Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day everybody! I hope everyone enjoyed their day.

The other day I heard a couple guys on the radio talking about Valentines Day in a rather cynical manner. I understand that lot of men feel that there is just too much pressure on Valentine's Day, it's too commercial and the whole holiday is just a bad idea. In fact they mentioned a web site which promotes a movement against Valentines Day. (No I did not take note of the site's address.)

My feeling on the subject is that it is completely up to each individual couple as to how they want to celebrate Valentines Day. Some people choose to go all out and spend a lot of money. Other people don't celebrate at all. And there are many of us in between. If someone is feeling "pressured" about the day I believe that is a communication issue between the two people in the relationship. If you are going to be involved in a relationship with someone communication is important. I believe that the problem (if there is one) needs a conversation ... not a movement.

As for Walter and me, we like to go out to a nice dinner on Valentine's Day and we get each other fun mushy cards. This evening we went out to Bahama Breeze which is one of our favorite restaurants and had seafood and key lime pie. For us this is the perfect way to celebrate. How about you? If you have a special way to celebrate leave a ntoe in the comments.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you and your families, everybody! How do you celebrate? Do you stay up and watch Dick Clark or the Space Needle countdown? Do you get together with friends? Do you go to bed early?

I don't think Clay and I will be "partying" per se, but we are hoping to check out Point Defiance's Zoolights this evening. It should be a fun time and a good test for our fairly new camcorder. Unfortunately I do not yet have a way to share videos here on the blog. That's something planned for the future though.

My favorite thing about the new year is that it is an opportunity for a fresh start. Like a brand new clean piece of paper we can choose how we want to write or draw on it and what we want it to be. Some people make resolutions, others clean house, some use it as a time for setting goals.

I just love the newness of it.

Happy New Year to you!!

Special Gifts?

Did everyone enjoy Christmas? I don't know about you, but I'm kinda pooped from all the activity! We had a busy but great couple of days.

I hope Santa Claus was good to you. Of course Christmas is not just about the gifts, but sometimes they can be pretty fun.

I enjoyed one thing that was probably not intended as a present, but I received it as one - my husband in a very jolly mood! It's harder for me to be all stressed and grouchy when hubby is happy happy happy and enjoying Christmas like a kid. Thank you dear!

I also received a very fun gift from my mother-in-law. It's a fancy digital photo frame. Something like the one at this link.

Have you ever seen a digital photo frame? It's a nice frame (mine is 5x7 size) you can put on a table top or hang on the wall. But the back contains electronics that let you load in a bunch of digital pictures and it alternates showing the photos like you would see a slide show on your computer. You can set it for how frequently the photos should change, etc. This one is supposed to play music and videos too if you want.

I haven't had a chance to open it up and play with my new toy yet, but hopefully will have a chance to do that soon. Then I will tell you more about it.

Of course giving gifts can be even more fun than receiving sometimes. For example, we got my mother a silver heart-shaped locket with a promise to provide a photo of my dad to go inside the next time we visit. She loved it.

How about you - did you give or receive any special gifts? If so, don't be shy, tell us about them in the comments!

Merry Christmas

I'm going to take a short blogging break to enjoy Christmas. I hope you, my readers, all have a wonderful Christmas with your families and friends.

Merry Christmas!!

Photography Tip for Holiday Lights

A few days ago I promised to post a picture of the two beautiful large Christmas trees in the lobby of my office building. Since then I have repeatedly taken pictures, but the lighting just wasn't right. I tried flash and no flash and different times of the day, but the pictures came out either too dark or too fuzzy.

Today I received a newsletter from Microsoft which included a link to some quick photography tips for this time of year. I decided to try Tip #4 which suggests that to capture the warmth of holiday lights or candles you should use the night shot feature of your camera with the flash. I tried it, and this picture was the result. You can click the photo to see it larger. It's a tiny bit fuzzy, but I think that's unavoidable due to the long exposure. That's what makes the lights show up. I like the way you can even see the lights reflected in the marble floor.

As you can see, there are two of these beautiful trees in the lobby. Note the person in the far right of the photo for scale - those are some really large trees. Of course these are artificial trees, and I don't know what they use to make them smell so wonderful, but from the incredible scent you would think they are real.

Doesn't it make you want to sing? O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

Reflections...

As you can see in the tag line above, one of the purposes of this blog is for "reflections."

At this time of year I like to reflect on many things. Family, faith, friends, and so many things I have to be thankful for. This is a good time of year for reflection.

It is also a good time of year for reflections of another kind! There's so much sparkle and twinkly beauty. One of my favorite views of our office Christmas tree is this reflected one. I hope you enjoy it too.

What are you reflecting on this season?

Decorated for Christmas

The Washington Mutual Tower where I work is a really pretty building. I've posted pictures of the exterior before.

The interior is also beautiful with its grand Third Avenue Lobby and the Atrium on the Second Avenue side. I especially love the way the lobby looks at Christmas with two large decorated Christmas trees and Chases Flower Shop decked out for the season. This photo shows Chases. I took pictures of the Christmas trees too, but the lighting wasn't right so I will try again in a couple days.

Thanksgiving With Pictures

Clay and I had a really nice Thanksgiving spent with my Mom, my sister Jozi and friend Colette.

It was our plan to go out to eat with Mom and Jozi in Olympia. A week or so before Thanksgiving I just happened to learn in a phone conversation with my friend Colette (who lives in Lynnwood, a little north of us) that she was also planning to make a trek south for Thanksgiving. Colette has family in Nisqually, which is just about 5 miles from where my Mom lives in Lacey.

Those of us who have driven the Seattle to Olympia stretch on Thanksgiving know that it can easily take twice as long to drive that distance on Thanksgiving as it does any other day of the year. Colette and I decided it would be fun to carpool. Colette generously offered to drive us in her cushy new van. It turned out great!

As is not uncommon, the weather was quite wet for the drive down. We had one little scare when a car two lanes over suddenly veered out of its lane and hit a car near us. Thankfully we were not involved in the accident. We could only speculate about what happened - was it a hydroplaning mishap? Or did the driver of the errant car have some sort of medical emergency? We hope and pray everyone in both cars is okay.

Colette's dinner plans were later in the day than ours, so we got to have some visiting time with her at my Mom's before heading out to eat. Jozi brought pumpkin pie and we had a little pre-meal dessert. Colette helped us take some pictures. If you click on the photo of Clay and me you can use the Next and Prev links to see the rest of the photos from the day.

Colette went off to her family celebration and Clay and I went out to a local restaurant with Mom and Jozi. The restaurant we chose didn't take reservations, but we were fortunate not to have to wait too long before being escorted to a table. The food was good, and we all ate a little too much. Isn't that required on Thanksgiving?

Colette picked us up at Mom's in the evening and we headed back home. All in all it was a fun and satisfying day. Thank you to those who shared it with us!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to my blog's readers. I hope you had a wonderful day spending time with loved ones and eating turkey and all the trimmings. Clay and I had a great day celebrating like most of you. On Saturday I will be at a computer where I can upload some pictures of the day and I will post more then. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Update Sat. 11/25: Sorry, folks. Here I am in front of the computer I use to upload photos, and I forgot my camera at home! The pictures will be up tomorrow, I promise.

Thank You to the Veterans

I want to say thank you to all the Veterans on this their special day. It's thanks to them that we enjoy the freedoms we do today.

My favorite veteran was my father who passed away two years ago. He taught me more about honor and sacrifice and duty to one's country than anyone. My dad was not even a native of this country when he joined the US Army in World War II. He survived the Bataan Death March and time in a Japanese Prison of War camp.

If you know a veteran, say thank you today.

More Halloween Pictures

Every year at Halloween I look forward to seeing the young ones dress up in costume. Some of my friends are really good to me and forward pictures of little ones that I can't see in person.

Thank you to Susan who sent me pictures of her two girls on Halloween. This is the beautiful Felicia as a Spanish Dancer and her little sister Cameron who is the lovely ballerina in pink. Felicia is 12 and Cameron is 2-1/2. Cute!


This little guy is Elliott, son of my friends Doxey and Cynthia. I confess to having stolen this photo from Elliott's blog. This was Elliott's first Halloween (he's not quite 4 months old) and his folks dressed him up as the sky. Note those white puffy clouds and the jet plane passing. Elliott's dad is a mountain climber who does weather lectures, and the cloud and sun props are from his collection. You can see more pictures of Elliott in his costume here.


Thanks for sharing the pics of your adorable little ones, Moms and Dads!

Christmas Card Surprises

I love this time of year when cards start arriving in my mailbox filled with pictures of my favorite kids. The first photo to arrive from her proud parents this year was Nikka's. She's growing up to be such a beautiful little lady! Don't you agree?

Christmas Postcard from Germany

I recently received a wonderful surprise in my mailbox. A Christmas postcard from Germany! The card was not signed and contained only the note "Merry Christmas Carm, from an unknown Postcrosser." Thank you to whoever you are, my unknown postcrossing friend. I love it!

Let It Snow ... Indoors!

The other day we went to Pacific Place (an upscale shopping mall in downtown Seattle) to watch it snow.

It doesn't actually snow in Seattle very often, so Pacific Place provides indoor snow for shoppers. They make it snow from November 25th through December 31st, from 6:00 to 6:15 p.m daily.

It's a fun activity, and they play really good Christmas music while you're getting snowed upon. In fact, it feels like you are on the set of some Christmas movie watching people with their shopping bags hurry about between the flakes, moving up and down the escalators, kids jumping up and down and catching snow on their tongues, and the adults trying to capture it all on their camera phones.

The little ones were SO excited about the snow, but I saw a lot of big smiles from adults as well (including our own). If you're having trouble picturing indoor snow, you can see a video of it here. Pretty cool!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great Thanksgiving, spending some time with my mother in Lacey. It occurs to us that Clay and I have a lot to be thankful for this year:

-- good and improving eyesight!
-- lots of family and friends who love us
-- special people in our lives who help out in amazing ways too numerous to mention
-- each other

My Favorite Goblins

My favorite part of Halloween is seeing the little ones in their costumes. Here are my three favorite goblins:

First we have the lovely Nikka in her Kitty costume. She is SO tiny - it’s hard to believe she is 3-1/2 years old now.

And here is Miss Cameron looking beautiful in her ballerina outfit. Cameron is 18 months now!

And of course the stunning Elena as princess of the kingdom. Elena also just celebrated her 18 month birthday.

Fun Stuff

Once in a while it's good to stop and enjoy the fun stuff. I received a couple links recently which were well worth a couple minutes of playtime each.

Check out Cursor Theft. After you play it a couple times watch what happens if you move your cursor below the picture and leave it there. You won't be able to resist moving your mouse. Cute!

And if you ever wished you could carve a pumpkin without all the mess, this Happy Halloween site is for you.

Enjoy!