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This week was a little slower. Today, especially, was a slow Sunday. I’m sick with a sore throat. Wayne took on a lot of chores today. We had church and a social event planned. It was kind of nice just to stay home and play with the girls and really relax. It’s been one of those fun, bump along weeks. As I’ve said before, I delight in the ordinary.

I toured the last 2 of 5 schools in our district. Even my presumptive last choice is wonderful. What a fun choice to make. I’ve been learning the school lingo, inclusive, spectrum, loop, ALO, split classes, alternative, etc. I’m slowly learning the gig. I’m glad I started a year early because the breath of our choice makes my head spin.

Valentine’s Day was fun. I made over 34 Valentine’s for Sara’s class. On Valentine’s morning, all three of us girls walked down to the breakfast table to have cards from Dad waiting for us. I grilled brats and and made chocolate covered strawberries for desert.

This week, one of my projects was to DAM (digital asset management). Normally, this is Wayne’s job, but he’s been swept up in the tides of life. I’m trying to get our Xmas photos onto the blog. I’ve just now gotten through the first 450 photos. Man, what a boring job. Putting it on the blog is the fun part.

I finally got the Xmas letter out. It’s always fun to get email responses from folks I haven’t heard from for a while.

Sara is saying “Geez Louiseez” this week copying me. It comes out as “cheese louise”. She says it “when I’m tired”. Laura used the sign for please tonight. Her food tastes fluctuate. Last week, chicken was a wonder. This week, she will eat the broth of the chicken soup but regurgitates the chicken. She seems to be saying words like cat and bye-bye, but under her breath and not repeated.

Our Valentine’s date was nice. We went out with friends who have a daughter Laura’s age. We went to the Hi-Life. It’s Paris there. For the first time, we were able to share a family dinner. We got a large salad, a mushroom crepe appetizer, and Daube de Boeuf (beef stew). It was all good. The chocolate tart I had for desert was supreme. I might have to go back for that. Last night, the moon had a beautiful ring around it. The sky was clear and cold. I also got to see the alpen glow on Mt. Ranier.

Wayne didn’t think we’d do it this year. Every year, my Xmas letter creeps. First it was ok for Epiphany, then I waited till the State of the Union address, I’m now 2 weeks later. Regardless, it’s fun to post a summary of the year. I enjoy looking back over our blog and seeing how the girls have grown. I also enjoyed all the Xmas letters and greetings we got this year.

Laura
Most of Laura’s development has been in 2007. She’s 15 months and walking like a champ. She’s been doing it since 10 months. Like Sara, she communicates well, but doesn’t speak. She’ll say ‘ma-ma’. Da-da is most popular. When Wayne comes home from work and opens the door, she shrieks ‘DA-DA’. She uses some signs like ‘more’ and ‘wash hands’, but mostly points and sometimes shouts for punctuation.

Laura and Sara like playing together mostly in the form of wrestling. When Sara has a friend over, Laura becomes the ‘baby monster’ and is happy chasing the older girls around. Laura is into dollies and less into stuffed animals. She loves to cover her dolly with a blanket and push her around in her stroller. She likes to make anything that’s not a toy into a toy (like this computer).

Laura seems to be a Mommy’s girl. She’s always been a snuggle bug. She cuddles with me while she sucks on her thumb. She still insists that our bed is much more comfortable at 5 in the morning. Most of the time, she sleeps well enough to share a room with her sister. Her hair is brown and her eyes are large, brown, and bright. Her hair now has cute little curls in back.

Sara
Four is fun. I love watching Laura making huge developmental strides and Sara making subtle ones at this age. Sara still has her curls, blonde-brown hair that’s lengthening, and big blue eyes. Sara has figured out that having a sister means she has a playmate. Her teasing and tauting abilities have increased with sisterhood. Dinosaurs and lions have made way for horses. Yesterday, she bought her 15th plastic horse with her own and named it Germany (for the imprint on it’s belly). Often, she’ll line up her horses across our rug.

Sara is learning letters and likes writing the letters she knows. We still make cards together (hopefully some of you have received and enjoyed them). Sara enjoys art. She probably brings home 10-15 new creations every week. Check our flickr page (link on the right) for occasional appearances. Sara likes to read the comics from the funnies with us. Garfield, a comic I’ve ignored mostly, is a good pictorial comic for Sara to understand. She gets to learn about God and Jesus at Mom’s group and church. The other day, she prayed to Jesus to discuss the fact that I had accidentally ripped one of her pictures. That’s practical faith!

Wayne
I wonder if there will be a time when I have trouble remembering all the Pixar movies. Wayne has now been working there for what seems to be forever. He gets so concentrated on “hacking” his code that sometimes even Sara’s plaintive words can’t rouse him from his task. The next movie for Pixar is Walle and we’ll attend the premier this May.

Wayne has taken up D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) from his younger years. He plays once a month with a group of guys from our church. This is good, because Sara and Wayne are still depressed that our basement is still out of commission from flooding. This means no Nintendo Wii and no Mario Galaxie. I caught Wayne and Sara watching a YouTube video of Mario Galaxie of Wayne’s iPhone. Wayne’s also got to go snowboarding twice. We had a unexpected visit to Whistler and he got to go after a record breaking snowfall.

Karen
This has been a year of transition. I’m still at the VA, but had to change my clinical focus from Spine to Multiple Sclerosis in order to continue to work part-time. I miss my old patients, but am enjoying working with a new patient population. I still work the same schedule, taking care of the girls the last half of the week. I now get a day to myself.

I got a new camera this year and have enjoyed photographing. You’ll notice more activity on the blog because Wayne has made it easy for me to put my photos on our account. I also like making cards with stamps and photos. After making 34 Valentine’s cards, I feel like I need to take a break.

Travel
We have finished the Laura Wooten Road Show. We traveled to Milwaukee over President’s Day to visit my college roommate, Heidi and family. We had a wintery blast there. We switched climes to Maui and enjoyed the sand and surf. We plan to revisit this year with John and Shirley for their 40th wedding anniversary. We continued the show off Laura tour to Atlanta and Nashville. We ended the tour in San Francisco to see the premiere of Ratatouille and see the Fredas. My parents took us to Tofino, BC and Mt. Ranier this summer. Wayne traveled to L.A. for Siggraph and I attended the AAPMR (rehab conference) for the first time in Boston. I got to visit with Aaliya in New York for a day and see a portion of the Pirozzolo clan in Boston. We returned to Atlanta and Nashville for Xmas and got to spend a luxurious 2 weeks with both families.

State of Us
Feel free to peek in on us at any time. We often have new photos on Flickr (see the link in the upper right hand corner of the blog, under photography). Our lives are full and blessed. Have a wonderful year of the Rat (wasn’t that last years movie?).

I got an early morning visit from the twins. Claire brought two car seats, strong biceps, and breakfast treats from Larsens. Our breakfast was over in time for the girls to get home for 9am naps (I often wish I could take midmorning naps.

Audra called and join me for an impromptu tea for an hour while Johanna and Sara chased Laura and played with blankets.

Audra took Sara and Johanna to McD’s to play on the slide. I took Laura and worked out at the club and finally delivered my own birthday packages at Sip and Ship. It was nice to have them pack the goodies while I watched Laura.

That evening, Wayne and I tried Serious Pie by Tom Douglas. The place sits community tables with 2/3rds of the place occupied by kitchen. At first, the place seemed a little cramped but the atmosphere grew on me especially once I got a taste of the pizza. Wayne tried one with elk sausage. I tried one with fennel sausage and cherry bomb peppers. The flavors were complex and interesting.

We slipped next door to the Dahlia lounge for doughnuts (beignet like, served fresh with sugar in a crinkly, white paper bag, that’s opened with scissors with as much flourish as the wine, accompanied w/ vanilla marcapone sauce and jam–I like the doughnuts in case you couldn’t guess) and coconut creme pie for Wayne. Food was great, but I went to bed with a overly full stomach.

We awoke the next morning to the Saturday sours. I had hoped for a Karen day. I had imagined a 3 mile walk to downtown Ballard and having brunch and wandering around stores. Wayne’s stomach was sour from the previous evening, my knee was swollen slightly from an arthritic flare, and we had some time sensitive tasks. This lead to some mild tension about how to arrange the day. Laura led the way by taking a nice morning nap. I had my desired midday sleep and Wayne got some quiet time with Sara and got to do some work.

When Laura awoke, we saddled up and drove halfway to Ballard. We walked to the downtown.

Wayne let me take photos along the way. Here’s a sampling. This was one of the funniest parts of the day. It’s hard to photo when caring for kids at the same time.

We got passport photos made of Laura. We looked at camera cases for my Nikon. We stopped in at Pho Than for pho. Laura liked creme puffs. She mistakenly tasted lime and peppers and needed 5 minutes of ice eating before she was ready to eat again. We stopped by Cupcake Royale. Sara and I voted with cupcakes. When we returned to the car, we saw the Democratic primary caucus crowds breaking up.

The party was at J&C’s with our neighbors, Ken and Erica. We had a pasta dinner with salad and cupcakes (mint and chocolate frosting). I got to blow out a candle. Sara kept asking when I got to blow out my candles. I’m glad Erica provided the candle because Wayne and I forgot. Claire got me a fun game called Kill Doctor Lucky. It was a fun game. Wayne let me win. I killed Dr. Lucky with a joke while slipping on a banana (come visit and play the game with us sometime). We ended the next morning by eating my birthday cupcake. It was a sweet ending.

Have you noticed more activity on the blog lately? This is the result of my husband and my Dad. At my begging, my Dad got me a Nikon D40 for Xmas. I wanted an SLR digital camera that was light enough for me to wear to ordinary events, yet still produced decent photos. Some people refer to this camera as a soccer Mom’s camera. Neither of my kids play soccer yet, but the idea is there. I would watch my Dad walk around taking photos of everything. Of course! He practiced. I just take out the camera for trips and special events. So I’m trying to take more photos just for the sake of photography.

I’m also trying to use the photos. In our Mom’s group this week, a woman from Creative Designs came and talked to use about preserving our stories. She made the point that while a picture is worth a thousand words, that those thousand words make the picture. It gives a history and highlights to the photo. Wayne has helped my ability to DAM (digital asset management) by installing Lightroom on my computer and giving me my own hard drive so I can do photo work in bed. This has improved my desire to do this in the evenings when I’m tired.

Finally, weeklies are the weekly viewing of the progress of a movie at Pixar. On Friday, the whole company views whatever movie is being worked on in whatever state it’s in. I thought this could be a similiar idea…a weekly review of our lives.

Friday
Amy and Lydia visited. It’s been a while since we’ve seen them. As with Johanna and Sara, it’s extraordinary to see how different the personalities are. Lydia is more verbal where Laura is more physical. It was also fun to see how difficult it was to carry on a conversation with 3 kids floating around. At least we tried

Saturday
Wayne had his present to snowboard. The powder was “off the hook” closing passes and causing avalanches. Wayne went with Ken and Erica and made it with only sore muscles. He enjoyed his birthday present.

I stayed home and had Johanna over. Laura was developing pink eye. She had to stay home today.

This was the third day in a row we went to the park and Laura loved it. The older girls got “lost” in the woods and enjoyed swinging.

We got invited over to dinner for amazing lasagne and apple crisp desert. We came home feeling full, but satisfied.

Sunday
I went to church on my own with Sara. It was fun to be alone on an outing with her. I took my camera to church and accidentally kept poking the woman next to me with it.

We watched Batteries Not Included with Ken and Erica for Stupid Movie Sunday. I also got to meet Spencer, the new springer spaniel puppy they just adopted. Bloody puppy teeth on the floor? Not something I thought about with a new pup.