12

Elizabeth had her birthday on Saturday. She is now 12 years-old. We had family dinner for her Sunday. She picked out the menu and the cake when we had Elizabeth day. So Papa got to bbq hamburgers and we had white cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate ice cream.

Since she is at an age where she has way too many material items we gave her play tickets. So she and I will go see "Robin Hood" next weekend in Portland. Audrie will go spend the day with her Grandma Nita since babies aren't really conductive to plays. Grammy gave her a gift card to pick out her own CD. Elizabeth had rattled off a list of ones that she wanted, but we can never remember so now she can pick her own. :)

Weekend

Started the weekend with my usual lunch date with friends. From there Audrie and I went and visited Myk. She was so loving to him this time it was amazing. They got to spend some real quality time together. He left the diaper to me, but I told him in 38 days it would be his turn. We also discovered she has tooth number 11.
Saturday we lazed around the house a bit and then went out for dinner with David and Brendan and their friend. Had a blast and got home after nine. David has gossip for me so we are planning another get together real soon.
Sunday we got a wild hair and drove up to Longview after cleaning my mom's house. Aunt Cris wasn't home, so we just left her gifts by the door. Ended up back at Ridgefield Junction for lunch. Had omelets. Audrie likes toast. It was a very nice weekend indeed. :)

Took Long Enough

So I realized on Wednesday that Audrie and I don't have anymore ferry rides. Yeehaw. Now to be honest none of the rides bothered me much, but I just knew we would have one of those really rocky rides sooner or later. Anyway we are back on the Shelton rotation which cuts almost two hours off my commute due to being able to drive right to the parking lot and leave from the parking lot. Got to like that.
Today we make our first trek back to Shelton. Get to tell Myk about Audrie's new skills. This week she learned how to take off her jammies and how to open the dishwasher door. More fun to come.

Humble Gratitude

My friend reminded me and I was almost going to say I am so grateful that no one is in the hospital and no one in jail. Ha. Myk is still incarcerated so that would not be true. He is being transferred to Shelton this week. Working his way back south. His release date is still Feb. 28. As it gets closer I find myself feeling more anxiety. I have no control over what he is going to do and that is hard. I have been able to breathe the past few months while I know he has been clean and safe. Soon it will all be up in the air. So I am grateful for the time I have been given to breathe and take care of Audrie.

All's Quiet

All is quiet on the home front. Doug caught an early morning flight home. Always good to see him. I'm sure he is ready to be home though. It always feels best sleeping in your own bed.
We all have colds. Isn't that nice? Hopefully Doug didn't take it home with him.
Now back to our routine.

Family Dynamics

Doug and I were talking about family dynamics the other day. Family dynamics in an alcoholic family. So I am a fixer. I have always been a fixer and have to remind myself often that I can't fix it. Well Doug is also a fixer. I've known that for a long time. He was always rescuing his girlfriends from their lives. At least he figured it out that you can't save people. Recently we discovered that Tanya is a fixer also. This family has way too many fixers. But anyway....Tanya wasn't always a fixer in our family so it is a new role for her. According to treatment family members can switch roles often, so it isn't really surprising. Sometimes it is kind of hard to take watching her try and fix things. But we also know we can't fix a fixer, and have to let each one learn that it can't be done.
Watching other families is kind of interesting. The thing I have learned is that families part and come back together. Feelings get hurt and then heal. And sometimes it is over small slights and sometimes over big wrongs. But families are families. It was kind of nice having the conversation with Doug and having a similar point of view. Who knew?

RIP Les Davenport

Funeral today. Dave's uncle died last week in a skiing accident. He was near Tahoe on a big ski trip. He hit a patch of ice which sent him floundering and then downhill head first into a tree. Sounds like it was pretty quick. And however sad this is he died doing something he absolutely loved and I don't think many of us are that lucky.
I'm going to miss him and the conversations we used to have in the field.
So today we go to the funeral. Dave and Doug are both being pall bearers.
They both made it home even with all the crazy weather on the East coast.

2011 Rush

So I survived another Rush week. This time Rich switched it up a bit. I didn't spend all my time doing security. I bounced around giving lunches and did a lot of the receiving for the week. Had an ew moment when one of Myk's little gal pals hugged me. Anyone who knows me knows I don't do hugs. That said I did hug Hodong when I saw him. Nice to see one of Myk's friends doing something constructive.
The people were very cranky on Monday. We had to do the stop the store thing where we had a line to get in due to being at capacity. People do NOT like to have to wait to get into the store. But this time they seemed especially annoyed. I think maybe they partied too much new year's eve and hadn't recovered yet. They were much better on Tuesday. By Friday everything was back to normal.
We were told that the numbers were actually down, but it sure felt like we had a lot more people pass through this time. Funny how that works.

Holidays

Just a few pictures.