Awake

Happy Monday! (Oh wait. It's Thursday.)

I love a good snow day. Two snow days: whoa. On a week with a holiday? Even better.

This week, I had MLK, Jr. day off and spent it up north with the fam. I headed up to Oly on Saturday night after teaching the 4s about John baptizing Jesus and trying to 4-year-old-ize answers to questions they were asking about the nature of the trinitarian God. (Yes, they're 4. Yes, they really did ask me about that.) Originally, Seth and April (and the girls) were going to Seattle to Deliver The Wii to Brant and Jackie. Of course, I wanted a piece of that action and since I had a holiday on Monday, I told them I'd be tagging along. Well then Brant reminded us that Jackie's birthday was on Tuesday and would we want to celebrate her birthday while we were all up there? But of course! Plus it made perfect sense.

Meanwhile, The Dadoo was in Mississippi replacing rotten siding, installing plumbing and doing other tasks that enabled a few flood-affected families in Moss Point to return home. He was to return home on Saturday, but due to a storm, the flight was diverted and he wouldn't be arriving in Portland until around 11pm Saturday night. So we weren't really expecting Mom and Dad to join us, but alas, they could not deny their dual parental and grandparental natures and like a moth drawn to a flame ("it's so beau-ti-ful") they decided to drive up to Oly on Saturday night, stay overnight in a hotel to rest up, and join us late-morning at Seth and April's to hang out with their granddaughters.

So on Sunday afternoon after Seth got home from work and we all had lunch, we drove up to Seattle to celebrate Jackie's birthday and Deliver The Wii. It was a delightful afternoon, albeit short-lived. April and I made Pink Lady smoothies for everyone as well as dinner and for dessert we broke out The Great Chocolate Fountain. The boys played with the Wii—I've never seen The Dadoo so relaxed! It was fabulous. (I may have to find a way to integrate the Wii into my practice. "For homework, I recommend 30 minutes of Wii Golf. Don't forget to stretch before and after." ;)

On Sunday evening, we headed South—Mom and Dad to Portland and myself to Oly to stay another night at Seth and April's. I finally got a chance to play with the Wii—it is so fun. Fun for all ages, actually. The Wii takes a SD memory card from a digital camera. My camera's card is an SD card so we plugged it in and sure enough, it loaded all my pictures and videos—even ones I had deleted years ago! (Side note: the Wii may be an effective tool in recovering deleted photos off an SD card. Just plug in the SD card into the Wii, select the photos you want to recover, and email them to yourself!) There are a few fun programs where you can "draw" on the photos and there's a few effects as well, like turning a photo black and white. If you're connected to the Internet, you can email these photos to anyone. Likewise, you can receive photos from others on the Wii as well! I'm going to give my niece Adalie one of my spare 32 MB SD cards to use in her Fisher Price digital camera so that she can take pictures, load them onto the Wii, have fun with them and then send them off to her extended family. How fun is that?

So then, the snow. On Tuesday, I didn't even realize it had snowed until I opened my back door to leave for work. What a delightful surprise that was! I called into work and sure enough, the office was closed for the day and it turned out, Wednesday as well. My classes were cancelled both Tuesday and Wednesday. So no first day of Clinic for me. I guess in a small way, I experienced the reality of how inclement weather impacts a business.

So now it's finally "Monday" but it's already Thursday. Bliss.

Happy Slush Day.

Bonus video: This was the video of the week. Bumper cars slippin' and slidin' and crashin' down SW Salmon Street (up the hill from where I work).