Barry Manilow crashed my computer

Cliff was trying to load Barry's Christmas CD into iTunes. This is only the second most embarrassing thing about today. The most embarrassing is that we are still working on our Christmas cards. This is not because we are writing such long, personal messages in each one–it's because every time I open my address book to get started, I'm sidetracked by how many entries are deceased, divorced, or departed to unknown locations. And then there are the ones to whom we owe really long letters. Or visits. It's overwhelming.

A couple of Christmas cats...and a Christmas parade.

Ahhh...the fire, the cats, the lights, too much cocoa...

The gift-wrapped boy was a great marcher, but the box got pretty heavy after a mile.

A trip to the west side

Ethan and Mom took a bus trip to Seattle for a weekend with god-sister Clairey! We got to see her amazingly scary "house" and her amazingly fabulous, brilliant creek. By this time next year, the house will be rebuilt and fabulous too.

New York in November

There are a lot of things to do and think about when you find out you have a terrible disease like ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. When we found out Jan's dad had it, we decided to think about how much we'd like for him to see NYC while he was still mobile enough to enjoy it. So a couple of weeks later, there we were. Many more pictures (though not all of them by any means) are on our Flickr account at www.flickr.com
/photos/cjdolph

Halloween 2006

Here's Pharoah Ethan and Samantha, the little witch from across the street that he plays with all the time. They fight like old married people but seem to enjoy each other anyway. Did I mention the Egypt obsession?

Back to SCHOOL??!!! ALREADY???

It isn't easy to start getting up early every day to go to class but he doesn't whine TOO much. And Ethan is doing OK, too.

Aug. 2006...summer winding down

With Zhenya gone and school looming, we still manage to have some fun. One of the advantages of having a friend living in Milton-Freewater is that we are more motivated to try out things like the Muddy-Frogwater frog-jumping contest. Ethan didn't win, but we had a good day. And a praying mantis is even more fun than a frog!

July 2006: Our temporarily expanded family

If you ever want to see all the things we did while our Belarusian "son" was visiting, you'll have to visit and see Ethan's 102-page scrapbook of the summer. We sent one back with Zhenya, too. We sure miss that little guy!

Grandpa Camp

Ethan spent a week in Spokane while we were tied up with work and continuing education classes. We were amazed each night by the reports of all the things Ethan and Grandpa A. had done during the day.

June at Jubilee Lake

As we ate mint Oreos and watched the sun set, Ethan declared it a perfect day.

May 2006

Cousin Emily's Build-a-Bear birthday party and the Walla Walla Balloon Stampede were highlights.

First piano recital

Practicing is a pain, but lessons are pretty fun, and recitals are the BEST!

Spring break 2006

Ethan is lucky to have an auntie who lives at the coast AND has big dogs!

Speaking of birthdays: Feb. 2006

The obsession of 2006 was EGYPT. Moses, mummies, Pharoahs, pyramids, all things Egyptian. The boy's Bible is getting so it opens automatically to Exodus! We did a treasure hunt that ended in the spooky crawl space down in the basement, made TP mummies and built a pyramid out of cans for the food bank. Lots of work. Maybe next year we'll go to Chuck E. Cheese.

We have some catching up to do: Jan. 2006

Might as well go all the way back to last winter. Ethan's early birthday present was a day of snowboarding at Bluewood with Mom. We both played hookey.

My three guys at the lake

Actually, it's more of a reservoir. But superdad is doing a great job of providing fun summer times for the adorable 7-year-old and his adorable 8-year-old Belarusian brother, who is visiting us for six weeks as part of the Children of Chernobyl program. I took this picture in the afternoon when I joined them after work, and they had already had a four-mile bike ride and blown up the raft, among other adventures.

-J

My son, the carnivorous plant

Missoula Children's Theater was in town last week for The Frog Prince. We predicted he'd be a tadpole (he was a bean for Jack and the Beanstalk), but the Scoot was cast as a venus flytrap.

—J

Went on a garden tour today

Might as well start with my favorite. Wow.



We visited 7 or 8 others as well. Sadly, I didn't take nearly enough pictures of flowers--I was too distracted by stuff that looked like Home Depot ads. I did manage to fit in a picture of a fairy garden for my goddaughter (who really talks to fairies! and sends them letters!) and the pond pictures for my friend who has a ce-ment pond in her backyard and is pondering what to do with the landscaping around it. (Pun made by accident but left in on purpose.)






































And speaking of the ce-ment pond, it was looking really lovely later the same evening. Who needs to spend $15 on garden tour tickets?


—J