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January 5, 2007

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Well, the partying is over, the new resolutions have been made (and hopefully not broken) and we are into another year. I was just getting in the habit of writing 2006 and now it's 2007 already. I hope everyone has a happy new year!

We had our two oldest granddaughters, Ashtin and Paige stay with us for a few days during their school Christmas holiday to give their parents a break. Dave had a couple of broadcasts to engineer in Portland, a lacrosse game and a basketball game, so the girls and I were on our own for a couple of those days. We drove up to Seaside on the first day to go on some of the amusement rides. Wouldn't you know it; they were closed for the season. That was a big disappointment for the girls. However, we did go on the carrousel and they got to pick out some candy at the Candy Man Store while we were in town.

Since I was in the neighborhood of Costco and Fred Meyer, I decided to take them shopping with me. I mentioned to them that they had cameras throughout the store that was keeping an eye on everyone so that they had better be on their good behavior or they would kick us out. Everything went fine until four-year-old Paige wanted to push the shopping cart and ended up running over some old lady in the aisle. She could barely see over the top of the cart to begin with and she was going too fast. Oh well, the lady lived and I learned my lesson!

On the way home, we stopped at the scenic turnout on Neah-kah-nie Mountain to see if we could spot any whales in the ocean migrating south for the winter. No such luck there either. It just wasn't our day. That's the viewpoint that you can see to the right of the "Jan's Journal" photo at the top of the page. Great place to watch for whales...if they're there!

Another thing we did was taking them to the Tillamook Cheese Factory where they watched them make and package cheese. Afterwards, they got to pick from a zillion flavors of ice cream for a cone. That was fun.

But, by the third day of their stay they began to fade fast and were really getting homesick and missed their mother. They can only play so many computer games and the weather was too cold to be outside. Thank heavens, Granddad showed up and he entertained them for a while. But by New Year's Day, they were ready to go home. We went to Silverton and dropped them off on our way to a Blazer game that we had to work that night.

We stayed in town for a couple of days as the Blazer games were only a day apart and it is too much of a drive to run back and forth. I got a couple of errands done and visited with my Mom while I was in town.

Besides spotting our usual number of deer along the highway and watching the temperature gauge drop below freezing while we kept our eye on the road for icy spots, our trip home after the Blazer game on Wednesday night was uneventful. It was almost 1:00 AM when we pulled into the driveway. One of the reasons we came home right after the game was that I had a Park Committee meeting in the morning. As it turned out, the meeting had been cancelled and we could have waited until the next day after all. I made sure City Hall has our email and cell numbers in case that ever happens again! But it is always good to be home in your own bed after being away, so I am glad we drove back that night.

I have spent the remainder of this week doing laundry and cleaning house. I also got my Christmas decorations down so that is done for another year.

With all the activity around here the past week, you'd think we would have taken at least one picture...but, no we didn't. Maybe next week.