N Style

I finally picked up my knitting needles for the first time in a week last night. Still moving along on the socks. And Luan's Noni bag.

Just as I fortold, I've been far too engrossed in Animal Crossing to get much knitting done. Embarrassing to say that I ended up purchasing 3 copies of the game - one for each of the kids and me - because I got tired of the kids' fighting and having to share my house with them. Now each of the kids have an original DS, and I purchased a used DS Lite for Steve, although he teases me that it was really for me. I keep telling him that if it was for me, I would have purchased a new pink or black one. :rolling eyes: I am such a geek.

We finally had a birthday party for Shea last Sunday with her friends. It was an Ice Cream Social theme and all of the kids had fun putting on far too many toppings! Most of their creations looked like Clark's. Making his/her own personal concoction was more fun for most of the kids than actually eating it.

With all of the sweets from the ice cream we decided to forego the cake I had purchased for Shea, so we all had another private family celebration on Monday. Shea was finally able to blow out some candles.


In the end I guess Shea ended up having a two-week celebration instead of a single day. Still can't believe she's five!

Happily friends of ours whom we've known from far before we all had kids moved back into town, after two years. We're having them over for dinner tonight, as well. Going to introduce them to Steve's other geeky pursuit Settlers of Catan - Knights & Cities.

My baby is now a big 5-year old! I can't believe it! Such a little lady and still so sweet! Everybody loves Shea.

We had originally planned to got to Minnesota for one of Steve's cousin's son's Bar Mitzvah, but the flights were too full. We were all so disappointed we decided to make a quick trip to the mountains and spent the night in Idaho Springs at the Indian Springs Resort. Personally, "resort" is considerable s-t-r-e-t-c-h of the term. The room was rather spendy for quality at about a Motel 6 level, and the "resort" looked all of its 100+ years.


The indoor pool had the tropical feel of a terrarium, albeit half of the roof was composed of blue tarps. Yet, the water was warm and the kids had fun.





Poor Shea. Since we hadn't planned to be in town, we didn't have her birthday party scheduled. Yet she was sad because she felt it wasn't her birthday without a party, and I guess, spending time with her family wasn't enough of a party. But we didn't forget about her birthday and brought a couple of presents along with us for her to open.


I think that in the end she had a pretty good birthday even though she didn't get a party with her friends. ;)

Never forget.

How can I? 9/11 was truly one of those events I will always remember.

I was pregnant with Shea and near the end of my 9 months. I decided to sleep in a little, since I wasn't feeling all that well and rather exhausted. When I first woke up the main topic in the news was the Bronco's Monday Night game and Ed McCaffrey's broken leg. I called in to work and went back to sleep. As I was driving in, I heard the news on the radio. A plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers! I had a glimmering fear of terrorist attack, and then it was confirmed as the reporter suddenly started saying that another had just crashed into the other tower! What chaos! What an immense feeling of fear and concern, anger and sorrow!

It was already all the talk at work when I arrived, and it continued to absorb everyone all day. The worry was palpable. Management tried to get us all to "show those terrorists and get back to work" but it was difficult when it was on everyone's mind, including our customer's. Plus, nothing could be shipped for the next few days.

Of course, it was stressful. Sadly, one of my greatest fears was that Shea would be born near the day. I did not want her birthday to be constantly associated with 9/11, since I knew it would remain emblazoned in our history books. I guess that personalizing the event was my feeble way of trying to cope with the situation.

My thoughts and prayers go out to eveyone who experienced loss from 9/11. You will not be forgotten.

Fun night! We helped Kevin & Michelle serve beer at the Brew at the Zoo. Basically it was a "beer fest" with fancy foods, beer, and wine (albeit very minimal in the wine department) all with the ambiance of the zoo. The weather turned out perfect considering it was rather cold and rainy earlier in the day. Amazingly, we ran out of beer about an hour shy of the end of the evening. The cool thing about the event was that everyone was serving full pours; that is until they all started to run out of libations.

Still we had a lot of fun, and this will probably become a yearly event for us.

The kids had an enjoyable night, too, with our newest sitter. ;)

OK. So I splurged yet again, and purchased another copy of Animal Crossing off of eBay. (You've gotta love eBay for the ability to find anything!) So far it's saved me $15, including shipping! Not to mention saving me referee time with the kids. Woo hoo! Hoping I'll see it by the end of the weekend. :)

Shea, Clark and I each have a person in town now. What I don't understand is why we all have to do the exact same things? I was hoping that we would save time by helping each other out with reduced rent, so to speak. Guess we'll see. I've been quite impressed by how much Shea has been able to figure out even without being able to read. Of course, Clark has already talked with everyone and even created his own constellation! Now, we're all working on convincing Steve to join our house, too. lol I'm such a geek.

In knitting news I managed to add another 1/4" to the socks, which seems to be about the width of each stripe. It's fun to watch the bands grow and see the colors blend. But the socks still aren't coming along as quickly as I think they should in my mind. I am concentrating on improving my purl tension. We'll see how it goes.

Too tired now to do much more of anything right now. It was a terrific weekend with a lot of friends preventing us from being homebodies. It actually makes it a little easier to get back to work for some reason.

ETA: So sad about Steve Irwin. I always found him fun to watch. He seemed to be so full of like! I feel so sad for his family. :(

I broke down and finally exchanged the Nintendogs game that Steve had purchased on a whim but never gave the kids. Yes, Nintendogs is supposed to be very addictive, but we have a real dog. Why would a digital one be more fun? (That was a rhetorical question. I've been struggling with the fact lately that I really think that I turned into a cat person at some point. Poor Lilo. She's a terrific dog, and the rest of the family loves her. I, on the other hand, still miss our dearly departed kitty, Hunter.)

Anyway . . . I got all excited to play with Shea on Clark's DS (yes, his aforementioned hinted at birthday present), but Animal Crossing happens to be a game in which two (2) (!@#$!) cards are required to play together unlike the other games we have which only require one. How completely frustrating! I don't really feel like shelling out another $35 just to play with the kids on this silly game. But who knows? I'm currently in obsessive/compulsive mode about the whole thing to begin with, and all for a silly game. I'm such a geek. Plus, the kids are already fighting over who gets to play. Bummer to have 2 DS's and only one game that we can't share! Maybe I can hunt down a used one . . . .

At least I was able to gain about 1/4 inch on my socks. Other than that I spent much of yesterday cleaning the house, buying groceries, doing laundry, etc. I seemed to have very little time to do much of anything "fun". Guess that's why I woke up at 6:00 AM today and couldn't seem to get back to sleep. Here's hoping my last day of my 3-day weekend is a little more productive in the fun sense.

Can't believe it's already September. Clark told me a couple of times earlier this week that this year has really "gone by fast." Interesting that he would notice this at barely 7 years old. I don't think I realized how quickly years can go by until I was 10 or so.

Steve, Luan and I have been testing our Brain Age the last couple of weeks. It's fun albeit somewhat frustrating. Personally, I'm not so good with the math calculations, which doesn't surprise me, because I recall being nearly last person in class who could complete 100 multiplications in whatever time period it was in 5th grade. I've done very well at the memory games and the color/word test, however. I started out at a brain age of 45 and today reduced it to 39. The target is a brain age of 20. We've completely hooked Luan, and now she's thinking about buying a DS just for the game.

I've also been interested in checking out Animal Crossing for the DS, after reading a thread about it on my knitting board (of all places). I'm such a geek. (Steve has started World of Warcraft, though, so he's a geek, too.) Only problem with starting something like this is that 1) it will cut into my knitting time, 2) it will result in my house being even more disorganized than it is. Not that I should encourage the kids to play video games, but I think it might be fun to play with them. May have to consider asking for my own DS for my birthday, since my knitting stash is doing just fine right now. ;)

I still wasn't able to find the pattern match after rewinding the sock yarn into 2 balls. Yet it has made it considerably easier to start my next pair of socks. I'm hoping they won't look too silly being mismatched and all.

Socks. I was anticipating spending my first evening of a 3-day weekend restarting (for the third time) my new socks with my new yarn - Lana Grossa Meilenweit Fantasy.



However, the yarn gods had something else to say about that. Here I thought I was so clever to knit 2 socks on 2 circs using 2 ends of one ball of yarn. All I have accomplished thus far is casting on, knitting one side, and getting lost in all the needles and tangled in the yarn. Why is it that the mere change of yarn gauge and reduction to 1 skein could create such havoc?

:sigh: BIG :sigh:

Back to the drawing board or maybe I should say ball winder. Me thinks I must now rewind my yarn ball into two. On the bright side I might even find the stripe pattern and get my socks to match.