Audrie's Home

Cousins. Elizabeth, Adrianna, and Audrie,

Elizabeth and Audrie.

Adrianna and Audrey.

Myk, Cassie and Audrie got to come home today. Naturally that means a few visitors. Here are pictures of all our girls. Adrianna wasn't too sure about her at first, but seemed to like holding her.

Minnie is in love. She thinks she has a new pet. Anytime Audrie cries Minnie is right there checking on her. She is being so gentle with her doggy kisses. Mishka and the cats don't really care.

Introducing Audrie

Audrie came this morning at 11:39. She weighs 7 pounds and 7 ounces. She is 20 inches long. For now she has red hair and blue eyes and is perfect in every way. Not that I am prejudiced.

We Found the Answer

Now we know what keeps happening to the papertowels.

Audrie Update

Cassie had a dr. appt. yesterday. She goes in tonight to start the induction process. The dr. told her to call for a time around midnight. Well before we got back to BG the hospital called and wants her to call to make sure that 8 p.m. will still be good for her. The only thing that shifts her is how many mothers may come in today to have babies. My understanding is she gets some kind of medication that works overnight and starts the process of birth in the morning. So if all goes according to Hoyle, Audrie should be here tomorrow. Am I an excited Nana....no not at all. :)

Visiting Uncle

Uncle Jerry from Colorado came to visit. He is spending a few days at Aunt Cris's house. So today they had a little party at the nursing home with Uncle John. Beth, Randy and Mary came. Mom came with me. You can see Mary and Randy in the first picture along with Jerry and Aunt Cris cutting cake. The next picture is John and Cris. Sorry Unc...the photo with the napkin was the better of the two. And then the last picture is Unc checking his text message about some work that he is suppose to be doing while he is here. So he did 'work' briefly. The cake was delicious.

Then we went back to Cris's house and had dinner and a nice visit. I got baby gifts for Cassie and finally go to see the quilt. Beth was helping Cris pick out paint color for her bathrooms. Just a nice family evening.

Visiting Uncle

Travelling....Really?

So Dave has tickets to fly. He tells me his work schedule and I don't count on anything until he has the airline ticket. And even then it can always change. However it looks like he is spending the next three weeks in Montreal. He'll be home every Thursday to make his group meeting on Friday and then fly back on Saturdays. Wow.
I think he planned this to get past the new baby to be in the house. He expects to be discomforted by her crying. I said...you have survived three babies in your house before and she won't be in our room nor do we have to get up with her. And she may not be a crying baby.

Not Yet

No sign of Audrie yet. Cassie has another dr. appt. on Thursday. Last week the dr. said she hadn't dilated more but things are progressing. Just so slowly and too slowly for Cassie.

Busy

We have been busy the past few days. We had Adrianna's party. Then Dave and I went out for dinner and a play on Saturday. We ate at El Presidente. Both of us wished we would have stopped at El Rancho Viejo in Battle Ground instead. The food wasn't bad, but it wasn't nearly as good as El Rancho. The play was at the Magenta Theater. We saw "Wait Until Dark", which is different for this theater. Usually they do comedies and this one was a thriller. We liked the play and walking around downtown. Sunday was pretty quiet. Then Elizabeth had another day on the horse yesterday. She got on the horse all by herself with no one holding on to the horse for her. She is making good progress.

Recycled Fountain

I've tried twice to get photos of this really cool fountain. Both times the pictures turned out really bad. Dave and I were downtown and he took these. They turned out much better than mine.

Recycled Fountain

Recycled Fountain

Adrianna's Second Birthday

Adrianna turned two years-old yesterday. We opted to do the family dinner birthday thing that we do with Elizabeth. It saves us the frustration of bigger parties. So we had lasagne and then cake. Then Adrianna got to open her presents. All four of them. Four seemed like a very good number. She enjoyed everything and didn't get overwhelmed. The boots are for our house, but she wasn't taking them off tonight. She wore them home and they will come back another day.

Clean Carpets

I've been doing the home cleaning of the carpets and thinking that it just isn't doing the job. Must be time to have the truck come and suck out more dirt than I can. My brother's old roommate actually started a carpet cleaning company. And I knew that if he was in our area I would have him do the carpets. He is completely trustworthy and I know would do a good job. The only problem was he lived in Salem.
So I am at Pat's house chatting with Pat and he says something about Sean. I said yeah but he is in Salem. Oh no, he moved to Vancouver awhile back. Pat gave me the number. The next day I was at Pat's and there was Sean up on his roof helping him paint. Well we set up a cleaning.
He came this week and was here for three hours doing my great room. Seems my great room is about 420 square feet and Sean charges 30 cents a square foot. Came out to $126. He didn't insist that I had to have things I didn't want, like the last cleaner I had in. My carpet looks so much better and even feels nice under bare feet again.
Sean's business is American Dream Carpet Care and the number in case anyone is interested is 360-921-6823. But I don't think he will travel to Malaysia, so don't call him Scott.

Pasture Time

Elizabeth finally got to ride in the pasture. She discovered that it is quite a bit different than riding in the arena. First there is a lot more space and it isn't nice and flat like the arena. Then the horse doesn't listen as well in the pasture. Tries to eat grass. So it is a different experience and Elizabeth was not sure she liked it. Now she did fine and will get over that nervousness. I bet she now understands why Jerry wanted to make sure she had good control before letting her loose in the pasture. We are going back on Monday, but more than likely it will be raining which puts us back in the arena.

Got to get that girl some of her own boots. Guess her xmas list is growing.

Nostalgia

This picture hung on the wall of my grandparents' kitchen for as long as I can remember. The people in the picture are my uncle Warren, my uncle Wayne and cousin Fred. Now Fred likes to call himself my uncle because he always felt more a part of my dad's family than his own. And that is fine. But really he is a cousin. I think it is a really cool picture and I'm glad that someone made a copy for my brother. Then my brother just scanned it for me so I have my own copy.
I think I have been feeling a little nostalgia since I took Doug and Heathers' wedding pictures down. They got divorced this year. As I was replacing the pictures I felt wrong about it. Even though they are now divorced their marriage was a big part of our lives too. And that doesn't change just because they are no longer together. I know that life goes on and things change, but memories are nice also.
I am starting to think about my picture wall again and finally putting it back up. Maybe I will still hang a wedding picture just because it is our history along with all the other pictures that remind of us of who we are and where we come from.

Elizabeth Day

Elizabeth and I didn't do a lot exciting. We did go find Lulu's boutique in BG Village. There wasn't much there for a girl her age. And mostly the prices were too high for me to spend my money. It wasn't badly priced, just not cheap enough for my frugal nature. Lulu pointed us to the shop across the sidewalk which is called BUG. Means Battle Under Ground. Website is www.battleunderground.com . That shop I really like for its pricing. She had a lot of cool things in there and I think all the teens from BG should go shop there. We bought a scarf and a magnetic necklace.
While we were at Lulu's , Brandon, her husband came in with her lunch. Her family owns one of the little Thai restaurants in town called Golden Tusk. We discussed that Dave actually now likes Thai once in awhile and maybe we would see if he would dine with us there. So that is where we went for dinner and Brandon remembered what we would be ordering. He doesn't listen to his wife but he does listen to patrons.

Another Change

Yesterday was my Elizabeth day. We asked Dave if he wanted to go out with us and he said he would (there is that doing things again). I asked him whose car we were taking and he said his. I commented on noticing that he is driving again. He said well he isn't inebriated.

Too Funny

I am in the shower when Mishka starts barking. Mishka went through a period of barking at everything when she first lost her hearing and most of her sight, but lately she is pretty quiet. So I get out of the shower and wrap a towel around me. Go out into the living room and there is red light flashing in the driveway. Oh no. I peek out the window by the door and it is my car flashing. I don't have a car alarm. This is very strange. So I go dry off and get dressed. Take my key and go to the car. Unlock it and it still is flashing, but the dome light comes on. There is Mittens in the car, but she can't get back out of the window she got in. It was only down about three inches and I had the seat flipped forward. She had turned on the emergency flashers. Maybe she is a smart cat....or just lucky.

Minnie and Marseilles

Just a picture of Minnie and her pet cat Marseilles. They are so funny. Marseilles still follows Minnie all over and lays with her on the deck to survey the domain. Marseilles likes Minnie a lot more than she likes the people.

She's Coming

Cassie had a dr. appt. today. She is at the every week stage of the pregnancy. Well today the doctor told her that she is 1.5 cm dilated. She estimates the baby to be between 7 and 8 pounds. Told her she would see her at her appt. next week if not before. Methinks there is a baby coming sooner than the 22nd of Oct.

I Don't Get It.

It turns out that Max's litter mates live across the street. The neighbors ended up with two male kittens about the same time as we ended up with Max. One of them looks a lot like Max and they are all the same size. So that means that someone definitely dropped them. I don't understand the mentality of that. If you are going to go to the trouble of hauling them all the way out to the "country" it wouldn't be much more bother to put them in a box and stand in front of Safeway finding them a home. Max, Hyde, and Leo are just lucky that they found homes instead of becoming roadkill or coyote food.

Change

Dave wanted to go to Barnes and Nobles to get a book. When he told me about it he actually asked if I wanted to go with. This after helping me with hay yesterday and we went to Fred Meyers the other day. A couple of weeks ago I felt like going to Saturday Market and he went.
Now WE don't do things like this together anymore. Haven't really in years. So this feels like a remembrance of years past when WE did do things together. I'm talking about the mundane usual kind of things. It is kind of nice.

Hay

Too Much Power is getting to be an old lady horse. So Jerry said it was time to start feeding her better hay. He explained that hay from the east is better than the hay grown here. More nutrients. More money also because it has to be transported here. So we talked about that and how much that kind costs. Too Much already gets beet pulp. Yummy.
Seemed kind of fair to me that we supply that extra nutrition as we are working her. So today I bought a ton of Eastern Hay. One hundred pound bails. Once we got it from the feed store to the arena and stacked it is surprising how little it really is. Anyway she now has her extra hay for this winter. I hope Elizabeth appreciates it. Because after this the work is on her to pay her way for her riding....and that means mucking out the stall.