Thinking positive...

We woke up today to the sound of rain (again...) and got dressed in our raincoats and waterproof boots since it was a field trip day at Millie's pre-school. Off we went at 10 am to the Cedar River Watershed in North Bend for a talk and then a hike outside. As you can see it was a pretty nasty, dark, rainy day.

Having fun (and staying dry) inside the watershed center.

Some pretty sounding water drums.


Off on our hike. Needless to say, it was fun to be outside(that is my being positive statement...!) but it was also really nice to get back home, dry off and light our woodstove and settle inside for the rest of the day. Unfortunately we are also monitoring the flood situation once again for possible floods from the Snoqualmie River today. Can you tell we are very anxious and excited for sunnier and drier weather around here!?

Dreaming of Hawaii...

We got to spend 10 beautiful, near perfect days in Oahu, Hawaii earlier this month. We did not really leave the beach this time. Here is Millie planning a sand castle city in Kailua Beach.



Playing catch in the surf!

Mike and Millie are posing at our beach in Kaneohe Bay. We stayed in a wonderful beach cottage there and this is where we got to go swimming and snorkeling everyday!

Here is our cottage. Millie liked to feed the roosters that wandered around in the morning. She would drop them little bits of bread from the balcony.

Here is the amazing view from our deck (lanai)!

Lots of fun building castles.

The view from the beach of our cottage in the background. I miss this so much! Now we are back in Washington state with temps in the 40's and lots of rain. We had so much fun and relaxation on this holiday!

Stay tuned for more....

Coming very soon, will be our photos from Hawaii. We miss the gorgeous scenery, weather and pretty much everything else! So thankful we have these vacation memories.

The Promises She Keeps by Erin Healy

Promise is a college student with singing aspirations. However, she has a cystic fibrosis and is not expected to live past her mid-thirties. She therefore wants to leave a legacy of fame behind to keep her memory alive. Porta is an aging sorceress and art collector who is searching for immortality. When Promise survives a series of bizarre accidents that should have ended her life, Porta believes that she has found the girl who holds the key to eternal life.

We are also introduced to Chase, an autistic artist who falls in love with Promise and attempts to help her. Soon Chase, Porta, Promise and several other interesting characters are thrown into a confrontation of finding hope and faith.

I really liked this book. It was a faith based thriller that really seemed to become suspenseful towards the end of the story. The beginning of the book focuses a lot of time and attention to introducing us to Promise and to the other characters. I did not like the character of Porta. She was the definite "villian" in the novel, but it sometimes was annoying to read the passages by her. I also disliked Zack even though Promise seemed to always see the hope within him. The author seemed to be trying to share that eternal love, not life, may be the greatest gift of all. Twists and turns at the end of the book made for a really good read and I'm glad I had a chance to read this.

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Scrappin"

Okay, this post is for my mom since she is always begging me to post pictures of my recent scrapbook pages. So here is one that I made about 2 weeks ago and I have hanging upstairs in the craft room. I've been on a real reading binge the last week, so have not made anything new since then, but lots of ideas ready to go; photos and paper laying in piles ready for a new page.

Meet Miffy and Nugget!

Millie has been begging for a pet for a long time now. Of course, she asked for a dog, bunny rabbits, or even another cat, but we decided to start with something smaller. Then last week, we unexpectedly got the opportunity to adopt 2 sweet gerbils.

We have been having so much fun with them. I surprised myself too by becoming rather fond of them. Nugget, the brown gerbil, will spend hours on his wheel. Miffy loves attention and eating sunflower seeds.


Here they both are attacking a toilet paper roll, probably their favorite pastime!

January 30

I had a really nice birthday on Sunday. Millie was so excited to help Mike make homemade frosting for my cake and they got up early to do that.

Later on we got ready to go out on a hike.

Off we go! At least it wasn't raining...

Later that night, a trip to Olive Garden in Kirkland. That was delicious! I am so excited to have a new flip video! Now we can make cute movies of Millie!