Soaking up the Sun

I've missed the sun. I really thought the whole Twilight thing was just for literary effect but its true.. its too green. Moss everywhere, even on the tree trunks. We've always made fun of people that pray for moisture (hey look, our prayers are answered.. its moisturizing!) but now I know where they got it. All it did while I was there was moisturize. No serious rain. Just moisture making the sidewalk always damp. Sunny on Wednesdays just doesn't cut it for me.

OK... so it's beautiful in a lush green way, I'm excited to eventually see all the sites (and blog about it), and I know winter isn't necessarily Seattle at its best but I've missed the sun. And brown.

So I'm sitting here in Vegas
soaking it up. After a sleepless night (dumb body thinking its a new place), an early morning bike ride with Melissa, and the rest of the morning filled up with errands and shopping, I decided 2 take a nap.

Um... hello, might be hard to sleep out in the middle of my communities' commons so instead I'm blogging/emailing/surfing. A useful pastime, especially since I can "borrow" a neighbors unlocked Wi Fi. I can sleep when the sun goes down.

A lady in the Seattle temple told me to embrace the rain and called it liquid sunshine. A lofty goal but for now I'll try to get enough sun to last me two more weeks. I'm kinda hoping to get sunburned just a little.

An Afternoon in Wenatchee

I still have a few Christmas pictures but I wanted to post about my trip on Saturday.

Many of you know Mauvia used to live in Seattle but recently moved in June or July to Wenatchee, about a 2.5hr drive from Seattle, to start her new career. I had come to visit her and her family in Seattle about 7 or 8 years ago after I graduated from school but hadn't seen her since. I decided I'd try and visit on Saturday.

I probably should have mentioned it to Mauvia.

Oh, we had been texting back and forth and I asked her if could come but wasn't shore if I would have to work or not.

I finally actually called her and left a message Saturday morning. When she called me back asking me what my plan was, I was already almost an hr on the road.

It's a good thing Mauvia is so nice! She said she was excited for me to come.

The drive was beautiful. I passed so many cool bridges I tried to take pictures from my moving car,

which didn't work so well.

So I stopped a couple of times.
Oh right, and those beautiful mountains.
Um... lets try another spot.
There they are!
And the water gushing off the side of the mountains. Man.
This desert girl hadn't seen such a thing in a long time.
I'd read and seen pictures of the mossy trees and green stuff growing everywhere (dare I say Twilight?) but don't remember really seeing it.
It was awesome. And so sunny! I've decided I love the other side of the mountains. Here in Seattle the exciting news was that it was sunny last Wednesday.

And then I saw Mauvia and her family and totally forgot to take any pictures.

Sigh.

Its a good thing she invited me back for a weekend trip.

It was so fun to see her and her family! I didn't want to leave. Bringing an overnight bag would have probably been the height of presumption but when I had to leave I wished I had. It was so fun to catch up. I'm already looking forward to going back.

This weekend the Sorensons are headed to Disney land cuz Tate learned to read. You guys can run but u can't hide!

I'm gonna be here for eight weeks. Plenty of time to head over the mountains again to make some Vitamin D.

Christmas Day 2010

Jared told me I HAD to post tonight so I'm doing my best. Don't know how lucid this will be.

Plus, I can't take any pictures off of my camera cuz apparently this Macbook can't read the camera. These pictures I had downloaded onto my desktop and moved over on my jump drive.

Look at all this work I go to so I can post. So dedicated.

But never fear, I'll just take camera and jump drive to work next week. What can I say, I work hard.

Christmas morning,Someone had my camera...and discovered the zoom.
Romeo Romeo, why do you have such a funny name?

I shore am funny after 11pm.

We take a while in the morning before we go in to see what Santa brought us... eat breakfast... maybe shower (see picture above).

Poor kids. Any day now would be great!

Come on, lets line up.
All right everyone, settle down.
A line of cameras.
Mom's camera face.
I like this next sequence. Come on guys, lets get serious.
What?
Never mind.
This is my view every year, except the Emily on the side cuz she asked to be in the room to see the little kids come in cuz she's never been able to be down there. She was pretty smug when Mom called her down before the rest of us.
I didn't take any pictures of us in the main room partly because there was so much going on. We haven't had that many people in our front room for Christmas for a long time.

Plus I was enjoying my new laptop. Emily got a new camera. Ya Baby.I had Angela this year. I had a theme.
CD's, xylophone, sheet music, and some of Mozart's quartet music. There's a theme there. I'm a wonderful sister.
Did you figure out the theme? Just wondering.

Emily had me. She gave me a ton of things. Flippers, a recipe book stand, socks, puzzles, a rock, and much more.
Now I can be a cool house with a wooden train.Some nice photography there. Was it Angela? I don't recall.

Thanks Emily!

Wow, I barely got this in under the wire! takes a while to write when ur tired and its late.

Christmas Eve 2010

Well, I don't have much to report here in Seattle. I walk to work (I timed it this morning, 10 minutes), I pretend to know what I'm doing, I walk home late at night. The sun has come out once. It's probably all in my head, but I kinda miss it.

OK, I do have one funny story but it isn't really specific to Seattle except for the fact I can watch TV while on the treadmill. I walked in to the exercise room and saw that Star Trek Next Gen was on. I recognized the episode right away. That episode ended while I was there and when the next one came on I immediately recognized it. I just might be a little bit of a treky.

I'll probably have something more to post this weekend, hence the quick post about Christmas. I'll post the rest of Christmas tomorrow.

This is doing luminarios (I decided this is the way to spell it. If I spelled it wrong too bad). I LOVE luminarios and I don't care if they are really supposed to be called faralitos. I like luminarios!

First we make them,

It takes a lot of peoplea lot of hard work
while some others sit around a table.
It's good we have dedicated helpers.
Thorpe gave what support he could.
A couple of piles of 10 for easy counting.
And of course the annual throwing by Emily so we have a path to walk through (Where's Emily's head?!?!)
The lighting doesn't start until the evening so Bethanie's girls entertained themselves by dressing up (um... a ghost bride? Edwardian maiden?).
Then on to the lighting, the best part of luminarios. FIRE!
Everyone had a helper.
Except Aaron of course didn't need one. Emily had put him in charge of the whole process which he took very seriously... with a little motivational help from his sisters.
Angela had her wheels to help.
Thorpe had to stay in so some part of him wouldn't get singed. He's not very aware of his tail.
Aaron put a guard on Andrew's candle. Little boys aren't very aware of their candles.
Little girls are actually not that much better but at least they drip wax on their helpers and not themselves.
I don't have a final picture but just take my word that it was beautiful. Good job Aaron!
At the end, Emily decided to be a lamp.

One Tire

Well, I was going to put some pictures of Christmas up here but I can't find the cord to my camera. I seemed to have misplaced it. I thought I had taken it with me home but I never saw it there and can't find it here.

Sigh.. But that's not the only thing I left at home.

I don't know why I thought I would bike while at home. Past performance does not guarantee future gains. I had the following against me:

1. I'm a lazy bum.
2. Its very cold to ride a bike in New Mexico... well, compared to Las Vegas.
3. It takes twice as long to get the same amount of exercising biking as it does running.
4. I'm a lazy bum.
5. It snowed later in the week.
6. Jared wasn't there to ride with me.
7. The roads were icy.
8. I'm a very lazy bum.

So I put my bike back in the car from the garage where I had safely placed it when I arrived home. Once I got back to Las Vegas, I unpacked a bike frame, back tire.... pause... um, thats it.

Hard to ride a bike on one wheel.

Here would be a good place to show a picture of the beautiful box Dad made to send the tire home. It is quite the thing! I won't describe it becaue a picture is worth a thousand words and I don't have time to write a thousand words.

But as funny as that is, my next news is even funnier.

Everyone has been asking me about when I'm going to Seattle already.

Oh right. Some of you may not have heard that I was slated to go to Seattle for a couple of months to help with a Design Build Proposal involving a floating bridge.

After Christmas I had decided not to worry about it. I had been stressing and asking my boss if he had heard anything since the middle of November. The answer was always that he would know next week.

I'd given up. It was dumb to stress about something that would probably never happen. Emily and I talked about it last night.

This morning I was asked if I was still willing to go and they needed me there next Monday for a total of 6 weeks. The Seattle office needed Ricky to go up ASAP.

What?

I'm feeling just a little overwhelmed. It's going to be quite an adventure. I'm worried about accommodations, transportation, and arrangements here. My ward has been very supportive and I keep telling myself its only 6 weeks. I shore hope so!

Of I go, into the wild blue yonder! And if I ever find the (or buy another) chord to my camera I will be sure to post beautiful Christmas pictures. If I find any on my camera.

PS. I helped Santa Claus get me a MacBook Air for Christmas which I might or might not have taken with me everywhere in my purse... even to Rancho de Chimayo.