Sunday, Sunday

Today wasn't too exciting. Although, it's nice to have days of rest. Today I think was one of those days. Bummer though, I didn't take one picture of us doing nothing. I often take pictures when we are out and about, when the boys are playing sports, etc. But I don't seem to take many pictures of us just being home together. That's something that I'm going to try to make a difference at this year.

This photo, taken 12/2/08 was before it snowed at all. This is how many birds we would have at our bird feeders out our living room window. Rod & Josiah got a book from the library and I believe we identified it as the Black Headed Junko. Apparently, we been turned into birdwatchers (How did THAT happen?). When it first snowed, they still came by all of the time. Then it stayed cold, and they didn't really come back. We only have a few that visit. Rod's going to go redo their food (again) and see if that will help. Skiddish but tons of fun to watch. I miss them.

A couple of nights ago we went to Best Buy to buy ink for my color printer. I have more pictures that I want to scan in, but not enough ink to do it. (I got a black & white only laser printer for Christmas. Yes, I really wanted a dorky printer for Christmas!) My color printer won't even scan unless the cartridges have enough ink in them to print. Ingenious on the manufacturers/sales side of things, lousy on the owners side. So, now it's plenty full and I'll barely use it. UPside, the ink will last forever, unless I decide to print a large picture (I have a 4x6 separate photo printer that i use for small photos).

Tonight I scanned in Rod's Jr Prom picture from when he was going to school at South Brunswick High School, in Monmouth Junction, Princeton, New Jersey. What a mouth full. He had no idea the amount of verbage that I would have to learn because he is 1. Norwegian 2. from Minnesota 3. from New Jersey. I guess he had to learn how to pronounce all of the Native American/Indian spelled names that there are in our county. Not that that makes me feel much better :)

When I was working at the bookstore at Skagit, I had made a call to a salesman about something bookstore related and he said "Are you at Skaggit Valley College?" All the time when talking to people from back east (and most of our book sellers for college books were back east) I had to correct their pronunciation inevitiblity. "Well yes, but it's pronounced Skajit Valley College." Thinking back, I should have just left it alone, it's not like they'll ever remember, anyway!!

This afternoon we took the kids swimming at the Y. Rod went to take Garrett's phone over to Verizon Wireless, so that they could make sure everything that is supposed to be off was off. It was supposed to be "quick". We were there from 2:30 or so to 4:30 and Rod was only there for 1/2 hour. You should have seen Josiah's mope-y face over the fact that his dad wasn't there to roughhouse with! Geesh!

Last night Rod made another attempt to fix the dryer. We realized last weekend while doing quite a bit of laundry, that the dryer wasn't drying very quickly. He looks into it and the blower needs replacing. Ok. Another $40 out the window. Get that replaced & it's still not really working well. We talked about what it all could be for quite some time.. Realizing that if the dryer isn't getting hot enough to dry the lint, but just throw it around, that there might be lint down the tube etc. that was wet, creating a blockage. Sure enough, after midnight that's where Rod was, cleaning out dryer tubes with his shopvac. What would we do without one? Those things work for just about everything.

Christmas Eve, late after making pies and finishing wrapping gifts, the sink got plugged up. (I have a hunch that after peeling apples for pies, that I didn't properly put the peelings down the garbage disposal, and that's what plugged it up...) The sink got backed up and there we were throwing things out from under the sink as fast as we could - with shopvac in hand to soak up the water. That things a gem! We had the whole thing contained and the kitchen floor dry in less than 20 minutes!

We ended the night with our nighttime reading tradition. Every night we sit down before bedtime and read a chapter out of this huge book that contains the entire story of the Chronicles of Narnia (all 7 books). It will take us forever to read through them, but what I really like about it is that it is creating a fantastic tradition and great memories. I don't particularly like to read aloud, but Rods great at it. He's got a good reading - listening to voice. Note to self - Goal for tomorrow: Take picture of family on couch listening to Rod read Chronicles of Narnia.