Happy Valentine's Day!

My Little Valentine


Although he wouldn't smile here, I thought it was the best pose.


Here are a couple more Valentine's pics of him:

Excited

&

Almost smiling

Happy New Year! - Checking out of the Hospital

We didn't get much rest in the hospital. Doctors and Nurses coming in to check on me and the baby, taking lots of blood samples, blood pressure checks, all kinds of newborn tests...

Since I had already spent a good portion of Monday in the hospital for testing, plus the labor on Tues and Wednesday, I was ready to get out of there!

We checked out as soon as we could after all the required tests were done (24 hours).

Merry Christmas Eve!

I went downstairs for breakfast this morning, and to see Sami before he heads off to work.

Look at the nice surprise he had waiting for me on the fireplace. Pulla! Yummy!

Happy Nameday to Me!

Hey, it's my nameday!

(at least in Finland)

I'd totally forgotten since none of our calendars have the namedays listed. Thank you Karoliina for remembering and wishing me a "Happy Nameday!"

My name happens to fall in the "women's week" in the calendar. That's July 18th - July 24th. If you're curious to know more about namedays, here's the wikipedia article, and here's a calendar listing the dates for all the Finnish names.

Scotch Thistle - Onopordum acanthium

I saw these thistles growing by the road on my walk to work this morning, but I didn't think they quite went with the Calla Lilies post.

Fourth of July Fireworks

Around 9:45 PM, we went back to the house to pick up some chairs and the tripod for my camera. We walked up to Bridgeton Road and set up on the sidewalk facing North. Although Melissa and Erica live in Portland, OR we were actually watching the Vancouver, WA fireworks across the river.

I couldn't decide which photos were my favorites, so I've made a slideshow.

If you can't see it, please make a comment letting me know what kind of error you get.

BBQ & Band

Erica (the Canadian) is American for the day.

Star Melissa and Sara

Aaron, Erica, & Melissa Grilling

Erica Masters the Art of Grilling

Dianthus

As a sort of housewarming gift, I took a bunch of lettuce and spinach seeds and a couple trays of potting soil over to Melissa & Erica's new place this spring.

Apparently I started a big gardening craze. Now they have all sorts of herbs, vegetables and flowers.

Erica, Aaron & Melissa - Time to eat.

Aaron, Sara & Melissa - The food was great!

Local Band Playing at the Channel's Edge

After dinner we walked down the street to the nearby giftshop/cafe to hear the live band playing there. They were quite good, but unfortunately I didn't catch the name of the band.

Aaron & Sara

Erica & Melissa

Happy Easter!

Brown eggs dyed with food coloring.

Since tomorrow is Easter, I decided we'd better eat sausage and eggs for breakfast. The elk sausage from the farmer's market is surprisingly low fat and very tasty.

The eggs... were brown. I was afraid they wouldn't dye properly and I didn't have time to get more (because I only had about 20 mins to work on them while Sami was putting mastic on the ducts in the laundry room). So I went ahead and tried. I was pretty pleased with the results, though I didn't manage to get a nice blue egg.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Black History Month

February is Black History Month.

In school, it was always a big deal and we studied all the great people who did historic things. In recent years, I've pretty much forgotten about black history month.

This past week, I was asked to make some displays for the library. I immediately thought of George Washington Carver, the botanist and inventor. He was always my favorite.

Anyway, I did a quick search of the internet looking for a few photos and found an amazing amount of information on black history at Biography.com. I highly recommend checking it out. Now... I think I need a peanut butter sandwich.

Christmas Comes Again

Two weeks ago I got a cool birthday present from Agnes - she sent a book about birds of the middle east.

On thursday I got this card and I was very confused. I was sitting there looking at the envelope thinking... "but she already sent me a birthday card and it's too early for valentine's day"...

Well, I opened it and it was actually a christmas card. I don't know what took it so long, but it was worth the wait. The flashing lights are very cool

Great Views, No Photos

Yesterday (Monday) was Martin Luther King Jr day and I had the day off from work. I made plans with Melissa and Erica to go over and see their new place on the river in North Portland. We had planned to go biking along Marine Drive.

As it turned out, the UPS people said they would be delivering Sami's new projector for the home theater between 10 and 2 pm. The note from UPS said that someone would have to be home to sign for the package. So I agreed to wait. I was really hoping they would come early.

On Sunday Sami and I did yardwork and cleaned up the area along the south side of our garage. The old stairs and other wood from the hot tub had just been sitting there since last fall. Anyway, we took the stairs apart and loaded them up into the truck so we could plant the free grapes on the south facing wall of the garage.

So, I used Metro's online tool to find a recycler. Apparently there aren't a lot of places that take treated wood. I found one in Vancouver, WA that was accepting treated wood and not charging any fees either. Vancouver is just across the bridge so it should only be a 15 minute drive or so from the recycling center to M & E's new place.

Unfortunately things didn't work out quite so easily. I waited until 2:50 PM and the package from UPS didn't arrive. I finally gave up on it. Driving east on 26 and north on 405 was no problem, but as soon as I got on I-5 north, traffic stopped. It was horrible. Around 3:45 Melissa called me to see where I was. I told her I was stuck in traffic and trying to take the wood to the recycling center. She said "Oh, you have wood? do you have any that we could use for a gate for our deck?" I told her yes, I'd stop by the house first so she could grab what she needed for the dog gate.

I got off the highway and ended up turning the wrong way on Marine drive. I realized that traffic was only getting worse and called Melissa to tell her that I was sorry and I didn't think I could get to her place and the recycling center by 5 PM. I tried to get back on I-5 north but there was so much traffic in front of me that I couldn't see the sign and ended up on the wrong lane. Ironically I ended up going the right direction on Marine drive and found myself in Melissa's neighborhood. So I stopped by and dropped off some wood for the gate. Then Melissa got in her car and led me to the exit to get back on the highway. It took 30 minutes just to get up the ramp to the highway. By the time I was finally moving again, it was 4:50 PM. Fortunately I had a good idea of where the recycling center was and so I didn't make any more wrong turns.

At 5 PM, I realized I was going to be too late. I knew I was nearby, but not there yet. I remembered I had called the recycling center earlier to confirm that they took treated wood. So the phone number was still stored in the memory of my phone. I called them and asked if they were closed already, explaining that I'd gotten stuck in traffic. The girl who answered asked me how far away I was. I told her I was in front of the Lowes. She said I was only a couple blocks away and agreed to hold the gate open for me. So lucky.

When I arrived, the girl told me they couldn't take the 2x6 beams with the joist hangers on them because it was too much metal. I said ok, and figured oh well, at least I'd only be carrying the three beams home with me. I started unloading the wood from the stairs and a man in a blue truck drove up. He said "Hey, I saw you going north on I-5 and figured you were heading up here... I was wondering if I could have those 4x6 beams you're getting rid of. I could really use them for this deck project I'm working on." I said "Great! I'm happy to get rid of them, I'm glad you can use them". And so he loaded them up into his truck and I was able to leave the recycling center with mine completely empty.

It was nearly 6 PM by the time I arrived back at Melissa & Erica's place. So it was already dark and I didn't get take any pictures of the houseboats or the sunset on the water. I was pretty disappointed, although it was cold yesterday, it was very sunny and Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens looked stunning covered in snow. There was also a full moon that started rising while the sun was still in the sky. A perfect day for taking photos, but I didn't get any. Actually I tried to take a couple while I was sitting in traffic, but my windows were too dirty for the camera to focus properly. And my arm was too short to roll down the passenger side window in the truck.

Dinner was wonderful. Erica made her first pot roast ever, and it turned out great. I'd brought over a basket of stuff I'd canned during the summer for a housewarming gift and we ate some vanilla pears for dessert.

I'd brought over some of the lettuce and spinach seeds that I planted last week and after dinner Melissa and Erica each started a tray. They should grow well on the nice sunny deck if Star (the dog) doesn't get into them.

Now I'm just waiting for another sunny day off so I can go over there and do the biking and picture taking that I'd planned for the MLK holiday.

Happy New Year!

Sami and I did a bad job of planning for New Year's Eve. It wasn't until around 8 PM that we started thinking... "Hey, what should we do tonight?"

Unfortunately most of my friends from high school weren't in town for the holidays and we didn't have a lot of options. We asked Matt what he was doing and if he had any fireworks. He said yes, and brought some out that he had bought in South Carolina on sale after the 4th of July.

About 20 minutes before midnight, I got my camera and tripod set up and ready to take pictures. Then I went to get Matt. Although his light was on, he was totally asleep in his bed. About 5 minutes before 12, I ran downstairs and found Sami still in the shower. So we didn't start shooting the fireworks off until around 12:15. Unfortunately some of them had gotten damp or something so only about half of them still worked. Next year, we really have to plan better.

Merry Christmas!

Andrew, my youngest brother, loves Christmas lights. This year he managed to decorate the front of the house very tastefully.

He also decorated the tree house and the back porch. The screened in porch was just added to the house last year.

Unfortunately my mom had to work at the hospital on Christmas day. My brothers, Matt and Andrew, decided to stay up late on Christmas eve and make a special breakfast for her.

They set up the coffee maker with the timer, and made several different kinds of cookies, with hand written cards listing what kinds they were.

Daddy and Matt watching TV.

After opening presents on Christmas morning, we did a lot of sitting around flipping channels.

Andrew gave Cody the dog a giant bone.

It was so large she could barely chew on it. And on the following days she nearly woke the whole house up by dropping it on the hardwood floors in the kitchen.

On Christmas Day, Andrew cooked the turkey and Sami and I made biscuits, mashed potatoes and a rhubarb pie made from our own rhubarb we canned last summer.

We told my sister Becca that she could make the vegetables but she declined.

My mom came home just in time to make the stuffing.

Sami carving the turkey.

Sami loves to use the electric knife. My mom offered to give it to us, but we don't make turkey very often so we decided to leave it there.

If you're wondering why the cabinets look weird, it's because the kitchen is in the middle of a remodel and the cabinets have only been primed, and not painted. They used to be a dark brown.