The Gift of an Ordinary Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSyCLJU3O0&feature=related

Very sad news....

I am very, very sad to report that Betty has moved on to chicken heaven to be with Maverick and Rowdy! :-( As my dear friend Heather suggested, she is probably up there eating glazed donuts which is what Heather liked to bring to her when she was taking care of her.

She was five years old which is old for a chicken. We had joked recently that she was an elderly "kept" chicken living in an assisted living hen house!

God bless her chicken soul!

Moth Ball

Moth ball lady is back at the gym....ick!

Parked the bus

I parked the hockey bus and I am back to my normal day job.

We had some hockey losses this weekend. The boys won their first game against the girls on Saturday. Boy were they happy - I didn't want to tell them its because we didn't have two of our forwards and one of our defense players. We just let them enjoy it!

Then on Sunday, Gracie played as the goalie for the Junior Sharks against Stockton - in Stockton. That was a hoot! It's a tiny building with only one rink in it. But they had announcer who announced all the girls at the beginning of the game, announced penalties and played music! It was like a whole entertainment event. Great fun!

Kooky Chicken

Because of the excessive rain we have had, the dogs have not been able to get out as much as normal and are stir crazy. So I got them a new toy today....a kooky chicken. They love it!

Time to drive the hockey bus....

In the next three days, Gracie has 6 hockey events: 2 practices, 3 games and pictures! And they occur at 3 different facilities - including a game in Stockton.

So my job for the weekend is to "drive the hockey bus". I am the driver for Gracie and all her gear!

For one of the games, she is playing as a guest player for the SJ Junior Sharks. She is on their roster so she can fill in for their goalie when she can't make it. But this is the first time she has needed to cover for her. Should be fun!

And if you see me on the road.....give me a wave!

Work from Home

I am working from home today and am working on the kitchen counter instead of my office. Jim brought Ahi over to keep me company and set up her bed on the counter. She snuggled right in like she sleeps on the counter every day!

Next to her is Gracie's ducky which I am suppose to watch all day. Gracie will be happy ducky was hanging with Ahi and I!

PG&E

I am on a mission to lower our PG&E bill! It was $555 this month and I just found out the next one is $578! With bills like that you would think we live in a castle....and a warm castle at that! But no - the house is not big and we are like popsicles in here!

Jim talked to them at length and we run the same range for our bills every year so its not like something is suddenly sucking power. The big problem is that when Jim built the house, he put in a can light every 12 inches so the house lights up like a Christmas tree on fire. And my family has a behavioral problem....they are unable to turn off lights!

Muddy Buddies

I am officially signed up to compete in Muddy Buddies in June. This is a competition for a team of two. The course is about 7 miles and consists of running, mountain biking and obstacle courses. My partner is Gracie's soccer coach, Cindy. Our team name is "C-Squared"!

Jim and Drew are signed up as a team too! They are "the dudes".

Gracie and Cindy's daughter are signed up to do Mini Mud Buddies!

Find a partner and join us.

Check it out:

http://muddy-buddy.competitor.com/

Gold

Here is an idea for you...

A few weeks ago, I cleaned out my jewelry box and took out all the old gold that I no longer use. There were earrings that I only had one of, charms that I had not worn in 20 years, old bracelets and necklaces that I never wore, etc. I had my mom take the gold down to some gold dealer and I got $87! Not a lot of money but more than it was worth sitting in my jewelry box.

Snow Shoe

While everyone else snow boarded this weeekend, I went snowshoeing. I snow shoed up to a place called summit meadow. It had a beautiful 360 degree view. I did a self portrait to show me in the background!

Badger

We went up to Badger Pass this weekend and were there for the beginning of the storm on Sunday. It started snowing at about 2 pm and when we left at 5 pm there was about 4 or 5 inches of snow. We got caught behind a snow plow on the way home that was stuck! We had to stop and watch him put chains on his tires so he could move again.

Lab hound

When we were up in the mountains this weekend, I met a dog that was the strangest dog I have ever seen! It was literally half labrador and half basset hound. The body was clearly a basset and then it would turn and look at you with a head that was a labrador head! It made me laugh out loud!

Book Review

We are reading the following book for book club:

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
http://www.amazon.com/Help-Kathryn-Stockett/dp/0399155341/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263497859&sr=1-1

It is a story about 3 women in Jackson, Mississippi during the civil rights movement. Two of the women are black maids and one is a white woman who does not agree with "separate but equal". The book follows each of their lives individually but more importantly highlights the intersections of their lives.

Great book! I would highly recommend it.

The book club is not meeting til Feb but I will let you know what they think too.

I don't get it....

Why do women wear thong underwear under their workout clothes? How can they possibly work out that way???

Urban Adventure

Drew, Mari and I went for a bike ride this weekend. We normally are mountain bikers - we stay off the streets and wander the woods. But this time we decided to try something new. We rode from our neighborhood to downtown. There is supposed to be a bike route... After experiencing this so called "bike route", I would call it more like "taking your life in your hands to get to downtown route"! We were on and off busy city streets, crossing in front of freeway entrances (2x), going down bike paths covered with graffitti and broken glass, dodging homeless people....

I am glad we did it because it was interesting to see the route to downtown in slow motion (vs going 70 mph in a car) but we won't be doing it again.

This is how we roll....

This is a typical story about how we operate.

Last nite started of with "we haven't seen the Manriqi in a long time, let's have them over for dinner."

Then it turned into, "let's have crab."

Then it turned into, "It's Tina and Marty's anniversary, let's invite them."

Then...."Aunt Shelly is home alone, bring her too."

Then...."Kayla's friend Kate is with her, she will come too."

Then...."Hey, its the Bish's anniversary too! They gotta come."

Then...."What about Kyle and Mari?"

Then..."Let's have bread, salad, crab, pasta, 3 types cake, beer, wine and soda."

Then...."Let's play poker!!!!"

Go Girl Power

Gracie's all girls hockey team is still undefeated! They won 1 to 5 last nite. Gracie would have had a shut out if it had not been for two of her players being in the "sin bin" at the same time! She had a great game.

My girlies

Here are a couple pics of the dogs from the weekend. That is Daisy late at nite on Saturday - we had a house full of people and she was done! Just rolled over and went to sleep! The other is Ahi in the front window with her new toy - a hockey puck!

Garage

Jim spent part of the week cleaning the garage and organizing it. Part of organizing it included building a big table in the middle that can be used to work on or to collect "crap" on top of it! It's good because it gives us two layers of surface area to store stuff. And its cool cuz the table is on wheels.

Want to hire him to do your garage?

Mom vs Monkey

Last nite I was helping Gracie get herself organized for upcoming practice spelling tests and real spelling tests. Because of her dyslexia she has this very convoluted, though logical way of taking spelling tests: she groups the words together so there is some kind of logic to them.

So I was writing up templates for the spelling tests. They looked something like this:

-ch
1.
2.
3.
4.

known words
1.
2.
3.
4.

-ic
1.
2.
3.

glued sounds
1.
2.
3.
4.

Weird words
1.
2.
3.
4.

Each of the titles is color coded, so I had to write the template and then color code properly. Then I had to put a box around "weird". And that is were it all fell apart. On one of the templates, I forgot to put a box around "weird". Gracie took one look at it and said to me, "I should have hired a monkey"!

Jim and I cracked up! She was totally slamming her mother, who has an MBA!

For a non-dylexic, I was doing the best I could!!!!!

Stinky!

You would expect stinky people in the gym....right? But today, it was a whole new experience....

I was in the locker room getting ready after my workout and this gal came and stood next to me at the mirror and she SMELLED like a mothball factory! Honest to God, the sweater she was wearing must have spent the last 5 years wrapped up in a box with 30 pounds of mothballs.

It was so bad, I had to leave the locker room. I never even dried my hair all the way and spent the whole day looking like I had been in a hurricane....but that was better than smelling that gal.

What if she worked in the cube next to you?????

New Pups!

NO! Not new pups for me! But new pups for my friends Leslie and Lani. They got new pug puppies for xmas. Bella and Dottie are about 14 weeks old and Gracie and I went to meet them this morning. They are DARLING, black, snorty little babies! But both Gracie and I agreed.....we DO NOT want another puppy! We are still trying to recover from raising Ahi Wasabi!

Next dog for us is a labrador named Kibbie. And I hope it is years and years away.

HP Hell

I got a new laptop and wireless printer for the kids for xmas. Today we tried to set up the printer. We have been online with the HP tech folks for about 4 hours now!!!! UGH!!! The good news is that we are going to get a replacement. The bad news....they can't seem to get an email to us with the "gift card" number to use to order another one!

Yosemite

I have not been blogging over the holidays because I have been pretty sick and have been converving my energy for things like hiking and snow shoeing. But I have to share our trip to Yosemite a couple days ago.

We took off at about 11 am with a plan to go into the valley to ice skate at the noon ice skating session at Curry Village. We drove up the road a little ways and decided to let the dogs out to run a bit. So we pulled over and took a hike. The hike ended in a hail storm with us running back to the truck!

This made us late for the ice skating session so we decided to go for a snow shoe.

But we had to have lunch first. We had packed a picnic lunch so we drove to Tuolomne Grove opened the back of the truck - Cafe Tahoe was open! We all made sandwiches and had some artichoke dip.

Once our bellies were full we decided to head out to the meadow for some sledding. While waiting for everyone to get geared up, Drew, Gracie and I took the dogs out for a walk in the forest. The area was BEAUTIFUL - so we decided to snoe shoe there instead of in the meadow.

Off we went wandering around in the forest! We made snowballs and then made tracks to roll them down the hill - like a marble in a track! Tina got stuck in an avalanche --- she was standing under a tree filled with snow when it let go!!! She blamed Jim but it was just mother nature wishing her a happy birtday!

Finally after the snow shoe, it was time to head to where we orginally were headed - to ice skating!

We ice skated for about 3 hours and watched the moon come up over Half Dome (see pic). Because it was over the holidays there were a lot of people there and it was a hoot to see the crazy folks out! We were all giggling when we saw a man ice skating who was about 60 years old, had a long grey ponytail and was wearing a peacock fabric skirt with a pink wife beater tank top!