Sunday, April 12, 2009

Happy Easter!

After working last Saturday, I enjoyed a day off on Monday. I started off the day painting in the garage before taking Clark for a walk mid-morning. We had only gotten a half-block from our house when we saw a little dog running across the street toward us. We live on a really busy four-lane street, so I was concerned that the little dog, who was unaccompanied, would get hit by a car if we left him out there. So I picked him up and took him home with us. He and Clark ran around the backyard while I got in contact with his owners. He was only with us for fifteen minutes or so, but Clark really enjoyed running around with him until his owner came and picked him up. With the warm weather lately, our cherry blossom tree is finally flowering. We planted it last year after it was done flowering, so we have never seen it in spring before. I has really pretty little blossoms.
About a month ago I decided that I wanted to teach myself to crochet, so I got some books from the library to help me learn. I had seen some patterns in a library book that I wanted to try making Katie for her birthday. Since she's a dietitian I thought she'd appreciate having a little crocheted apple and pear. I just finished another project too, but I have to wait to put up a picture of it until I have given it to its intended recipient. I am really enjoying my crocheting projects so far.
On Friday night we went over to my parents' house to celebrate Katie's 25th birthday. We had a good dinner and then cake and presents. Friday was also Bailey's birthday. He's 11 now, and still as feisty as ever, despite being blind and diabetic. He seemed to enjoy the party as well- or at least the extra attention!
Katie has the same cake every year- a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.
Today we went to the 9am church service, and then over to my aunt and uncle's house in Cupertino for an early dinner. I left our house an hour early and walked with Clark toward Cupertino. Logan picked us up and drove us the rest of the way there. Clark enjoyed playing with his friend Abby the beagle and then slept in the truck while we enjoyed dinner.

We've had a relaxing afternoon and evening since we got home. I sat and crocheted for a while in Clark's favorite chair, and he joined me in the chair to look out the window for a while. He's sound asleep in the chair now after his busy day.
One last bit of news for this week: Logan entered a contest to have his design put on the new t-shirt for his school, and the PTA chose his design. His school's mascot is the dolphin, so that's why his design is a boy riding a dolphin. I think it turned out really well. Very cute!

Sunday, April 5, 2009

My least favorite thing in the world

I realized something the other day: the weekends when I have time to post to the blog are not busy enough that I have anything good to post about. But the weekends when I have lots to post about are the weekends when I'm too exhausted at the end of the day to post anything!
The past two weekends have been the busy kind, and I'm finally taking a few minutes to tell you about them.
As I wrote about back in February, we've been working on finishing the garage. The past few weekends have been filled (at least in part) with my least favorite thing in the world- sanding drywall. It's dirty work- it gets sweaty inside the breathing mask, sticky inside the latex gloves, my arms, shoulders and neck ache terribly, and I end up with a fine dust all over me. Logan and I spent last Saturday slathering "mud" (joint compound) on the drywall seams. Then Logan and I sanded the walls and ceiling on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Logan put on a second coat of mud on Thursday and Friday. He took yesterday off while I was at work, and then the two of us sanded the final coat today before vacuuming up all of the dust and spraying the texturing on the walls. Now we're ready for me to paint tomorrow on my day off. And then- cabinets! We're very excited to finally have this project (almost) done, and really looking forward to the ample amount of extra storage space we'll have in the garage now. Here are some photos from last Saturday:Last Sunday we took the day off from garage work to head over to the beach for the afternoon. We stopped in Pescadero to get some bread from our favorite shop and then drove over to Bean Hollow Beach to walk around on the sand for a while. It was REALLY windy that afternoon. Clark had lots of fun chasing the sea foam around on the beach. (See video at the bottom of the posting.) Friday was my dad's 60th birthday, and we had two celebrations for him over the weekend. On Friday night we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Jasmine Thai restaurant and then dessert afterwards at our house. It was my dad's favorite: Strawberry Shortcake.
Clark seems to gravitate toward my dad's lap when they're together! Then this evening (Sunday) we went over to my parents' house to enjoy dinner and dessert there. In addition to my parents and sister, my grandmothers and two of my dad's friends joined us. Dinner was great, and Katie made a gorgeous pirate ship cake for my dad.
Cute Clark photo of the week: Here's Clark with his newest toy, Octopus:
(and in case you're wondering, this photo wasn't posed- he did this all by himself- what a ham!) That's all for this week- stay tuned for photos of the finished garage!