Kinda Funny

This is the amount of snow needed to cancel church in the Seattle area... If you can't tell from the pictures, there's about 1.5" of snow... but there are also high winds and lots of ice. Still, relatives in UT and CA have laughed at us... and I hardly blame them.

Front yard

Backyard

An improvement~

I was informed that the picture I posted of Papaya previously was not nearly as cute as it should be... I didn't have any cuter ones then, so now that I have them, you must all be subjected to them... Muahahaha!!

A mischief-maker at rest... This little one likes to eat anything he can get his paws on, from cat treats, to meatballs off the counter, to corn, to milk from my cup... He also LOVES to chase feathers, but only natural colored feathers, nothing pink or yellow for him. Electrical cords, string and yarn make up the rest of his favorite objects. He won our hearts the first time we held him at the shelter when he started purring loudly and immediately. He purrs like that, for anyone and everyone, when he's happy and when he's in trouble. Its hilarious!

This one was taken this way, it would have been a shame to rotate it...

Apparently, Faithful is not as photogenic as Papaya... But he's my old soul, even though he's only just over a year old. He's taken to running to my bed and getting settled in as soon as I get in, even if its only to read an lounge, for fear of being shut out of the room. He's more wary of visitors than Papaya, but everyone thinks he's a gorgeous cat! His favorite thing is sitting on my lap while I'm trying to put on my socks in the morning. He also loves fish-flavored treats and his kong- a plastic dog toy.

He looks so innocent this way, doesn't he?

Posing

What a cute cat!!

Trying to be good...

This is what I see when I go out my front door... Pretty, right??

It's actually a huge pain, and I didn't know it would be! I'm feeling tricked! These beautiful trees are not all they're cracked up to be in the fall. Daniel has had to work a lot this week (Who works 12 hours on a Saturday??) so I figured I would be a good and helpful wife and take care of the leaves in the front yard since the rain had stopped. Well, I grabbed my fairly new rake and headed out and after about 5 minutes, it was raining pretty hard again! I went back inside, got the rest of the way ready for the day, loved my cats, and lo and behold, there was some sunshine!! Being the optimist that I am, I grabbed my rake and "yard waste bin" (we can't just throw leaves away here...) and went to try again... This time I discovered that we had a mushroom farm growing under the leaves.

Hey, since the mushrooms are this big (~4 inches) doesn't that mean that there should be fairies around or something?? That would at least have made finding them more fun...

Anyway, this time, when it started raining (again!) I decided to muscle through and finish making my pile of leaves...

This pile of leaves filled my ENTIRE yard waste bin!! I had to keep crunching them down to get it in! Now, none of this would really be a problem... I appreciate a job well done, as evidenced by my previous post, but... when I looked out my window this morning, this is what I saw:

It doesn't look like I did a darn thing yesterday!! Honestly, looks like I spread my pile back out instead of spending all that time making sure it got into that darn trash can!! Oh well, it looks like I know what my plans are for this Saturday too...

One down!! So many to go...

As of 8:50 pm, I (finally) finished my quilt for my bed!! Here's a few pictures!

Here's a close up of the quilting, which was done by Wendy at Eagle Mountain Quilting. Its beautiful!! Thanks Wendy! Check out her website at : www.eaglemountainquilting.com
And a close up of the borders, with my hand-stitched binding, which is only a necessary picture since my fingers still hurt from all the stitching...

Don't you just love the feeling you get when you finish a big project? An extreme sense of pride in your abilities, a reminder that you do have some talents, a reminder that you really do have a long enough attention span to finish something- anything. (Which is hard to remember when you look around and see that the dishes are half done, the bathroom is half clean and yard needs some serious work...) There's also the sense of release- the ability to look around you and see the possibilities of new opportunities without feeling guilt or that sense of "I really should spend the time on something else." Life is good! I have completed something! Something beautiful. Something big. Now on to the next!

Leaves are Falling...

Fall is wonderful here in the Northwest! We went on an adventure this week to take some pictures of the leaves... Every time we look around, we love living here even more!!

(So this one isn't leaves, but it was definitely worth including, don't you think?)

And so it begins...

It seems as if the best chance I have to keep a journal in this life is electronic. So here goes nothing... We're loving life here in Seattle! We love our house, its been really fun to decorate and get everything settled. Our jobs have been treating us well too. Things are getting a little slow for me with the IAM strike, but I'll live. Daniel really hasn't been (and probably won't be) affected by the strike. I just started a Project Management Certificate course through UW. It seems like it will really help build my skill set and resume. At leas there won't be tests. I am not ready to face testing again, I did enough of that in college. Anyway, life is good. Check in again later!