This was supposed to be Mt. Rainier

But the sky is pretty.

Weirdest thing I saw in Seattle today

Too early

Flying to Seattle today for a client meeting. I'll be back home in about 15 hours.

Yahtzee with Grandma

Watching Ethan play with his Grandma D, we have been reminiscing about playing Yahtzee with our grandmas. Sixty years from now, maybe he'll be playing it with his grandchildren.

Grandpa and Ethan

Yay--I found it!

I left my favorite Bible in Ethan's classroom at church weeks and weeks ago, and ever since we keep forgetting to look for it, or we're out of town or whatever. It was right where I left it, because hey, who would steal a Bible.

By the way, this picture isn't all that terrible considering it was taken with the crummy Motorola cameraphone.

Rest

Ethan (who took today's picture) loves what he calls "nice evenings" at home, which require candles. And as much darkness as he can talk us into.

Tonight the candlelight came with red lentil soup and a good loaf of bread. Yummmm. Hard to beat a cozy evening when the temp is below 20 and still falling.

Maybe I should be at a casino right now....

This morning while waiting for my windows to defrost, I looked down and saw this. No kidding.

Happy birthday, Dad!!

Weird sky out my office window

Scooter on ice

I dropped him off and ran, but Becky stayed long enough to take a picture.

One small step...

This may not look like a page from Better Homes to you, but about an hour ago it was piled high with tools to go to the garage, Christmas light bulbs, and much assorted what-not. So to us, it looks pretty darn spectacular.

(IMPORTANT: Please imagine that the what-not is tidily stored away in its proper place, rather than simply moved to a nearby counter.)

Yipes! Almost forgot today's entry.

No worries...42 minutes to spare.

We shoulda brought the skateboard!

Gigantic ramp that was just completed for Dad (and what it looked like the next morning)

After Dec. 25, decorations just look sad

Which is why they'll probably come down today. I will miss the twinkly lights, though.

This is my first post from the cell phone! No excuses for missing the daily photo now. The only downside? Cingular charges something like 25 cents per message. And many of my pictures (this one, for example) aren't worth 19 cents to print, let alone an entire quarter, four of which could buy me a big delicious bottle of lime diet Coke. Mmmmmm.

The other contender for today's photo was Lita's Feet II. Unfortunately, the picture I took of them wasn't on the cell phone, and testing the mobile was the whole point of today's post. My co-workers have some very nice shoes.
- J

P.S. Hey, why not throw them in now.

Raindrops

We meant to use our morning break for a walk, but a few steps into it, the rain began. By the time we finished one trip around the circle (1/4 mile) we were soggy and ready to quit. At least Lita got a chance to put on her cute shoes.

Unwinding

Today was the first day back at school for the boys. Ethan had a few tears last night about the end of vacation, but his new alarm clock helped ease the pain. He was the first one dressed this morning! This picture shows how Cliff unwinds after a big day back in the classroom.

Toy heaven...or something

We have discovered the solution to our toy troubles. First, Dad picked out a few bags of outgrown toys to donate or share, which will make a small dent. Next, we discovered a large space in our house that was being used only to store boxes! It's a little dark and dreary, has a few spider webs...but potential, yes? No?

Assembly not included

We are beginning 2007 with a full house. Extremely full. And word to the wise: When the box says "ages 10 and up," pay attention. Your 7-year-old may desperately want this toy and have loads of fun with it (eventually), but the assembly of those hundreds of little parts is all yours. Which is why we spent about 6 hours constructing the K'nex roller coaster and why as soon as I'm done typing this I go back to assembling the slot car track down the hall. We had to move the rug out of his room to find space for it. I just hope there will still be room for the bed!

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