Eric and I headed to Ellensburg today. We go every year about this time as Julie and I have a tradition of going to the scrapbook convention in Bellevue every year. We stopped at Eric’s parents first. Neither Bob nor Julie were home so we just left Baylee there while we went to Greg and Hollie’s to see them and the kids. The last time we saw them all was Father’s day weekend in June when they’d just bought the house and showed it to us.

We timed it just right as Beth was just awake and it wasn’t long until Miles had woken up. Those two kids are SO cute and I can’t believe how big they’re getting. Eric and I were stilling in the living room chatting with Greg when Miles came down the stairs turned and headed towards us. Hollie said something like, “Look it’s auntie and uncle” and Miles smiled from ear to ear and came running toward us. Of course it was big hugs all the way around. We sat there and chatted with Greg and played with the kids while Hollie was messing around in the kitchen. Beth is so super cute with her big brown eyes. Beth is so young and we haven’t spent the time with her like we have Miles because Greg and Hollie moved a little less than a year ago so I’m really not sure if she even knows who we are yet. It was a lot of fun though to play with the kids and catch up with Greg and Hollie.

It wasn’t long and Miles asked if we wanted to go upstairs and play video games. Originally he’d ask me if I wanted to play but I asked if Eric could play with him because Eric likes video games and with my tendinitis the repeated thumb usage isn’t good for me. We all headed upstairs to the landing where the kids have this great little play space to play video games and trains. It’s such a fun little place. Miles played a couple of games for a bit while Beth, Greg, Eric and I watched. Then, Eric and Miles were playing. Beth had a blast cruising around upstairs checking things out, jumping on the bed and playing with Miles clothes. Greg was multi-tasking by watching his laptop and hanging out with us while Hollie was downstairs. I had a lot of fun keeping Beth happy while the boys played video games. She’s VERY ticklish so of course I tickled her like crazy. One of the most precious moments was when Greg was on the floor with Beth and tickled her. He had Beth in his arms with her back to him while he hugged her with one hand and tickled her with the other. The best part was their facial expressions. I wished at that moment I had the camera because you could see the love Greg has for Beth and the love she has for her daddy. It was a very precious moment! It is those moments with the kids that mean so much. I want to have a close relationship with both Miles and Beth.

After we’d spent a few hours at Greg and Hollie’s we headed back to Bob and Julie’s to spend a little time, have a cocktail and chill before we all met at the local pasta restaurant for dinner with Greg, Hollie and the kids. I had a great night. I mean, it was so nice to sit with Bob and Julie at home, have a little to drink and catch up on things going on with all of us. It makes me appreciate the “slow times” where you really get the opportunity to talk with each other. Later on we headed to dinner and met up with Greg, Hollie and the kids. It was a great dinner; the kids were so good, better than I think I was at that age. It was nice to sit as a family and have dinner together and catch up. I really love moments like that, gathering together, spending time, chatting about all sorts of things and just appreciating each other. What a great night.

It’s 1:10p, Wednesday and I’m sitting here at work trying hard to deny the fact that I really am here at work and I need to do something and the iPod and “surfing” isn’t doing it, so what should I do? Well, I realized that I have yet to post about this last weekend and Father’s day. So here goes…..

So Friday Eric and I got to Ellensburg for the weekend. Jim, Eric’s grandpa, was there too and the plan for the weekend was that “the guys” would be golfing sometime on Saturday while Julie, my mother and I hang out and did, “woman things”. OK, so we get there on Friday and of course it was but a millisecond that Eric sat down with his grandpa and watched golf or some other sport. I had wanted to go around and take pictures of places I remembered from my childhood. Julie and I decided we’d drive around and do that since neither of us wanted to be subjected to sports. So we jumped in the car and headed out. Here’s the pictures:

1) This was my childhood home, just off Tamarack street and down the street from the park. Man, I loved that house and living there. I have many a story about that place and the adventures there, but I’ll save it for my “Book of Me” scrapbooking I’m determined to work on.

Ellensburg House,

2) The “Castle House”, this was the coolest ever place when I was a kid. My parents used to drive by that place every day on the way to the sitters or school and I’d dream about the place and wonder…. What if..

Castle House,

3) Mt. Stewart Elementary School
I went to kindergarten and first grade at that school. My best friend was Barbara Mann. He dad was a cop in town, if I remember. It was there that I had my first crush, Jeff Rainey, wonder what ever happened to him.

Mt. Stewart,

4) Mrs. Shore’s house. Mrs. Shore was my babysitter. She lived just about a block from school. I had a blast there. I have such fond memories.

Mrs. Shore’s,

5) CWU indoor pool, the first one. It was here that I learned how to swim. Mrs. Purser was my teacher and man was she mean. I mean she’d throw us kids in the water and tell us to “swim”. Oh the stories. The best though was when she’d make us go off the high dive then jump in (she was LARGE) after us. When you hit the water you really swimming for your life!

CWU Pool,

Saturday the guys went golfing in Mattawa. Julie and I met my mom there and took off for Othello and “hanging out”. It was a nice day, especially the authentic Mexican food in “little Mexico”.

Sunday was the best day. Greg, Hollie and the kids came over for brunch and we all hung out for a while. Here are some great pictures of the day. It was so nice to spend some times with the whole family. After brunch we got to go to see Greg and Hollie’s new house. It’s super cool and bigger, which is a great plus for them. I can’t wait to see it when they’re all in and it feels like them. What an exciting time for them.

Miles,

I seriously can’t believe it’s been almost ten days since I wrote in my blog. I guess that shows the level of busy I’ve been. Be prepared for a looonnnngggg post

Work:
I’ve been working like crazy at work trying to get ahead and really kick butt this year and make a name for my self in this organization. I’ve been working on a few HUGE projects and then a couple HUGE proposals. First the projects; one of the project I’m working on is for our site in Massachusetts. It’s a pretty huge project meaning a lot of people (over 7000 people) and a lot of applications (about 10). Just about every day something changes and I’ve got to plan for something else. It’s like juggling a bunch of balls all at the same time. It’s a challenge, but a healthy one. The other project I’m managing is a Canada deployment. At first I was pretty excited because I thought I’d get to go to Canada but turns out that there are only 12-15 people that will need the training and with current conditions I’ll be doing it over Netmeeting or something like that. The other fun, well ok, not so fun thing is that the Canada project has pulled in their date so now it’s going to be the same time I’ll be in Boston training people there. Argh…..

I’ve got two proposal I’m working on at the moment as well. One is a process to implement team health assessments. The group I work in hasn’t taken a team health assessment in a very long time, if at all. I’ve designed a team health survey that I’m piloting with my team. I’ll report out on the results and then present the results to my team. We’ll work on designing actions to take to improve things and see how it goes. I’m going to be recommending that we go through the process twice a month. I’m actually interested to see what sort of data comes in. I guess I’ll find out in the next few days.

The other proposal I’m almost finished with is one on what’s called Impact Mapping. What is impact mapping you say? Well, an impact map is a visual representation of the linkage between learning and “impact” to the business organization. Think of it like an excel sheet. In the first column you’ve got the job roles, next column is the key skills and knowledge the person in that job role will learn as a result of the training they’ll be attending. Next column is the OJT (On The Job) application. Basically you would state what behaviors the trainee would exhibit as a result of the training. Next column is the team results, meaning how does the training have a positive effect on the team goals, next column is similar but business goals and last column is the corporate goals. The short of it is you’re basically showing the student how the objectives and tasks they learn in the training roll up hill to the rest of the organization. The idea is that by connecting the dots the trainee understand why they’re at the training and the training will have more meaning for them because they get why they should care.

Eric:
Well I guess I can tell everyone that reads this blog. Eric didn’t get into the Radiography program for PCC. He was 4 points shy. We also found out the other day he didn’t’ get into the Yakima program either. It was a bummer but neither Eric nor I were devastated about it. I mean it does mean that he’ll have to wait another year and apply but he’s got a job he likes so it’s not a huge deal. It was nice too that he’s been encourages by both to re-apply next year. He was so super close this year. It does stink that he didn’t get in but the good things are that he can most likely go with me to Boston in August/September. The best thing, is we get to stay together…

Birthday:
This weekend the parental units all came down for My birthday and Eric’s birthday. This year we did something super fun and super adult. We went wine touring all day Saturday and then went out to dinner down town to , The Melting Pot. I loved the whole day. Eric did a great job of planning all the wineries. We started out at Adelsheim. It was so cool there. We drove all over the place to get there, even to the top of Bald Peek. The drive was wonderful and picturesque. At Adelsheim we have a full blown tour of the place. We all learned so very much in the tour. One of the biggest things I learned was that when the juice comes out of the grapes the winemaker tastes it and then determines what flavors he wants to accentuate out of the wine. Once she/he decides that they put a specific yeast in the wine to make the desired flavors come out. I knew they used yeast to make wine but I didn’t think that different yeasts were used to get specific flavors to come out when the wine is poured.

Let me see we went to;
Willakenzie Estate
I loved this winery. The scenery around the winery was fantastic. The winery had a ton and a half of Pino Noirs. I didn’t think you could have that many Pinos.

Carlton Winemaker Studio
I was a little disappointed with the studio. I thought it would have more wines and be a bigger and better place. Unfortunately it wasn’t that much to talk about. I had a few wines but nothing that was so wonderful I’d buy it.

Cuneo Cellars
I really, really liked Cuneo. They has some very nice wines and a variety too. What was cool there too was that they had a Bocce ball area where you can play the real way. What’s cool too is that they have a league that play Bocce ball weekly.

Elk Cove
Elk Cove was another wonderful winery with a great view. I loved the Riesling and ice wine. It was so nice and sweet. There was a cute old golden retriever dog too. What a cutie.

Kramer Vineyard
This was our last stop and the nicest from a nick knacks perspective. My mom found something to buy and Julie bought some cool hand painted glasses. I didn’t get a picture of them but they were super cool.

After all the wine we headed back home in time to change and all jump on the MAX to head into town. We had dinner reservations at The Melting Pot. I loved the place. The restaurant is a fondue place. We ended up getting a great 4 course dinner there. The coolest things was that all the fondues were made right there tableside. It was so fun and made for a great long dinner. First was the cheese course. We had two different kinds of cheese fondues and got to eat them with apples, veggies and bread, then a yummy salad. Next course was a meat course. Again we had two types of fondue, one with a wine fondue, the other with an oil sort of thing. The last was the best, Chocolate fondue. It was amazing. I loved dipping the fruit and eating them with chocolate. The best was the Oreo covered marshmallows dipped in the chocolate. The heat of the chocolate melted the marshmallows a little bit and made for a wonderful dessert.

Last thing……

Tonight Eric and I went to the place called Dinners Ready. Basically, you go and make meals, freeze them and then eat them later. We went for the first time and had a good time. It was pretty reasonable too. We made 24 dinners in less that 2 hours. I did the math and factoring in the cost each meal is only about $4.50 per person which is less than we’ve been spending. It should be nice because now we’re set for much of the month. We decided to try it this month because now that Eric is at work until 6pm he doesn’t make it home until about 7pm, if he’s lucky. I’m getting to the gym just about every day and by the time I get home it’s almost 6:30pm. When we each get home neither of us have much of an energy level to make dinner so we thought we’d try this and we’ll how it goes.

Today is what you call a cluster… you know what. Actually it was a super fun day. Eric and I are at his parents in Ellensburg in Washington. Today we went to the jewelry store in town so I could get my engagement ring which is a family ring from my mother-in-law Julie’s mother. It’s been passed down from generation to generation. Anyway, I went to have the prongs checked and found out that emeralds are so delicate that they can’t really re-prong without taking all the stones out. The jeweler recommended a new setting so I asked if him if he could make a similar setting as my wedding rings for the stones. I was so happy when he said he could do that. SO now when Bob and Julie come down in May they’ll bring my engagement ring but set in a new setting. SO exciting. I can’t even wait…

Once we were done we headed to Yakima on the hunt for a new plasma TV for Bob. It’s sort of funny. Bob is a lot like me in that when he really wants something he gets tunnel vision and doesn’t stop until he gets what he’s looking for. Today we started in Costco, then to Best Buy, then some no name place in the Valley mall then to Sears. We finally found what he was looking for at Sears and bought it. It was sort of cool because Eric and I were able to save him a few hundred dollars with our “no tax” Oregon thing. The funny thing is that we were so sure we could get it in the car but it would get in so we all piled back in the Lexus and headed back to Ellensburg. Once we got back Julie and I headed to lunch/early dinner while Eric and Bob jumped in the truck and headed back to get the TV.

The guys came home and we thought everything was ready to go and all good. The guys were so excited they wanted to rip the box open, plug the TV in and check it out. Unfortunately it was a little more effort than that to get the TV out of the box. We got the old TV moved and the new one put in its place when Bob and Eric realized that they needed something for the TV to sit on. Of course Julie and I offered to go to Fred Meyer to get it so they could have a drink. Julie and I went to Fred Meyer for the 4th time in one day. I have to say my thought as we drove up was something like, “Oh, God, we’re here AGAIN!” After a few cell phone calls we finally decided which table to get for the space. We bought it and were out the door. Once we got home the guys started putting the table together. It was so funny because Eric opened the box, found the directions and then noticed they were like Ikea directions, no words, just pictures. Eric just sort of looked at the directions and had the helpless, “I don’t want to do this” look on his face. Bob took the initiative and started putting it together. It wasn’t long until we had the table thing together and put it in the space where the TV used to be. Now the guys are sitting here playing a golf game with sounds of; “oh” “ah”, “check this out, you can see the rough!”, “Look at the people walking in the back!” So now Julie and I sit here, watching a little video game playing and listen to the boys get all excited about their game.

ah….. technology how easily entertained are the boys! Like father, like son!

This year for New Year’s Eric and I, and his parents, went to dinner and Mamma Mia at the Keller. I was so glad I did it. It was such an awesome night! It all started a bit before Thanksgiving when I heard that Mamma Mia was coming back to town. They were here last year and we didn’t go because a number of reasons. So I had been thinking about it for a while this year but kept hemming and hawing because of the cost. During Thanksgiving I brought it up with Julie and she thought it was a great idea and mentioned that she and Bob hadn’t been either so I asked them if they wanted to go with us and make a night of it. I had left it pretty open not really sure if I’d buy the tickets or not and really commit to it, then one day I just called Julie, asked her for a date that worked for them and bought the tickets. It was sort of funny too because Julie was a little concerned that she and Bob would be imposing on our night see as how it was going to be New Year’s Eve when we went. I thought it was so cute and funny at the same time because I didn’t think of it as an imposition or anything. I guess that’s the difference between getting along with your in-laws and not. I love my in-laws. Talking to Julie is almost like talking to my mother. Sometimes the similarities are scary.

So New Year’s Eve day Eric and I hung out and did much of nothing during the day and waited for Eric’s parents to come. Once they got there Eric and his dad watched some sports game while Julie and I headed to the scrapbook store. I love Scrapbook Attack. Julie bought a QuicKutz letter set since she bought my old tool from me when she was here last. After that we went and bought a car battery for my car since it has been having issues lately, then we headed home to get ready for dinner and the show. We went to this fantastic restaurant, Carafe. It was just across the street from the Keller and had valet service. We started out with drinks and I had this great espresso martini. It tasted like and iced coffee but better. It was fantastic. We each got something different for dinner and each sampled each others food. Eric had an awesome steak with fries. Those fries were the best ever. I had a pork chop with this cream white polenta and savory pears. It was tasty.

After dinner we headed to the show. It was so neat seeing all these different people, some dressed to the nines and some not. We sat in our seats in the first balcony. Man, they were good seats. I was so excited because I’d never been to a Broadway, or off Broadway show before. The house lights went down and the stage lights went up and so the production began. It was AWESOME! I loved hearing all the ABBA songs and the story line was very cute too. I sat there so happy and having such a great time. The best was when they sang, “Knowing you, Knowing me”. In the song the lyrics go something like;
“Knowing you, knowing me… ahhhaaaa”
Well, Eric’s mom and I did the same thing to the song. We would mouth the words and then to a hand gesture where we’d dip our hand down and then back up, like a wave. What was funny was I noticed Julie do it when I did (Eric was sitting between us) and then asked Eric to watch his mom and he noticed we were both doing it at the same time and he chuckled. At the end of the show they did an encore and even sang Waterloo in these flashy costumes. They also sang Dancing Queen again. Julie and I stood up and clapped to the music along with the rest of the audience. It was great.

When we got out of the theater our car was waiting for us. It didn’t take us much time to get home either. We had about 30 minutes to kill before the new year. We put on some ABBA and Eric, Julie and I danced a bit while we waited. Of course Bob was in the corner, ear buds in listening to the Mamma’s and the Pappa’s on his new ipod. When we had just a few more minutes we turned on the TV, watched the ball drop and toasted the new year with champagne.

What a great New Years!!!!