He even remembers my old car - the Lexus we had when he was 1 and 2 years old. He points out current Lexi (haha) and says "mama's old car". 2) Navigational prowess and 3) ability to ride a bike at age 3 1/2. Hopefully he remembers how to ride it come next summer.

Dae took Christian to Home Depot on Saturday. They have these free workshops for kids the first Saturday of every month. Leelee made a beautiful birdhouse :)

News on the baby's front: he is up and walking like a champ. He didn't go through much of a mummy phase with his arms outstretched in front. He seems like an agile little guy.

He looooves Vitamixing. He Vitamixed for about 30-45 minutes yesterday.

Labor Day in January

Living in a home requires a lot of manual labor and I have been forced to up my game, go against my nature, and take care of business on several occasions now. Today, I took care of two pressing items: pigeon poop and a tumbleweed pile-up. Both were laborious, and one was really disgusting.

1) Tumbleweed disposal: This was so tedious. I just kept telling myself "Imagine I'm on Amazing Race and I have to do this as a task". That mantra has worked really well for me :)

Before:

After:

Tumbleweed Relocation. So there really is nowhere to put the tumbleweed. Our neighbor admitted he just throws his over the fence onto the street. We basically haul it over to the other side of the house where it will eventually blow away, most likely into our neighbor's yard.

 2) Pigeon Poop: Disgusting. So gross. Dae was so annoyed by these pigeons he decided to take matters into his own hands and scare them off for good (no further details needed! ha!). But there was pigeon poop all along our entryway, pigeon feathers everywhere and they were always up on our roof squawking.

Before: (this was about a month ago - it was considerably worse today)

After:

I swept all the hardened poop, then sprayed windex all over the remnants. Then I put on gloves and scrubbed it with a dish sponge. I am no animal hater but I am having a hard time loving those pigeons.

So, in a nutshell, that's the most manual labor I've done in years. Instead of going to the gym or jogging I should just do household projects and be productive!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2013!

I feel fortunate in a lot of ways. I plan to keep that feeling through 2013!

Everyone thinks he looks exactly like Dae. I agree. So cute, the little Korean.

The exercise equipment gets a workout every time the kids come over.

This guy squatted for about half an hour while 'doing dishes'

Grant (Trena's younger son) and Christian at Trena's new beautiful house on the water in Seattle.

Spa day with Megan, followed by Sushiland and Nordstrom Rack. A nice day :)

19 degree weather around Ellensburg. I forgot how cold it gets east of the mountains!