More to come

I've received some flack lately from friends and family for not blogging more often or more consistantly so here I am promising once again to become more frequent in my postings. Sigh...can't a girl ever catch a break? :)

To start out right I'm including a picture of my new kitten, Jasmine. She's almost five months old, a sweet-heart, fiesty and I'll add more pictures (both of her and the past month) in the coming days.

There is lots happening here but you'll have to stay tuned for the catch-up post.

Blessings!

Merry (belated) Christmas!

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas! I spent the bulk of the first half in the air flying home to Fargo to visit my parents. What a treat to break through the clouds before landing and see miles and miles of snow! Some of you will remember me complaining last year because Fargo didn't have any of the pretty white stuff on the ground, much less get a lick of the stuff while I was home. This year made up for last.

So now I'm home for a week and just enjoying my time away from the office. Don't get me wrong, I love my job but it's always nice to get away for a few days and really unwind.

Hope your holidays are just as relaxing and you find time to get a cup of coffee with friends, eat cookies with family and take long afternoon naps. Blessings, friends!

Shame on me!

It's not even worthy of an apology...maybe begging and pleading for forgivness for not posting ANYTHING lately. Can y'all forgive me? If it makes you feel any better I haven't been keeping up on my personal email either. At any rate, I'm going to attempt a brief catch-up via pictures and hopefully, maybe, fingers crossed try to get back on track with at least weekly postings. Blessings to all of you this Christmas season!

On the monorail in downtown Seattle - November 13







At ECA's annual turkey giveaway - November 17






My angel costume (in rehearsal) - late November








Check out that sunset behind the mountains! This picture doesn't do it justice. - late November




The first snow of the year - December 1

Getting into character with Rebekah...again, first snowfall - December 1










My normally little creek is more like a fast, raging river with all the rain we've had - December 4

Weekend

I'm here! I've meant to post for the past few days but just haven't found the time to logon and get my thoughts down. So here it is.

It was a fantastic weekend! Friday night was rehearsal for The Gospel According to Scrooge. But this wasn't any regular rehearsal. This one we had at an off-site gymnastics studio. Imagine this: a sea of adults and teens stepping onto a bouncy gymnastics floor and instantly jumping, jumping, jumping. What a sight! And we have this doll that we're using as the baby Tiny Tim that looks ridiculously like a real baby that it's eerie. It's heavy and has cute little eyelashes and life-like eyes. Crazy!

Saturday night was cool too. I went into Seattle with Marianne and we got last-minute tickets to the Pacific Northwest Ballet. A great show! We saw Agon (a Balanchine classic), Kiss (an aerial pas de duex), Caught (a David Parsons' piece using a strobe light), and In the Upper Room (an interesting Twyla Tharp piece). Insane seats in the second row but definitely not as good as you'd think. For one, my view was partially blocked by the head of the woman sitting in front of me. Secondly, the cool strobe light piece was nearly impossible to actually see because we were so close to the lights. It's as if all we saw was light and not enough distance between us and the dancer for our eyes to focus on what the light was reflecting off of. At any rate, it was still fun!

Don't cry for me...

I am constantly amazed by the strange little things in life. For example, I needed to go to the grocery store today after work to pick up groceris (surprise!). What song do I hear over the speaker system? "Don't Cry for me Argentina." How random! What's worse is that I found myself softly singing along while walking down the cereal aisle. Thank goodness for the kind guy restocking the shelves who didn't give me a strange look and only said "hello." I love the kind Washingtonians!

My other observation this week: if you let your imagination run a bit you could come to the conclusion that the mountains in Issaquah are bullying the clouds. Let your mind run on this one. The church is up on a plateau and as you drive down into Issaquah, you're coming down to a stores and homes nestled between three mountains (Tiger, Skwak and Cougar). On a foggy day you get a really cool sight of the clouds trapped between the mountains and just kind of sitting there kind of bubbling on top of themselves trying to escape. Very cool. Can you see it? No? Ok, I'll try to take a picture the next time. :)

Oh! Exciting news on the new church property...we poured the first bit of concrete yesterday!

The artsy shot (above) and the better view (right).











"The guys" surveying the basement of the future building.

Surprises

When I lived in the Tri-state area I was rarely surprised by the unusual things I saw - Superman walking down the street in Port Chester, crazy clothes, funky hair, weird people in general. But it's so less common here that when someone stands out from the crowd, good or bad, I'm usually really tickled. Take for example a fellow I saw today. I was on a little shopping adventure with a friend in Covington and as we were pulling out of the parking lot a little old man (definitely in his 70s or 80s) whizzes past us on a little scooter. I'm not talking about a Vespa or a motorcycle, but a scooter with a seat. What a thing to see!

That's about it...enjoying another beautiful day in the Northwest. Here's a picture of yesterday's sunset through the trees. Can you see the purple clouds along with the orange ones? I know...totally hard to see it but trust me, it was gorgeous!

Costumes

Not too much to share from the past two days aside from shooting hoops last night. Ok, so I was really just overseeing one of those little hot shot basketball games at ECA's Fall Festival and was passing out candy to all the little dressed up kidos, but it was still fun. The best costume I saw? My friend's oldest daughter (she's 7 or 8) dressed up as her mother...in all black with a little tech headset. What was she? A producer. How great is that?! Am I showing my geeky side? Wait. Don't answer that.

Otherwise, I took a friend's advice and joined a couple groups on Meetup.com. Pretty cool site where I can hopefully get to know some new people outside of the circle of people I'm meeting. The best group I've found so far is New Yorkers in Seattle. Finally, someone who genuinely shares my longing for real bagels and good pizza. :)

Oh, my Verizon phone (the 203-xxx-xxxx CT number) is going out of service on Saturday. Drop me an email or comment if you're looking for my new 425-xxx-xxxx WA number. That's it for now. Later!