Saturday, May 30, 2009

Watermelon freak

Trying to post some videos AGAIN.



Nick the watermelon freak.

Fishy


My husband has an aquarium screensaver on his PC and every time my son sees this, he runs over to the screen, points at the fish and says 'shshy'.  I'm working on the f's with him.  Shshy is now bishy.  Close.

I was bored the other day so I took him to Petsmart to check out the real fish.  I had no idea that when I tried to leave that he would throw the worlds biggest hissy.  He sounded like he was being murdered.  Or the fish were being murdered.

'Mmmmaaaaammmmmaaaaa!  Bishhhhhyyyyyyyy-yyyy-yyyyy'  
"Noooooooooooo..... Bishyyyyyyyyyyyy!'

To avoid further embarrassment, I turned the cart around and we went back to the tanks.  This led to me pricing the tanks, rocks and everything else for him.  He thought we were leaving again even after I explained what I was doing - finding a house for the fish.  He seemed satisfied enough when I gave him the net to hold.  Like that was the sign he was getting some fish to take home.

The last thing - getting the fish.  He had to pick them out.  Himself.  Of course, catching the fish you want from a tank of 3000 feeder goldfish is easy right?  We ended up with 3 different colored ones.  A white/silver mix, an all orange and and orange/black combo.  Off we go to the register, this time without screaming.  That bulging with air, fish filled bag is in his little hands and he's fascinated.  I had to pry it away from him so they could get the codes to ring it up.  All the way home, he held the bag.  I couldn't look bag there because each time I thought I'd find the bag opened or being tossed around.  Poor fish weren't going to survive the short trip home.

But they did.  I had them sitting in the sink getting acclimated to the new water temperature while I fixed up the tank.  No small feat mind you, when there are tiny little hands darting here and there trying to get some piece of the setup.  Plants, rocks, air stone.........

Its finally ready and in go the fish.  There was this loud 'ooooooohhhhhhhhhhh' that escaped from him.  He makes that sound whenever he finds something he likes (and probably shouldn't have).  Seeing his fish for the first time must have really excited him.  

And then he started talking to them.  He leans in really close and just babbles.  Baby babbles.  The word 'bishy' comes out every once in a while and he points his crooked little finger at them.  We're still working on the 'don't poke the fish' rule.  That concept is not grasped yet.  These poor fish are going to die of a crooked finger induced heart attack.  Which proves my point when I told the fish girl at Petsmart that we didn't need the 200 gallon tank for the feeder fish.  My little one gallon would do just fine.  If they make it past the weekend, I'll consider upgrading.

This is when I notice that the white/silver one is missing an eye.  Oh lordy.  He'll be the first to go.  2 days later and he's still hearty.  Looking at the missing eye, it doesn't look like its fresh.  Maybe he was born eyeless.  Who knows.  He just has a hard time finding food from that angle so I need to make sure I drop some on the side of his good eye.

So we now have One Eyed Pete, Marley and Bishy.  One Eyed Pete is obvious.  Marley is the all orange fish and Bishy is the orange/black one.

And so begins the adventure in fish parenthood.  We need to work on the feeding.  Nick thinks the flakes are for him.  He also wants to play ball with them.  He'll drag the chair over during the day and climb up there with the ball.  Its bounced on the countertop in front of these poor fish.  Heart attack waiting to happen......

Another video

Just glad I finally got this working!

Now I can share the Alaska videos too.

My son has this natural ability for all sports and after seeing his cousins play baseball, he squats down just like they do.  Its his baseball stance.  And since the camera was on him, he won't do anything cute like swing the bat.  I need to catch him when he doesn't know I have the camera.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

More goodness

Someone I know may be without their mojo. I think I stole it from them a couple of weekends ago.

Sorry! :)

Just a few more that I worked on this week. ETA: I hate when Blogger flips my pictures!! You can see them the right way in my Gallery.
Nicks first bug encounter. He wasn't too sure what to do when the ladybug landed on the edge of his pool. I had to pick her up and let her crawl on me first before he'd let me put her on his arm.
I ended up getting him a bug box at Target so he had a place to look at bugs now.
Mixed up some of the Cosmo Cricket lines. Bug is from the chipboard elements from Girl Friday and the papers are from Lil Man. Thats my favorite of their new lines.
My cousins daughter. Her outfit matched these papers from Pink Paislee perfectly. I don't get to use a lot of pink so it was fun using that paper with the pearls. The pearl strings can be found in the new Vintage Shoppe.
Again with the flipped photo. Bugs me. The bew Basic Grey Lime Rickey line.
New Fancy Pants overlays. The yellow paper is actually Basic Grey Lime Rickey. Border around the photo is also from Lime Rickey. Buttons and transparency are from Fancy Pants Summer Soiree. AC Thickers and the small orange letters are Lil Davis epoxy letters. We still have a few left in the store.
I still have a huge stack of photos from our family shoot last year. I can't believe its been that long. Nick was barely standing and now he's going to be 2!! Trying to scrap a bunch of his older photos to recapture that little baby faced boy thats growing up too fast! I used the new Lily Bee papers and diecuts for this layout.


I have more to share but I'll save them for another day.

Friday, May 22, 2009

New Layouts

Just a few new layouts this week. Everything can be viewed with supplies in my Gallery.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Home

Finally.  It was a long 2 weeks but a fun 2 weeks.  I don't have any positive comments for Celebrity Cruises - we all learned that we are partial to Princess and thats who we'll stick with from now on.

Nick was perfect and hard to handle at times.  He really did well for being 22 months old!  It was a little stressful keeping him occupied.  He's very curious and tried to get into everything.  Keeping him focused on things like his crayons and not destroying some area of the ship was hard but with the entire family there to help rein him in, we did just fine. 

My parents even took him for a few nights so we had some Nick-free time.  Not much to do on the boat so we watched our Netflix movies.

I also took 2 Photoshop classes on board.  I've had this program for a while and never really learned how to do anything in it.  So now I know the basics.  I think I can teach myself the rest of what I want to know.  

Whenever I find myself sitting still, I can still feel the motion of the boat.  Just that gentle rocking motion that puts you to sleep.  Its worst when I'm sitting on my stool - like right now!

I've done 5 loads of laundry and have at least 2 left to do.  I never imagined how much laundry we actually got through in 14 days.  But, you figure 2 outfits a day adds up to a ton of laundry.

Lots of orders to fill.  I'm totally procrastinating on them.  I have this bad habit of filling the smaller ones first.  It looks like I'm accomplishing something.  But I'm out of smaller orders and now I'm filling them in the order they came in.  Crazy.  I need to order new products and so much more for the store.  I feel so behind and that I'll never catch up.

I have a bunch of photos to upload and edit (with those new PSE skills I picked up).  I have scrapbook pages to work on and a room to clean.  Someone is coming over this weekend to crop and she'll need her own space.  Gotta work on that!!!  I should do before and after photos so she knows how lucky she is.

Anyway, glad to be home.  Glad to get life back in order.  Glad to get Nick back on his routine after 3 weeks off.

I'm also finding a bunch of stuff that might turn into a RAK here soon.  We'll see.  Maybe I'll do something next week and giveaway some of the piles of (s)crap in my room.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Hubbard Glacier

Hubbard Glacier

We headed north to the Hubbard Glacier this morning. About 9 am, they steared the ship into Disenchantment Bay, the entrance to the Hubbard Glacier valley.

We were surrounded by more sharp peaks covered in snow. The light reflected off the snow creating a surreal view. That line of fog is where we were heading. The glacier valley is somewhere behind that.

I stood on at the front of the ship most of the morning to get the good shots. Once we actually entered the fog bank, it felt too much like the Titanic for me so I headed to the side of the ship.

Once we were through the fog, we entered the valley. Surrounded on all sides by snow covered peaks and the glacier straight ahead. The naturalist on board said that in his 10 years of doing this, he hasn’t seen too many days like this. The fog lifted just in time to reveal the Hubbard Glacier. Even saw a 'fogbow'. Not a rainbow, but light reflecting off the fog.


To its left, another glacier. Can’t remember the name of that one – I need to look that up.

But you can see the difference in the two. The Hubbard Glacier is mostly clean ice while the second glacier is dirty. They seem to come from the same direction but if you follow them to their source, they follow different paths. As the glaciers move, they pick up dirt and debris. The Hubbard Glacier is mostly ice on the surface. The lower layers (under water) are dirty. The naturalist called this a ‘deep’ or tall glacier compared to others.

We weren’t able to get too close today because of all the ‘bergy bits’ or small pieces of icebergs that had broken off the glacier. The Hubbard Glacier is one of the few glaciers that’s still growing. Most of them are receding. So as they calve or break off, they get smaller. The Hubbard Glacier is still growing. Its 76 miles long and 14 miles high.

Didn’t see too much wildlife but we got a visit from a seal. He swam along the boat for a while.

Finally got hungry and came in for lunch. As we were sitting there, one of the big icebergs rolled over. I didn’t catch it before but here are a couple of shots while it was rolling.

The Naturalist said this was one of the reasons they couldn’t get the ship closer. There were too many of the larger bergs sitting there by the glacier and more breaking off. It would take them several hours to navigate the large ship closer. Most people on board wanted them to get closer but they said it was too risky. As this one rolled over in the water, you could see how volatile they are.

Seeing this glacier was completely different than sailing through Glacier Bay/College Fjord.

And one last surprise. We all noticed the ship send out a tender while we were circling in the bay. They were out recovering a small chunk of ice to bring back on board. That was pretty cool. We all got our pictures taken with the ‘iceberg’. In fact, its still sitting out on the pool deck tonight. I even got a Glacier Tan today.

Off to Sitka, then Victoria and home. I miss home.


















Skagway/Juneau Part 2

Juneau/Skagway

Man am I tired of eating. There is food all over this boat. Not too interested in the dining room food but the buffet is amazing. They have a stir fry bar where you can get whatever you want. Since I’m a regular there, the girl always has a bowl ready for me after dinner. I just snack on bread and salad and then head up to the buffet after. Its at the back of the boat so the view is incredible. I enjoy my chicken/carrots/green bean with teriyaki sauce stir fry and the sunset.

Heres a couple of parting shots from Juneau. It started raining while we were in town so it was almost impossible to get a decent shot of the town.

Nick boxing with the waiter. He has started a High 5 craze on this ship. Almost every member of the wait staff stops by the table during one of the meals to give him a high 5. Or a fist bump. We’re working on that too. So the fist bump turned into a boxing match at dinner the other night.

That scout from USC has been watching him and says there isn’t any sport Nick can’t play.

Skagway





Just spent a couple of hours walking around town. Had a drink at the Red Onion and Nick got his picture taken with the Madame.

Some of the old buildings in town. There are only about 1000 residents here.

Leaving Skagway. Some of the most beautiful scenery yet. The rugged peaks are gorgeous. We just sat outside on the back of the boat. The sun sets around 9:30 or 10 right now. The last time we were up here, we went further north and the sun was setting around 11:30. It would rise at 4-4:30 so there was little darkness. The air is so clear up here so the sunsets are breathtaking.

On to the Hubbard Glacier tomorrow. They say its supposed to be foggy so I can’t guarantee any photos.