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Softball Season Begins

Softball games began this weekend.

Game one, Saturday:
Abby played: right field, left field, third base and shortstop.
She was up to bat twice, and hit the first time, and batted a run in. The team got out before she was able to get off of first base.
Her team won, 3-11.

Game two, Sunday:
Abby played: catcher twice, left field twice.
She was up to bat twice, but struck out both times.
The first inning, her team scored three runs, and held the other team to 0 until the 3rd inning, when they scored four runs. In the fourth inning, they scored twice, and then the other team scored twice as well, for a score of 5-6. I was sure that her team could come back and win, but they called the game for time, as it had been two hours already. Bummer.

Abby said that playing catcher was okay, but that the gear she had to wear was weird and uncomfortable. She said she liked batting best.

More pictures from game one.

The team website.

At The Firestation

Saturday morning, the girls' girl scout group took a trip to the fire station. Five parents went along as well, and I think that the parents might have had more fun than the girls did.

We saw:
The kitchen - where the girls were impressed by the four different refrigerators there. There is one for each shift, plus one where condiments and other shared stuff is kept. They explained how, when the alarm goes off, everything in the kitchen shuts down so that nothing is burned while they go off on their call.

The bedrooms - where the girls wondered why the rooms weren't labeled with their names, and were slightly confused as to how exactly they shared the rooms, when there was only one bed. The firefighters work for 24 hours at a time, in three different shifts.

The media room - where the many recliners were quite impressive.

Offices - not very exciting.

The garage - This was where most of the fun was. Ambulances! Fire trucks! The girls got to go inside the ambulance and see all the different supplies. We learned about how there are different levels of answering a call, some are answered with aid cars, which are staffed by two EMTs, some with medic cars, which are staffed by two paramedics, and then the fire engine, for actual fires, and which can also double as an aid car. All the firefighters are EMTs, and all have been trained to use the defibrillators, and they said that King County has the highest resuscitation rate for cardiac arrests in the nation.

One of the firefighters got all dressed up in his fire-fighting gear, which was quite extensive. The girls also got to see equipment used for getting people out of cars and got to go on the fire engine. Shortly after they saw the fire engine, a call came in and they got to see two of the firefighters leave on the fire engine. They talked about how people tend to freak out when they see a fire engine or ambulance behind them.

The guys that were there were really nice and seemed to enjoy talking to all of us about what they do. Pictures of the visit are here.

Fun with Refrigerators

Tonight I cleaned out my refrigerator. I wasn't really planning on it, but I took a couple of bowls of yucky stuff out, and got rid of that. Then I noticed how gross the shelves were looking, and that there was still nasty stuff in there. So I took out the nasty stuff, washed the one shelf, dried it carefully and put it back in. Then I noticed how disgusting all the other shelves looked compared to the first shelf.

Then I took the small drawer out, and there was gross stuff on the shelf that holds the two produce drawers. I couldn't put a nice clean shelf back on top of a disgusting shelf, so I wrestled out the two produce drawers, which was a trick, as the door of the fridge is blocked by a wall. I washed and washed and washed, and then it came time to put the produce shelves back in. Many gymnastics were performed, and then I realized that an bar inside the drawer was upside down, so the drawers weren't seated correctly. Wrestled drawers out again, fixed bar, wrestled drawers in again. So much fun.

Got everything cleaned and put back in. Then I just stood back and admired my fridge. It made me so happy. How sad is that, when a clean fridge brings so much joy? Katrina has said, "Wow, is that really our fridge?" It really is impressive.

Much Music

Tonight we went to the Redmond Regional Choir Concert, which was hosted by the Redmond High School choir. Many schools participated -- all schools that feed into RHS. We saw six elementary school choirs, two junior high choirs, and two different high school choirs, jazz and regular choir. The bleachers were very crowded, and about 350 kids were there to sing!

In spite of the cramped conditions, the program was a lot of fun. Katrina saw her friend from summer daycamp, and they waved at each other about a million times. Some of the songs were really fun. The first school did a song called "New Shoes Blues" which was very cute. Abby's school did a very nice job, and was definitely the biggest elementary school choir there.

It was interesting looking at the outfits the schools had. Many of the elementary schools, including Abby's, had the kids wear a choir t-shirt and jeans, which looked fine. The elementary school that looked the best had all the kids wear black pants/skirts and a white shirt, and then had a deep red loose-ish cummberbund for all of them to wear, and the cummerbund made them look really put together. Another elementary school had the black bottoms/white tops look as well, but without the cummerbund, it didn't look anywhere near as smooth.

My favorite piece of the program by far was the end, when they got every single student up there, and had them sing a closing song. It sounded great, and what impressed me the most was that even though they had not ever all practiced together, they were doing parts, and it sounded wonderful! I forgot my camera, otherwise I would surely be posting a picture of all of them up there together.

I am looking forward to doing nothing after work tomorrow, as this afternoon Abby had softball from 5-6:30, and choir from 6:30-9. We did manage to find the mysterious indoor facility where her practice was, which was better than we did last week. I would think that if you were directing someone to someplace that looked like a shut-down hardware store, and had really no identifying marks on the outside of the building, you might give them more information than telling them that the "indoor facility" (no name given) is somewhere in the 500 block, but that's me, and apparently other people have lower standards, (or maybe higher standards for the people they give directions to, like psychic abilities?).

Other music news is that Abby has a solo for the spring concert, it's a verse from the "Be Our Guest" song from Beauty & The Beast. It's really very long, but she is doing a great job with it already.

Weekend? What Weekend?

I spent the whole weekend at work. And tomorrow (well, technically today) is Monday!

At work, our round of funding is completed. Yay.

Abby had her first softball practice on Saturday after getting hit in the eye with a softball while running to base last week. She was playing shortstop when I went to pick her up, and seemed to be doing well. She said her coach told her she was a good infielder. Not like her mom, who was always out in right field!

I am hoping that this week is a quieter, less busy week than last week. I have About a Boy on DVD from Netflix, and I'm wanting to watch that again -- Abby and I saw it in the theater, and while she was kind of bored, I really liked it.

I also have some books that I'm wanting to read, including Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson and Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt. I read another book by Kate Atkinson a couple weeks ago and loved it and read it for approximately eight hours straight until I was done with it. Then I was sad it was over. I read Possession by Byatt a while back, and it was a little tough to get into, but was very good after I did.

Theme Songs

The girls have decided that they each have a theme song now. Abby started the trend, and her theme song is "I Will Survive." She has it on a disco CD she got for Christmas, and listened to it during what was evidently a very long room-cleaning session, and memorized every single word. She sings the whole thing, in a falsetto. I laughed until I cried the first time I heard her sing it. Am going to try to record her singing it sometime soon.

Katrina's song, chosen after her sister informed her that she was NOT allowed to sing "I Will Surivive," is "TNT" by AC/DC. She doesn't know all the words, but she sings what she does know with great enthusiasm. The part she knows goes:
I'm TNT, I'm dynamite
I'm TNT, I'm out of sight
I'm TNT, watch me explode!

K. has discovered that singing A's theme song will incur great wrath in her sister, and so does it quite frequently. Warning A. that the less she responds the less her sister will do it doesn't seem to be helping too much yet.

Portland or Bust!

Thankfully, there was no busting involved.

We went down to Portland yesterday to meet some friends for lunch, the zoo and a trip to Powell's bookstore. The weather wasn't looking too promising for the zoo before lunch, but by the time we were done eating, we could actually see sunshine!

We ate at Mother's Bistro, and the food was very good! I had a waffle with ginger pear compote, and the pear was so good, just sweet enough and nicely spiced from the ginger. Katrina had two huge pancakes with a whole layer of chocolate chips inbetween them. We didn't pass her the syrup! Abby had a nicely-rounded meal with eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast.

We took the train to the zoo from downtown, which was nice and handy, as the new line runs right out to the zoo now, and the stop is right by the zoo gates. The zoo was fairly empty, and we saw lots of animals. The polar bears were really fun to watch. They had balls that had been stuffed with fish, so they'd throw the balls around to try to make the fish fall out.

The bats were interesting too. Their cage had bananas hung all around on the branches, and the bats would eat the banana right out of the skin. They had food bowls too, and one bat was hanging with his head just resting in the food bowl!

We saw two seals that started a bit of a fight with each other. They were growling and kind of biting, but then they seemed to calm down, and Katrina got bored, so we were off to see other things.

The girls had fun posing among the animal statues near the elephant area. Katrina seemed to think that I should take lots of pictures of her studying the map of the zoo.

Even though I lived in Portland for six years, I'd never been to Powell's before. It is huge! We picked up maps inside the front entrance, and there were many different rooms, all with color names, and numbered sections inside each room. They have both used and new books, and they put them all together, which makes it really handy to look for cheap books. I could have bought many, many books, but we escaped with a fairly small bagful.

Abby stayed awake all the way home, which surprised me! K. sacked out after we stopped in Centralia for dinner. I fell asleep in the middle of a tv show after we got home. Now I'll never know what happened to the man John Smith was trying to help on the Dead Zone. Well, lucky for me, since it's USA, I'll get to find out Thursday night, when they show the episode again.

Many more pictures available here.

Puddles

The girls managed to find just enough snow last night to build a sad little snowman, who was named Puddles Fredrick. I suggested Puddles, because he'd soon be nothing but a puddle. I'm not sure where Fredrick came from.

This is Puddles:

He died a very sad death this morning, when the girls went out to have a snowball fight, because, well, he was the only snow around.

Poor Puddles.

Katrina played her last two

Katrina played her last two basketball games today. They had a tournament, or sorts, where each team played two others. The girls had back-to-back games, and they tied their first game, 10-10. Then they played their second game, and they got behind at first, then pulled ahead and won it 13-16.

This was particularly exciting because they have not won a single game all season long, and most of the time, they've turned off the scoreboard because they do that when the game gets really lopsided. The girls were really excited, and the parents, maybe even more!

More pictures here.

How much for me, Mommy?

Today we were at the grocery store, and the girls were looking at the People magazine in the rack. The cover of the magazine was comprised of pictures of six celebrities with the money they make underneath it. They saw the picture of Oprah, with $1 billion Net Worth underneath it. Katrina read it, and then, with a horrified tone to her voice said, "They're selling people?"

It's Snowing!

We were all very excited to see the rain turn to snow at about 5:15 tonight. There hasn't even been a hint of snow all winter, and we're almost out of winter!

The whole gallery is available here.

Adventures in Produce

I joined a community farm program, Full Circle Farm, and got all kinds of exciting produce on Wednesday. It was a big box full, and pretty much everything is pictured below!

So far, we have had potato-leek soup, which was basically potatoes and leeks, cooked in water, then blended up with the little hand blender and then seasoned with salt and pepper. I stirred in a half-cup of sour cream right before serving it. Surprisingly enough, both the girls liked it! Katrina had three bowlfuls, and Abby finished her first bowl.

I also made salad to go with the soup. On day one, salad was the salad greens, a cut-up pear, walnuts and a dressing I found online and made. The dressing wasn't very good, and I decided that I just don't like walnuts that much. So tonight's salad was greens, a cut-up pear, almonds and a bleu cheese vinagrette that I got at the grocery store today. Plus Abby made Irish Soda bread, which was very yummy.

We still have a lot of produce to get through. I'm going to make coleslaw tomorrow. Both the girls said they like it, so that's something. I need to find an appropriate dressing for it, because I hate it with mayonnaise.

Here's this week's haul: