Look at me, I am iFlying!

I went to iFly with my brother and his two sons for his youngest sons birthday and we had a blast!  I think everyone needs to try this at least one time.  We each got 2 turns at 1 min 15 seconds each, it is expensive, but worth the experience.  In the picture I am floating all by myself, the trainer is there to help if you get off balance, he gives you hand signals to help you get in the right position.  At one point I went up above the windows and was spinning around, it was so fun.  We have a video of it and I will try and get it up on here soon. 
 

Bonfire at Jeni's for Memorial Day weekend

This is Paco, Jeni's goat, he has two friends that live with him.

Diego and (I can't remember the other ones name) but they say she is not very smart.  I keep my distance from them because they are known to spit.

This is the pre-bonfire drinking and eating festivities on Jeni's deck.

Here is Ryan in front of the bonfire pile, this is just the kindling to get this thing going, there are equally large piles of branches and limbs on either side of this pile that we added throughout the night, some of it from our yard, it feels so good to get rid of it.

Barry always comes up with a unique way of starting the fire, this year it was doused with kerosene, I think or white gas, whatever it was it was extremely flammable.  Anyway, then he lit some roman candles and aimed them at the pile and after a few missed the pile finally we had a hit and it went up in flames so fast.

This is less than a minute after it started.

It was pretty out of control at first, but quite awesome.  We had a great time!

Videos of Snowmaggedon

This was the beginning......

This was on Wednesday 1/18 about 7:15 AM, no sweat, but today is a different story.

Snowmaggedon 2012

Up until today I have been able to make it to work, but this morning, not so much, on top of all of this snow is a thick layer of ice, it has pretty much made it impossible to drive. Right now we are having freezing rain and people all around here are losing power from the falling trees and branches, so far we are just seeing flickering lights.

Here are our snowpeople that Carina and Dan made yesterday. They are loving this weather (The snow people that is), Carina and Dan are bored out of there minds, Dan has been stuck here since Tuesday night.

I thought our bench looked really cool. The snow is about 6" or so on each of the slats. It doesn't show up well in the picture.

The pond is frozen over, I forgot to get the pond ice ring thing in there, but as long as I don't disturb it the fish should be fine, it wouldn't be the first time that it has frozen.

Unfortunately our Laurel bush took a beating, this section just broke, but luckily Laurel grows quickly and by summer it should be all filled back in. The cedar tree is sagging really low, but so far none of it has broke off.

Thanksgiving Turkey's 2010

Here's the Turkey's, I think they turned out really good.

Thanksgiving 2010

Got up at 8:00 and it was snowing, again!

Got my pies made, they turned out perfect, but I am pretty confident with my baking, it's my cooking that I am not so good at.

I made the cornbread the night before for my dressing, I had never made cornbread before especially from scratch, but it turned out good.

Here are a couple of my favorites right out of the oven, baked carrots and green bean casserole.

I also made Sweet potato casserole, Carina made the mashed potatoes and I made the gravy. All in all it turned out okay. We loaded it up and headed over to my Father-in-laws to eat, the main ingredient we were missing was my Mother-in-law which left a definite void, Thanksgiving will never be the same. Hopefully I can go back to just making the pies in the years to come.

Snowvember 2010

Here is our backyard, first snow of the fall, looks like it may be a really bad winter.

My pond is frozen, it is about 23 degrees out, I put the pond ring in there, but it may be to late to melt an airway opening. But it wouldn't be the first time, my fish are pretty hardy.

I don't think I will be hanging out on the swing today, or any day soon for that matter.

Break it to me gently

I added a link to my "My favorite links" tab called "Break it to me gently". When I was down in Alabama last month I found an old cassette tape that I had recorded for my Mom of me singing back in the early 90's. I had this cheap little Karaoke machine and I sat down one day and sang my own mix of songs that my Mom liked and taped it, then sent it to her. The next time I came to Alabama to visit every time we would go anywhere people would say, "Oh, I loved your tape!", it turned out my Mom had played it for anyone who would listen, it was pretty embarrassing. Anyway, I asked my brother Bob if he could record it onto the computer as MP3's, and he did and then he posted this link of one of the songs. You can tell it is an old tape, but I think he did a good job with it.

The Jazz Police at Tula's

This is my brother-in-law (Warren Pugh) playing a solo with the Jazz Police at Tula's on Mother's Day. We had a great time, the food was good, music was great and we had fabulous weather that day, who could ask for more.

Hot tub cleaning

So we cleaned the hot tub as you can see. We had to have someone come out and service it because the heater wasn't working, but now it is clean and working great. We got in it for the first time last night and it was wonderful, we both slept like logs.

More on the hot tub move.

If you haven't read the previous post you need to start there. The hot tub is now making its way down the skinny walkway on the side of the house.

Whew! It's in the back yard, almost to the slab.

Perfect landing right on the slab, time for some beer.

Here it is all filled up. We have to let it heat up before running the first cleaning cycle and then we drain rinse and fill up again. That process will start tomorrow.

Finally Hot Tub moving day is here!

Here's the guys contemplating the move to the backyard.

This is Ryan showing off his six pack.

We're making progress, this isn't so bad.

This seems like a good time for a break since it has been moved several feet so far.

Earthquake?

No, but forget sleeping in on a Saturday morning. My neighborhood has been getting torn up for months now and today was our day for replacing the sewer lines. The whole house shook while they tore up the street and half of our driveway.

This big hole is right in our driveway next to the Cherry tree and those are roots sticking out. We just spent $400 last Sunday because those roots got into the sewer line and sewage was backing up into the house, of course now a week later those lines are being replaced.

We are forced to park in our front yard and at times we were blocked in, but I managed to drive the jeep out of the side yard through the ditch and escape for awhile.

Retail Therapy! Doing my part to help the economy!

I went shopping with Carina the other night which is a bad, bad idea. I don't really like to shop, but she has a way of getting me to buy things I wouldn't have bought otherwise. She had recently bought the cutest Juicy bag and I loved it, hers is black and when I saw it in the espresso, I just had to have it! Then she steered me over to the Jeans and I bought a pair of Joe's Jeans, very cute but more expensive than I would have usually spent on jeans, I am usually good with Levi's or Lee. Then it is off to the bra section, she said, "Mom you really need a new bra, and when you get one we are going to burn your other ones." So two bra's one pair of jeans and a ridiculously expensive purse later..............I also found some Merrell's that I just had to have, they are my favorite shoes, luckily Nordstroms then announced they were closing, THANK GOD!

So what do I do on Saturday....I go to the Sew Expo of course, I didn't win the contest with my embroidered purse entry, but I didn't really think I would win anyway. So I go to the Expo with a mission, to buy a new sewing machine. People that know me are thinking, she needs a new sewing machine like she needs a hole in the head, but I do need a new machine, my old regular sewing machine has been dying a slow death and I have been waiting for this weekend for a long, long time. So I hit every vendor's booth who are selling machine's, Viking, Bernina, Janome etc.... and I end up at the Babylock dealer's booth, and I seek out the owner who has dealt with me before so I am suprised that he doesn't duck and hide. I get him to sell me the demo at a great discount and I convince him to throw in a quilt table, quilting foot and pay for the tax as well, whoo hoo! I will pick it up later in the week! Here is a picture of it below. I love to wheel and deal and get what I want!

Our new office

We just moved into our new office this last week and it is just beautiful. I have my own lane for working up patients which you can see in the picture below. We still have some finishing touches left to do, like our wall mounted blood pressure cuffs, artwork and my indirect ophthalmascope. We have 12 lanes in all and 3 diagnostic rooms and 2 procedure rooms as well. We have two tech stations and a huge break room and also a mydriatic area. We have a separate surgery area but it is connected to the clinic, the surgery side has 2 amblatory surgery suites and a separate check in, there are men and women locker rooms and showers and a huge pre-op, post-op area. We occupy 14,000 square feet which is almost the entire third floor of our building.

This is the clinic's check in, waiting area. We have a separate check out. This picture only shows a small portion of the area.

This is looking down the hall where most of the lanes are. We have a light system that signals where the patients are and who is next and it will alert the doctor's in their office. We also can see at a glance where everyone is from our tech stations.

These are our lockers in our break room, it's like being back in highschool again. We have a great view of Mt. Rainier from our break room. They put in a full size fridge with water and ice and two microwaves. We started seeing patients on last Tuesday and I can't tell you how nice it has been being in this brand new beautiful facility and the patients are loving it also.

I won!

It may be hard to make out the picture below, but it shows I won in our Fantasy Football league this year. I am the "Ass Kickers" and I won by just over 100 points this year, this is the first time I have won in all the years we have played. I am the only girl who plays on our league and it feels sooooo good to beat all the guys.