SPRING IS ALMOST HERE

We have been here a little over two years and my backyard is still a bit bare but it is slowly coming together. Since going from two paychecks to one, I have only been able to buy plants that are real small or plant the bulbs myself. This year I had purchased a cherry tree (top left pic) from Costco and had dad plant it in the ground for me. It is already starting to show their buds. Maybe we will get some cherries this summer/fall. The rest of the plants are as follows: tulips/daffodils (top right pic), apple buds from our apple tree (bottom left), buds from the Japanese cherry tree. Last year we planted the apple tree and by fall apples started to show up. However the tree was rather small and just the right height for Butch to pull them off the tree and eat them. Which is what the boy did.

SATURDAY........AKA THE DAY FROM HELL

Actually the day started off quite nice then at 1;30 p.m. it went on a one way trip down to hell. Mimi had made plans to play with her friend Alex. That was fine. I dropped her off at his house behind our neighborhood park then proceeded to go to four corners to fill up the gas tank and then get my SUV cleanned at the Elephant Carwash. Everything went fine till I got to the carwash. DO NOT EVER GO THERE! YOU WILL GET ROBBED! They charge $18.00 to do a crappy job of cleanning your car. I still had to clean my car after they were "finished". There was still dog hair and dried mud all over the back part of the car from where we go skiing every weekend and take Butch along with us. The people at the carwash was not happy with the fact that I was taking my time cleanning out my own car. They told me "I have a $80,000.00 Mercedes behind you that I do not want to get into an accident!" I said "Not my problem. Had you done your job correctly we would not be in this situation!" The people who were sitting and just watching me taking the kids trash and dumping it, all of a sudden were standing and rubber necking. It takes a lot for me to get this upset and they were pushing every last one of my buttons. The M to the A to the damn DEA came out in me. The stinky part about this whole situation they are just about the only full serve carwash in the whole darn state of Washington. If someone wants to make it rich, just open a California carwash where they charge $7.00 plus tip and do a whole lot better job. There just isn't any competition up here.

Next thing I knew it was time to pick up Mimi and dad and head over to South Center Mall for movies and dinner. Dad went to see Avatar which he said was fantastic. Super great. He saw in 3D. I was still fuming about the carwash however ice cream always makes you feel better until Ben & Jerry's charged me $8.00 for 2 small dishes plus a small bottle of water. Mimi then pulled a fast one on me. When I was not looking she stole my ice cream. The little thief! I did not really need it anyway. Dad was still at the movies so we went to buy a few items for the father/daughter ball coming up in March. Then at 6:00 we found out that the movie was 3 hours long! One more hour to go before it let out! That's it! We are going to get dinner without dad. Mimi wanted to go to the Rainforest Cafe so that's what we did. We then found out that it would be another hour wait but that is what the girl wanted, so ok, that's what we did. Dad came down and met up with us and we had dinner. The unfortunate part about dinner is that unlike Red Robins, they don't give free refills on the mac 'n' cheese. I think they should.

I think that I am done with the Elephant Carwash, Ben and Jerry's and the Rainforest Cafe for a long time to come.

MAPLEWOOD PARK

When lunch was over and playing in the playset was done, we had a little more time to kill before gymnastic practice and then going to Sara's house in the evening. So over to Maplewood Park we went. Ever since Mari took Mimi rock climbing and when she was here visiting, she showed Blake how to do it, they both now love it. Blake was quite proud of himself in regards to how well he can climb and Mimi is quite proud of herself on the fact that she now can cross the monkey rings all by herself. They are growing up way too fast for me. Mimi exclaimed "Mom! Did you know that the school year is already half way over?!" It seems that it was just like yesterday when I first brought her to the UCLA pre-school/daycare.

SOOS CREEK

It seems that every month Mimi's school has a three day weekend because of staff development day. Last Friday was the day. Although we did not get any snow here it is plenty cold for most out of towners. I think that we have already acclimated to the weather here. As you can see the kids are not wearing any jackets and it was about 46 degrees outside that day with very little light rain. They did most of the running and I did most of the fast walking. We walked/ran about 2 miles that morning before heading over to the McDonald's playset where Mimi saw a couple of her classmates Luke and Sarah.

THE TRUE MEANNING OF NAOMI

In anceint times a woman with this name could have made a promising warrior queen. Naomi is tough with a capitol "T" and is more than happy to demonstrate it in order to get her own way. Naomi can sometimes be regarded as vain by those around her and in a sense this is true. However, when you are good looking, intelligent and couragous in any situation you probably have good cause to be quite pleased with yourself. While she is certainly gutsy, Naomi doesn't go out of her way to create confrontation. In fact, she will far rather sit down and discuss things calmly and rationally. The central number in the valley of her name, indicates that along with everything else, she has the gift of gab and Naomi will usually be able to talk people around to her way of viewing things. In relationships, Naomi likes her partner to be as strong as she is.

I guess we did choose a good name for Mimi cause this fits her personality to a "T".

DAILY LIFE

Found this in one of grandma's catalog's and I may just go ahead and order it.

It seems that the older Mimi gets the busier we are. Maybe it is the same for everyone else too.

Just yesterday Keri asked if I was going to sign Mimi up for Little League. Yep, that's right, it's that time of year again. I told her as of now we have a whole lot on our plate so I think that we will pass it up. This is our schedule as follows: Monday-school/piano lessons, Tuesday-school/gymnastic practice, Wednesday-school/piano practice with Maddy, Thursday-school/playdate??? That is if anyone else is available, Friday-school (volunteer time for me)/gymastic practice, Saturday-family time, Sunday-ski lessons. Then we start all over again.

This year we did not have hardly any snow but lots of cold freezing weather. Yesterday was rather nice outside so I was able to do some garden work and much to my surprise my plants are starting to grow. The Fall is the time to plant your Tulips and Daffodils which I did and they are now starting to pop up from the ground. Then there is the annual "mystery plant" that is starting to growing and I can't remember what I planted last year. Gawd how I hate these "senior moments".

MLB.com Video - Buhner at FanFest

dorothy putney (gd.putney@comcast.net) has sent you a video link from MLB.com.

MORE MARINER FANFEST

Buhner at FanFest
01/30/2010


Jay Buhner at Mariners FanFest


http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7151641

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