Haircut

I had been wanting to get my hair cut for quite awhile, I just didn´t know what I wanted. I consulted with a friend on where she gets her hair cut. I finally called the place on Friday to schedule a consultation. They asked when the best time was for me to come in, I said Fridays, because I don´t work. They scheduled me for 12:30p. This was 11:15a when I called.

So, I went in, not knowing what to expect, and not sure if I really wanted to get it cut then. I also figured that there was no better time than now, since I didn´t have any better ideas. The girl talked to me about what she thought my hair could look like, and I said sure, sounds good. And I came out with an awesome cut. She straightened it with a flat iron.








I got a straight iron, and straightened my hair on Sabbath. I didn´t manage to get it as well in the back. I think I may need a smaller iron for the back, since it´s so short.

Today I´ve washed it and let it air dry. It´s not too bad. I´ll need to play with it a bit to see how it works and get a style that works for days I can´t straighten it.

Overall, I am really pleased with it, and would definitely go back there again!

Lookin' good

us recently at a friend's wedding

Flowers

Weather

About two weeks ago, we got home for the evening. As we were coming home I saw super dark clouds in the east. I was making dinner in the kitchen, and saw it getting darker and darker out. So I went to take pictures.

(dark clouds coming from the east)

(Looking to the north)

I went back inside, and a couple minutes later, super strong winds came flying through, whipping the trees around.

Then, it started to hail. Lots of large hail.

The hail began to melt, and it also started raining. It started backing up from the street into our driveway.

It runs down the drain, then empties into ours and the neighbor's back yards. Here's out little pool area that's flooded 6 feet out into the yard.

(within 30 minutes, all the water had dissipated)

And as suddenly as it all started, it stopped, and the sun came out again.

And even more snow

It snowed again last night. I (A.) got up at 5:15am and saw it snowing. I figured there were at least 3 inches of new snow . And it was still snowing. I was watching the news to see if they said anything useful, and got the call that the office was closed today. So instead of shoveling, I went back to bed.

I woke later and K & neighbors had snowblowered/shoveled our driveway, plus the neighbor's driveway and sidewalk. Another neighbor drove his truck w/ snowplow attachment up and down the street, making it pretty flat. Neighbor said he'd measured 7 inches new snow.

We continued to shovel out our sidewalk. We realized road wasn't too bad and we had a few things we needed to work on at the office, so headed off there for a few hours. By 11:30am when we left home, it was 35 degrees and snow was getting slushy. Roads had lots of water on them, and some large puddles. Once we got so much water on the windshield we totally couldn't see out. Other than that, roads were great.


(standing at the garage, looking out.)

(the huge piles that are only getting bigger)

(the branches had a lot of snow on them. I wanted to knock it off. So far we've lost one branch on a tree due to snow being too heavy.)

(You could lose a child, or in our case, a cat, in this!)

But you have a Subaru

Last night we came home from work, and as we drove down our street, we were kind of surprised. We'd left in the morning on a fairly compacted street. When we came home 11 hours later, we were driving in 6 inches of ruts. We almost wondered if it had snowed again.

We got in front of our house, trying to turn right into our driveway, and couldn't get out of the ruts. We turned slightly right, and slid a little, and then we were stuck, kind of perpendicular in the roadway, within 12 feet of our driveway. We tried moving the tires left and right, hoping to move on out of the rut and get turned. We tried rocking it, we tried pushing. Nothing but spinning tires. Front driver tire was spinning, rear passenger tire was spinning. So we pulled out the shovels and for the next 20 minutes proceeded to dig around the tires to try to get a pathway and get out of the ice.

(so close to our driveway)

(yes, that is a patch of the actual road)

Finally, with great clearance around the tire, and with a push from the back, we made it out and into the garage.

We found from our neighbors who started out to help us that there were others who had been stuck earlier too. We realized it was the trash and recycling trucks that made their way through the neighborhood that had caused such a trashy road again.

and winter seriously hits

It began snowing sometime around 11:30am Saturday. It didn't stop until 5:30pm Sunday. We already had probably 5 inches of snow on the ground from storms within the last few weeks. We got another 4-5 inches today. The snow comes up to my knees. The snow in the road is higher than the sidewalk, by a good 8 inches. While shoveling this morning (5:45am) neighbor man said to me "I'm having trouble finding places to put the snow". Me too, man, me too. Our main piles are taller than me, and I'm having to try to fling the snow up and over further into the yard.


And the weather people are predicting more snow Thursday and Saturday.



(sitting on the basement floor, looking outside)









Shoveling the driveway/sidewalk three times within a 24 hour period = not fun. We shoveled probably 4 inches Saturday afternoon, another 6.5 Sunday morning, then another 3 Sunday afternoon. And then we shoveled out into the street 10 feet to where the neighbor's tire tracks were so we could get out of our driveway. And it was heavy snow. Great for snowmen and snowballs, but heavy on the shovel. The snow today was much lighter.

Still causes the tree limbs to bow down though.

We did have sunshine yesterday, which made it super bright outside, but really pretty!

We did get a snow day from work yesterday, and then got to leave around noon today. Kind of "come to work if you feel safe driving in the weather" rules. (And everyone seems to freak out because, crap, it's winter, and it's snowing, and I live in the NW. Whoa!)

All this leaves us with very lazy cats. Every so often they go crazy and run around the house freaking out from boredom.








But overall, I'll take the snow. If it's going to be winter, it better be snowy and cold. I'm not a big fan of looking at dead grass for 6 months, or being soaking wet in the rain...

My car makes me laugh. It looks so dumpy with all the snow on it. (what's on the ground in front fell off the hood, and that was just the first time.) I actually saw a car that looked like this, with only the windshield area wiped off, driving down the road. As it passed I saw the handicap sign hanging off the rearview mirror.

Birthday party

Fun birthday party for Kevin:

Reading card from parents


Yummy strawberry scented candle

Opening gift from grandma - awesome picture!


Opening the helicopter from Keith & Jen


Turns out this one didn't work, so we replaced it with a nice yellow one that does work (Click here to see video)


So excited about sweater & socks from me :)


But he does look good in his new sweater


Challah - eat up!


Snow Chucks (one for each of us, for a fair fight) - neighbors thought it was so cool they came out to play too.


Party in the house

I had invited over 30 people, and about 25 showed up. Most had little kids age 10 and under. We don't need kids toys, we have stairs! And cats!


Cute babies for the adults to pass around


Two big pots of beans, one pot of cheese sauce, 5lb of chips, olives, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, peppermint brownies, apple pie cake, nut bars - yum! (note to self: 30 people won't eat 5 quarts of sour cream. Get less!)

We had a great time. Totally surprised Kevin. Filled every chair in our house. Ate tons of food. Laughed at the kids playing together. One little guy walked up to the Christmas tree and just started kicking it - for no apparent reason. Another took a header into the Christmas cactus. Only broke one little limb of the cactus.



(Kevin did get presents from others of you, but sorry, I didn't get those on camera.)

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 1

We left on Friday morning headed for Whiteswan Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. We'd done a little research - this park looked better than others we'd found along the way, and this park had 5 campgrounds, which upped our chances of a campsite over Canada Day weekend. We were planning to stay there Friday-Sunday, so were hoping to find a nice campground with nice sites. We did find a great campground along the river and with fewer people than other campgrounds (we weren't on the lake, so not as popular).

Here's our tent.

Notice the golf club and rocks? The ground was far too hard to get a tent stake in, so Kevin was creative in keeping the tent secured to the ground. The golf clubs were originally brought along to hit rocks, but I think we only ever used them to aid in holding down the tent.

The campground had a road that led to where the old bridge used to cross the river. It was really pretty there. You could climb down to the water level and there were tons of trees, branches, etc that had been washed by the water. Kevin found a cave man stick, which really does look like a cave man club, fatter on one end and all.

Our campsite was nice, however the sun comes up there at 4am or something crazy and unfortunately our site was in the sun in the morning. So by 8am it was roasting. The afternoons were nice though, since we were in the shade and could cool down some. (It was in the low 80s when we were there.)

Friday night our across the way neighbor in a trailer decided he needed to listen to old 80s music with his generator going. That began around 10pm and carried on until 2am. Between the river noise and the generator, we mainly just heard the thump thump thump of the music in our tent, but it was a bit annoying to keep waking up to. Saturday night wasn't as bad, though he did go over to the river and shoot off fireworks around 11:30pm (happy Canada day!).