Date Night

Last night Susan and I went to Ikea to pick up a few things, and on the way home we decided to rent a movie. At Fred Meyer's they have a vending machine feature called MovieCube that lets you rent movies for $1 a night. We had never tried this, but had talked about it before and thought it would be fun to try out. It's much better than paying $5 or $6 at Blockbuster and having it for 5 more days than we need it. The movie that we chose was "Step Brothers," with Will Ferrell.

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

From there, we went to Trader Joe's to pick up some pizza dough. They didn't have the plain dough, but Susan wanted to be adventurous and try the Garlic & Herb flavor they had. We have a pizza stone that we use a lot when we get Papa Murphy's, and Susan has made homemade pizza before, but this was the first time that we've done this together. Susan made hers first and covered it with peppers and mushrooms, along with some pineapple.

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

After Susan cooked hers I started putting mine together with some hamburger that Susan had already cooked up. I was having some problems rolling the dough in an even circle, and after I started putting the sauce on I decided to turn my pizza into a calzone.

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

Both turned out great, and it's something that we'll definitely do again. We had a great evening and it cost us less than $3, plus the ingredients that we already had at home.

Dan's getting chains

We woke up this morning to find that we are still getting snow. I looked out the window first thing after waking up and Dan said, "How's my car look?" I said, "Which one is your car?" He said, "WHAT?!? Mine is the clear one. I just drove it home at 7 last night and it was clear!" I let him know that it had a couple inches covering it, and the snow is still coming down.

That was enough for him to decide to get chains today. He woke up early to call Les Schwab, but all of their phone lines are busy. So he just went out in the snow to see if he could get some chains in person. Here are a few shots of him clearing off the car.

From December 2008 Snow

The car behind his was also cleared off late last night.

From December 2008 Snow

I just noticed he doesn't have gloves!

From December 2008 Snow

Good luck finding the road. It's all white down here.

From December 2008 Snow

The Saturn is all ready to make the 5 minute trip to Les Schwab. Judging by our conditions, it will be a 20 minute trip.

Update: Dan said that there is already a 25 person line there, and they haven't been open for even 30 minutes yet! Hopefully they don't run out of chains (or Dan doesn't run out of time before he has to go to work).

UPDATE: No chains. Dan has a very popular size. I might hurt him (as I've been begging him to get chains for a week). If I get stuck in the apartment for Christmas, I will be very sad.

Update part III: Dan got chains in his hand after searching for 2 hours. He texted me while he was in line (30 people back) and said he hoped they were the right size. I looked them up online only to find out that you are NOT SUPPOSED TO USE CHAINS WITH SATURNS! All of the stress for nothing! He was late for work, so he took off, but now we have to decided weather to get chains for my Echo tomorrow, or weather to just stay home for Christmas.

First Day of Winter

Happy first day of winter everyone. The snow has made way for ice. Below you'll find some pictures from this morning. Boston Dan was quoted as saying it was "the worst" he's ever seen (that he can remember).

We worked together to scrape off his car so he could get to work today. Luckily he only has to drive a few blocks, because our parking lot is like an ice rink. Some of the ice from the car was laying on a bed of snow, and it came right off. Some of it was stuck directly on the car, and that was a bit of a bug-a-boo to get off. I scraped off the stairs on the apartment (I'm such a good neighbor), and now I'm back in the cave... I mean apartment. It's not supposed to get above freezing today, and we are supposed to get more freezing rain. Currently it's 23 degrees and it's 10 AM.

I plan to scrapbook Christmas photos that I pirated from all of you. Keep me updated on your weather with pictures and messages!

Here is a plant on our balcony:

From December 2008 Snow

A layer of ice on our balcony:

From December 2008 Snow

Here I am holding a chunk of ice from the Toyota. We are going to use it as a mold to make a chocolate echo. PS... this wasn't the biggest piece of ice from our cars:

From December 2008 Snow

The start of our winter storm

We are just now getting some snow in Vancouver. We have about 1 3/4 inches now at 11:25 AM on Saturday. We are under blizzard condition warnings starting at 4 PM. We are supposed to get about 10 inches in the next 24 hours and winds up to 50 MPH. I know that might not seem like a lot to those of you on the east side of Washington, or on the East side of the U.S., but you have to remember that our entire county only has 3 snow plows.

From December 2008 Snow

This is the frozen duck pond at our apartment complex.

From December 2008 Snow

Don't be fooled... these are not real boulders. They are from the abondoned mini golf course!

We will keep you updated. Stay warm and safe!

Don't mess with me... I have ninja skills.

This is what Dan told me tonight.

I am totally sick. Sore throat, stuffy nose, fatigue, more sore throat... So we went to Blockbuster to rent a video game for the Wii, but when we got there, I realized that I didn't want to get a game that I would have to actually use any energy on. So we rented a couple videos instead (Season 1 of Weeds- 2 disks).

Anway, there is a karate scene in which the kid is wearing a yellow belt. Dan said, "I only got to a yellow belt."

This from my husband. I didn't know he was a trained assassin! I didn't even know he took karate. He claims he took it for a couple of months when he was 10. I had flashbacks of Brandon's karate and of Ross on the TV show Friends.

He ended the karate conversation by saying to me, "Don't mess with me... I have ninja skills."

My husband everyone- the Ninja.

Vote!

Vote.

Carving pumpkins

Dan and I had date night last night. We turned on a scary movie (which was more weird then scary, but it was free "on demand" so we can't really complain), and carved up a couple of pumpkins. We purchased ghost pumpkins this year, which are white with an orange flesh. They look wonderful when lit up. As you can tell by the pictures, we used carving kits. It was Dan's first time using one. I swear by them ever since someone introduced me to them about 14 years ago.

Here is Dan's pumpkin:

From Halloween2008

He was going to do a spider, but it was too hard to trace on his pumpkin.

Here is my pumpkin:

From Halloween2008

Two creepy dolls holding hands.

And here they are together:

From Halloween2008

Oh yes... we also toasted up the seeds with butter and worcestershire sauce (plus some garlic salt). YUM!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Fall in New Hampshire

We are home from our trip to New Hampshire (and Massachusetts, and Rhode Island...). We have a lot of stories to tell everyone, but I'll keep things brief on this blog.

We arrived in Boston on Tuesday and drove straight up to Manchester, New Hampshire. We had the pleasure of meeting up with Dan's father, Gary, and his partner/friend, Linda, at Billy's Sports bar. We had a great time catching up and decided to meet again later that week.

That night we got to Karen's house late, but she was just happy to see us. We woke up the next morning and Karen had gotten up early to get Dunkin' Donuts for us for breakfast. Dan was pretty excited about the food. I was happy with the gesture.

From New Hampshire Trip

We had a great lunch at a local spot with both Karen and Gram. We went to visit Aunt Heather, who volunteers at the hospital on Wednesdays (Macaroni day). After that we had ice cream before heading up to Concord.

From New Hampshire Trip

From New Hampshire Trip

From New Hampshire Trip

Gram, Karen, Dan and I all drove up to Concord and the leaves up there were amazing. We went to see Dan's Uncle Don, and his cousins (though we think of them more as nephews), Nate and Matt. They live up near a golf course, off of a driving range (hence the golfers in the photo). We wanted to go out to dinner in a pseudo-celebration of Don's birthday, and after much debate, we decided on Common Man. It was decorated in New England fashion, and was the perfect choice. Unfortunately, Jan (Don's wife, Dan's Aunt) was on the west coast, so she was not able to attend.

The next morning, Dan and Karen went out to a special breakfast all by themselves. They came to pick me up afterwards and we went to go apple picking. We noticed a lot of police in the area, and a lot of vehicles. It turns out that Barack Obama was speaking at the apple orchard!

From New Hampshire Trip

From New Hampshire Trip

From New Hampshire Trip

Very inspirational! At one point he mentioned John McCain and people started to "boo." He said, "Don't boo, just vote." It was raining on us, but I felt lucky anyway. The Portland, Oregon rally drew around 75,000. The Londonderry crowd was only a couple thousand, so it felt very cozy!

Afterwards, we still went to pick apples. I have to say, one that I had at the orchard was the best apple I've ever ate (sorry Washingtonians).

From New Hampshire Trip

From New Hampshire Trip

We spent that night at the hospital. Gram fainted and took a little bit of a spill. She fractured 3 ribs, but she faired much better than the grandfather clock she took down on the way. We also had another chance to see Gary and Linda. We are thinking of planning a trip to Vega$ together next year.

We drove down to Cape Cod (Falmouth) the next day (Saturday) for Tim and Amy's wedding. They had GORGEOUS weather and wonderful ceremony on the Atlantic Shore. We had a great time seeing all of our New England friends and enjoyed spending some extra time with them the next day.

Our last night was spent in Rhode Island. Trevor gave up his bed for us (THANKS WINNIE!) even though we hardly had any energy left for him. Part of the problem was the fact that we had to get up at at 3:45 AM to get to the airport (which is 12:45 our time).

Overall, it was a whirlwind trip!

I Toe-tally had an accident today :0(

Well, today didn't quite turn out as planned. The weather was gorgeous. Dan and I went grocery shopping together in the morning and planned on having a great day together at home. I planned to make him meatball subs so he could enjoy the wonders of Sunday football, as it was one of the few Sundays he has off. I planned on getting some stuff done around the house, making cookies, and some planning for my classroom.

As we got home with the groceries, I began to open all the windows and doors. It was so gorgeous here and I wanted to get some nice clean air in. As I opened the door to the balcony, I decided to go check on my herbs to see if they needed any watering. That is when the door attacked me. Here is a picture of the bottom of the door. Note the large, metal weather stripping.

Apparantly my pinky decided to go to war with it, and my toe lost. Big time. It slice my toenail in half, and took off a good section of the toe as well. It hurt as bad as stubbing a toe, not any more, but that's because I kind of went into shock. As most of you know, I don't blood, cuts, etc... I called the nurseline for my insurance and they told me to go to a doctor to avoid infection.

I went to the urgent care, which surprisingly, only took about an hour and a half to get in to see the doctor. He took a look at it and said it was all toenail. I said it was skin/toe too. We serisouly had a back and forth, "No it isn't, yes it is" for about 2 minutes. Finally I just gave up arguing with him. He numbed it up with a series of 3 shots (was only supposed to be two). MAN. THEY HURT. One was right by the webbing of the toes. Ouch. Then he cut off my toenail. I couldn't feel it, but I could actually here the scissors cutting through my skin. YARF. At that point he admitted that I was right about skin. I told him I'm going to charge him for the visit.

I am supposed to keep my foot up for a day or two, with the bandage on. No pain medicine because we are trying to conceive. Apparantly the stuff they used to numb it is ok, as is the tetanus shot that I got. That's what they said at least, but if he doesn't know the difference between toenail and skin, I was going to trust him. Everything I've read online seems to say it's perfectly safe to keep trying. Here is a picture of my shoulder with the cool Daffy Duck bandaid on it.

Don't I look tough? Surprisingly, the shoulder (thanks to the shot) hurts worse then the toe. I have a feeling that's going to change in a few hours. Overall I got four shots and I only cried once. Not too bad!

Still feeling crafty!

Here is my current creation. It combines two of my favorite things (snowmen and Halloween).

I stole the idea from another blog I read about scrapbooking and card making. It had the idea of making tealight candle covers out of paper. I went right upstairs and made this in about 5 minutes with my Cricut (die cutting machine). It's a simple black snowman/pumpkin guy glued onto orange colored, autumn themed paper I had. I inked the top and bottom with both orange and black ink.

It looks very cute!

Cards, cards, cards

I have to agree with my sister. It's fall. Dan and I spent a weekend in. He watched football and the Ryder Cup (golf), while I made cards. It was raining off and on. I made navy bean and ham soup for my lunch this week, as well as cornbread. We made brownies. After slicing them into weight watchers servings, we realized they are hardly worth it.

Here are just a few of the cards I made:

This card for someone on a paper crafting board. She has a co-worker that has uterine cancer and needs some support. I'm sending her this card, along with another one I've made.

This card is for our friends that had us over for poker night.

A halloween card. It's my favorite holiday. I love the way the spider is ripping down the corner of the paper. Dan said I should put a skeleton or something behind the corner, and I think he was right!

This is my first time stapling ribbon to a card. It looks very spoooooooooky!

Summer is still here

Summer is still here! The weather has been nice and I've been trying to enjoy. Dan and I are both trying to get in better shape, so went for a walk with a couple of wonderful co-workers on Friday. We plan to work out at school a couple of days a week.

We are also trying to eat healthier. We tried something new. Boca brand (vegetarian) breakfast sausage links. Pretty good. They were especially nice chopped up in our eggbeaters today (better that way, then just eating them by themselves).

Dan is getting home from work soon and I just got done making dinner. Weather was so nice that I decided to grill up some chicken. I marinated it with some of my fresh basil and spicy oregano (amongst other things like lime juice, oil, garlic...). To be honest, it needed a little more salt, but you can't tell that by the beautiful picture!

I hope you all are having a great continuation of your summer!

School

School starts tomorrow.

Enough said.

Back to school shopping

I went back to school shopping for clothes for the first time without my mother. Yep. It's the first time I went on a spending spree since high school or college (for clothes that is... I've been on spending sprees for lots of other stuff). After 10+ years, I needed some new clothes. I did go to GoodWill a couple of year ago, but I don't think that counts.

I set out early in the morning (the benefits of being a crummy sleeper). Most of you know that I HATE shopping, but today was a pretty decent day. I found a lot of cute, inexpensive tops that I can mix and match. I've never been a shoe fan, but the ladies at work are, and they are slowly converting me. I found a few pairs on clearance, including a pair of sandals. It is my 3rd attempt at replacing my old, scummy sandals. Finally I found a pair that are comfortable!

I did have a hard time finding pants (as I always do). I've learned a few things:

1. If you are in between two sizes, and you take both of those sizes into the dressing room with you, always try on the higher size first. It makes you feel better to have one size fit, then having one that does and one that doesn't.

2. Labor Day weekend is a great time to go shopping. Lots of great sales. Not a lot of kids out.

3. The people that are sewing pants now seem to think all of us are over 6 feet tall.

4. Try on your clothes BEFORE you get them home.

5. Make sure you don't buy too many pieces that look the same. I came home and washed all of my clothes, hanging them to dry, and found out that I had 5 new cream/white ruffly shirts. Good thing I have lots of different cute shoes to dress them up with!

PS- Dan is in need of a new wardrobe as well, so he is going out tomorrow. Of course, I will be supervising.

The Green's visit Vancouver

I think this is my first blog entry, so I'll try to make it exciting. Up to this point, Susan has been responsible for putting up new entries on a pretty regular basis, but she's busy crafting (with a little dancing as we listen to some Death Cab for Cutie), so she left this one up to me.

This past Monday, Jaimie, Dale & Jackson came down to Vancouver for the day. We had talked about visiting the Portland Zoo, but with the rain, we had to make other plans. We spent the afternoon going to Whole Foods to pick up some chicken for dinner, hitting Starbucks for some mocha lite frappachinos, and then shopping at The Learning Palance, where Jackson ended up getting some flash cards and other fun learning activites.

At our apartment, Jackson was having fun with our stairs: climbing up, getting carried down, climbing up, getting carried down, climbing up, getting carried down, climbing up, getting carried down, and on and on. Living in a one floor house in Monte, he loved the new adventure of climbing the stairs of our apartment. For the next few hours, we were hanging out and playing with Jackson. At some point we realized that no one wanted to cook, so we got pizza from Papa Murphy's.

Of course, the night wouldn't be complete without playing some Mario Cart on the Wii. Playing while Jackson is awake is always fun because he tends to gravitate towards Susan so she has a few more obstacles than the rest of us.

He likes it. He really likes it!

Dan has been very adventurous with foods lately. When I met him, he would basically eat only apples, chicken, and chocolate. The first things he added to his diet were vegetables: Asparagus, artichoke and zucchini (green vegetables only!).

Lately, he's been trying more fruit. He still doesn't like any berry except a strawberry ( :0( I love 99% of all fruits). But, this week, he found another fruit he likes. PLUMS!!! (but only if they are very ripe)

And please note that I LOVE my new camera. It take nice close up shots.

Today is the Day

Today is the day that Daniel and I will melt. It's supposed to be 103 degrees. I guess we are sleeping downstairs again.

At least there is an excuse for not turning on the oven!

Beach Scrapbook Page

This summer I have been spending a lot of time using my cricut cutting machine. I mainly use it to make cards and for scrapbook pages. Here are my latest pages, dedicated to a May trip I took to Pacific Beach with my family.

My next mission is to learn how to incorporate stamps into my crafts. I only have one stamp, which I got today. It is in the second picture, in the circle. It's a stamp of lines that you use so that you can write about your page - not too adventurous.

The only problem with making crafts is that as I progressively get better, I look back at my older stuff and think it looks really junky.

Fore!

Lately, everything we've been doing has to do with sports! We have recently made 3 trips up north. Two of them were to go golfing with my brother, and the third was to see the Red Sox play the Mariners (I'll post on that later.).

The first trip we made up north was up to see Dale, Jaimie and Jackson. We spent a couple days at their house. Usually we get fast food breakfast from the local burger joint, but we wised up this time and made our own biscuits and gravy as well as scrambled eggs with Cougar Cheese (smokey chedder from WSU's creamery). Dale and Dan went golfing (to get ready for a local charity tournament) and I went along to drive the cart. It was my first time driving, and man, it was fun.

Here is a picture of Dale with the gorgeous Oaksridge Country Club behind him:

Dan lining up for a shot:

And here I am driving the cart:

We went on to have a great time at the charity tournament, though our team had no chance of winning. The tournament went to support the Aberdeen Police Guild which gives to various charities around the Harbor. We had six people on our team, and I drove a cart around again. It was great fun, until our cart died on the 10th hole. Luckily, it's located pretty close to the office, and I quickly got a replacement. Jaimie spent the day helping raise money with a marshmallow chipping contest. I felt pretty bad for her because it was a cold, drizzly day (unlike our practice day that you seen in the photos- it was nice and sunny that day).

Dale and Dan were complaining that their arms hurt after about 10 holes. Now that we are home, Dan is complaining about his hip as well. Man, getting older is a blast!

Safeway Marathon Madness

I fancy myself as a frugal shopper. Sure, Dan and I fly over to the East Coast more than the budget allows and we drive all over to watch Pearl Jam. In order to do this, however, we have to save money here and there. During my summer vacation, I try to stockpile up on products we can use (during the school year I don't seem to have time to shop around). I think this is my best savings yet (91%). Here is a picture of the loot:

I spent.......... $5.80! That's it. I got over $56 worth of groceries for only $5.80. And the best part? I got a coupon good for $10 off my next shopping trip. Good on anything! Sure we got a few free things we would not normally buy or use, but we can donate them to the local shelter. $5.80 is more than we usually pay for the two ketchups alone! Here is what we got:
2 jars of salsa
1 jar of cheddar salsa dip
1 box chocolate special K (Dan wants to try it)
2 boxes of yogo bits (little yogurt covered balls... got them for 16 cents each)
4 boxes of pop tarts (going to the shelter... got them for free)
2 bottles of heinz ketchup
2 boxes of green giant broccoli with cheese sauce
1 package of kraft singles
1 package of wacky mac noodle
1 box of barilla pasta plus
2 containers of betty crocker frosting (made carrot cake cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting)
1 box of electrisol dishwasher tablets

Go team!

Mario Kart

This one is for T- to the Revor. You said you didn't like all of the boring day to day stuff. You said you wanted pictures of Dan playing Mario Kart. Here you go. PS... I finally beat him (He is the best in our family, even beating my brother Dale.). I was racing as Koopa Troppa- He was Baby Peach. Usually we race as our own people (Dan and Susan), however, we wanted fun little vehicles. He rode in a duck... I had a spaceship similiar to a Star Wars TY Fighter.

I threw in a bonus picture of Dan painting our new closet door (downstairs). Don't mind the messy closet!