CHRISTMAS 2007

This past Christmas our neighbor Jess and her family hosted a neighborhood pot luck Christmas party at their home. Everyone had such a good time. Later in the evening the kids sang Christmas carols while Mattie played the piano. Our Mimi decided that she did not want to sing. She decided to be the DIRECTOR. What can you say? That's our Mimi.

THE BIG 5

Tomorrow is Mimi's actual birthday but we celebrated today with a few of the neighborhood kids plus Liam who is a classmate of Mimi's. Her friend Erin came at the end so papa forgot to take her picture. Blake and his family are out of town till tomorrow.

Tomorrow after the fingerprinting is done, we will celebrate Mimi's birthday again with a birthday lunch somewhere in Seattle. Not sure where we will go, it is possible that it may be Red Robin's. Then again on Wednesday, we will celebrate her birthday with Erin and Blake with a pizza lunch before school. Next Sunday we will celebrate Mama's 39th and holding birthday in downtown Seattle.

I tell you, having a birthday before or after a major holiday such a Christmas is quite draining. Mama is feeling pooped!!!

NEW YEAR GET TOGETHER

Tonight at Julie and Jim's house was the monthly get together with our new China friends. They live in Bonney Lake which is close to a one hour drive from our house. There was about 20 families that turned out tonight.

Papa was almost in the dog house tonight. Since Mimi's birthday in this coming Monday, mama had planned to bring cupcakes for tonight's potluck dinner. While getting ready to get into the car, papa had turned ALL OF THE CUPCAKES on its side and they were ruined. Then he forgot the camera so THERE ARE NO PICTURES OF THE GIRLS. Lucky for papa, mama had made deviled eggs to take to the party so at least we had something to take. In addition, mama's SEAHAWKS WON their first game in today's playoff at Q-West field, so she is in a good mood.

Tomorrow we will all celebrate Mimi's 5th birthday at our house with cake, ice cream and the neighborhood kids plus grandma and grandpa if they are feeling good. There is a good possibility that it may be mixture of rain and snow tomorrow so not sure if grandma and grandpa will come since they do not like to drive in bad weather and grandpa is still in a wheelchair.

Then on Monday which is Mimi actual birthday, we will all go to Tukwilla to do our fingerprints for chili pepper #2.

PET BUFFALO

Mama saw this article on the internet news the other day. It stated that a man down in Arizona was trampled by his pet buffalo. Now how can a person use pet and buffalo in the same sentence? It just boggles my mind and cracks me up. Fortunately the man is alive and well.

SEATTLE'S BIG EMBARASSMENT

Last night only the people of Seattle knew it. Now the whole world knows it. All week long it was promoted to be the best fireworks ever seen at the Space Needle on New Year's Eve.
This is a story especially for all of our computer nerd friends out there.

Just when the stroke of midnight arrived, the theme song for Star Wars came on and........ NO FIREWORKS !!! Finally after about 5 minutes of music and no fireworks, one could hear boos in the background. In the meantime the thousands of people standing outside were still having a good time partying and even getting engaged so the news reporter stated.

Eventually the fireworks started up and sputtered out. It then started up again and lasted. Come to find out that in the land of Microsoft and Bill Gates, it was due to a computer glitch so they say. The computer reboot did not work so the technicians had to go back to the old way of doing these things of lighting up the fireworks. Space Needle officials say that a corrupted computer file caused the problems.

The public wrote into King 5 news and asked whether the computer was a Mac or PC. That cracked me up.

OUT WITH THE OLD YEAR AND IN WITH THE NEW YEAR

Today we took the kids up to Crystal Mountain for their first ski lesson of the season. For the same price of two kids in ski school one could also put the same two kids in a private lesson for two hour with the same instructor. We chose the later of the two.

While Mimi and Blake were up on the slopes with their instructor Bob, papa went skiing on his own. Mama and Keri took turns taking care of Bailey and watching the kids ski until Bob took them up the mountain on the ski lift chairs. That was the first time Mimi had ever rode on one of them.

Not long after the lessons is when Blake went home with his mom. Mimi and mama stayed while papa did a few more runs down the mountainside. Somehow when papa was done skiing, we kept missing each other they by the time we found one another it was quite late in the afternoon. Mimi was quite pooped by the end of the day and slept all the way home.

By the time we arrived home, she was rejuvinated. So much so that she had more energy to burn. Therefore papa took her over to Lisa and Neil's for their annual New Year's party. Mama is still feeling a bit under the weather and decided to stay at home. She's been hearing the fireworks go off all night long.

PAPAS NEW PROJECT

Since our move to the Seattle I've been working on a 43 story
office tower to be built in downtown Seattle. The photo at right are computer renderings of the building inserted into photograph of the Seattle skyline. It is the faceted silver building with the sloped top next to the tall black building. It's a big (and welcome) change from the hospital I was working on in Los Angeles.

Greg