The Ways of the Wallaces

Here we are again - Monday!  And it's time for one more try to guess the Mystery Macro shot for January.  You have until Wednesday  at midnight to guess and the answer will be posted sometime on Thursday.  Anyone who guesses correctly gets their name in a drawing for a prize!  Exciting?  Yes, yes it is.  Need more info?  Get the 411 on Mystery Macro by reading here.

This week I'm giving a clue because I think a reference point will help.  The clue is: edible.   Good luck to you all!  Ready, set, guess!

Yesterday morning it was sunny and beautiful (before the rain clouds hovered in).  I was in my kitchen refilling my coffee mug and ready to set down to some hard core Bible study of Revelation when I spied a black and white beauty out my window.  I immediately grabbed the camera and snuck out on the porch to get some shots of the birdies in my backyard.  It didn't last long as they ventured on to new places, but I did catch a woodpecker (I think?), robin and some other fun looking birds.  Does this mean that Spring is coming early?

Do you ever get an email at work that you weren't prepared for and laugh out loud while all your coworkers stare at you?  Oh, someone please say yes....that was me on Wednesday.  And the source?  This website.  Steven forwarded me an email made up of funny autocorrected text messages on the iPhone that people had submitted.  Oh. My. Goodness.  I was dying.  *note: this website does not censor anything and the reason why it is so funny is because 99% of the autocorrects are dirty or inappropriate.  And when most people get their text messed up by autocorrect they usually don't have nice things to say about it - ok you've been warned*  I'll share a few that were "cleaner" and still pretty stinking funny.  I do not have an iPhone, but apparently becoming a victim of autocorrect is an epidemic sweeping the iPhone industry users. 

One person almost had it right!  In fact, I think I might give it to her because it was as close as anyone has got thus far.  Her guess was, "maybe one of those hollowed out stones for grinding spices or pills."  Well, no, not a mortar - but so close, Cassi.  It's a pepper mill.  Not a rock or a lamp like so many thought.  Although I totally see the lamp.   Here is maybe a better picture of the pepper mill....

Ok, not a full picture of it - but you see it now, right?  Thanks everyone for guessing!  If no one gets it next week maybe I'll just draw out of everyone who at least took a stab at it.  Since next Monday is still January you get another opportunity to guess for this month.   Happy Thursday!

Five or six years ago I started a blog that I kept going for about three years.  Right before Steven & I got married, it was waaaay too much to keep up on and I dropped it.  Starting this blog, I felt it had to be new and represent my life with Steven.  Since it had been two years or more since I had blogged at the old one I just started a new one.  Well, my old blog is still up and it's linked to my blogger profile.  Occasionally I get random emails saying someone commented on an old post on my old blog.  Too funny.  Back in May 2010, Blogger started keeping stats for you on your blog.  Today I checked the stats over at Vessel of Light, and guess what?  Since May 2010, there have been 33 page views on a certain post I did about Kleenex, 29 page views on another post about Humility and 15 page views about an incident I had with Moldy Bread in Asia.  So, Vessel of Light lives on!

I can also see where the traffic comes from for those posts and 29 of the total page views combined are Google searches people do for moldy bread or Kleenex.  Does that mean that my previous blog is being used as a source for gathering information and research?  I actually had a recent comment on my mold post from a lady who works for a mold inspection company in Indianapolis.  It's my dream to have one of my blog posts cited in a research article.  Ok, not really.  But wouldn't that be cool?  And the top sources of page views actually go to the fact that I put "federal law" and "Kleenex" in the same post.  Apparently a lot of people Google about the lawful (or unlawful) use of tissue.  Do any of you have old posts that get a lot of traffic that you never thought would?  Check your stats on your blog - it's interesting to see where all those page views come from!

Time for my second installment of Mystery Macro Monday!  This go around I was a bit nicer and didn't crop the picture at all.  Good luck to everyone who guesses.  If you need the "low down," go to this post which is my first post on Mystery Macro and gives you the 411 on how it works.  Remember that you won't get to see others' guesses - but don't let that keep you from taking a stab at it!  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  You have until Wednesday at midnight to guess & the answer will be posted sometime on Thursday.  I already have something fun picked out for this month's giveaway.  Yup, already have it in my hot little hands.  Everyone who guesses right gets their name in the drawing for that month.  Whoo-hoo!  Ready, set, guess!

I wasn't going to enter for this week, but then talking to my husband he immediately went to this picture.  It is innocent!  The look on his face emanates innocence.  "I'm not doing anything? Why would you want to take a picture of me?  Aren't I the sweetest, most innocent boy in the whole world?"  Yes - oh, how innocently he wonders!  Check out I Heart Faces for more entries!  

Last weekend I went down to Prosser for some family shenanigans and ended it with a few basketball games at good ol' Prosser High.  My dad coaches the Varsity girls and my sister plays on the Freshman team so I got to see two completely different games.  The Varsity game was fast paced with lots of steals (by Prosser) and lots of fouling (by Ellensburg).  On the other hand, the Freshman game was more dribble down, run the play, miss the basket, other team rebounds, repeat.  I think only 6 points were scored the entire first quarter!  The Prosser freshmen lost by 1 (or something really close).  It was a good game, and eventually the shots started falling, it just took awhile to warm up.  One big difference I noticed throughout their game (other than intensity) was that, as freshmen, they tend to let the game and the play in motion dictate them instead of them initiating with the ball.  Example: jump to the ball!

When running a play what makes it successful is the players moving and shifting to get open and never staying in the same spot.  Creating space is another good word to use.  Making themselves open.  When they are open and when their teammate passes the ball to them, making it or breaking it can be summed up as "jump to the ball."  When the ball is passed to you - what do you do?  Do you stand there waiting for it to be received?  Or, do you jump towards the ball and meet it in the air?  Are you reactive (stand there waiting) or proactive (jump towards the ball to catch it)?  There are many times the defense is jumping to the ball instead of the offense thus creating a turn over.  Not ideal (for the offense anyways).  Watching my sister's team play, not many of them know how to "jump to the ball."  They run their plays well, take great shots and even create space to get open, but very few jump to the ball.  

In life, it's kind of the same idea.  When an opportunity comes to you, are you reactive and wait to see where it lands or do you see it coming and proactively jump towards it.  Being proactive is a better prepared position to be in because A) you see the ball coming B) minimize the distance the ball has to go by meeting it part way and lessening the chance someone else might intercept it and C) by jumping to the ball you are one step closer to being in triple threat position (if you don't know what triple threat is, it means that you are in position to either dribble, pass or shoot from where you stand).  I think lately I have been reactive.  Meaning that when I see an opportunity coming I don't jump towards it.  Instead, I wait to see what happens and, more times than not, it gets picked off and someone else now has that opportunity and I missed out.  

This week on The Office they made New Years Resolutions.  Of course, being The Office, they were either pointless or inappropriate.  But still they made them (and then Pam had to throw them out, because, well, on the Office nothing ever goes right).  I normally don't make resolutions, because, well - I don't keep them!  I'm part of that statistic that drops off come February.  Good intentions and no follow through (another basketball term that could be turned into a blog post).  This year I'm not making a resolution, I'm making a change.  I'm going to "jump to the ball" more often.  Not just this year, but hopefully for a long time.  Because life isn't about what happens to you (reactive) but about how you respond to life (proactive). I don't want to be the girl who reacts to everything but doesn't make things happen.  I am going to make things happen.  Anticipate change.  Create opportunites.  And not be scared to take the ball in my own hands and see what takes place.

Wow - you all came close, but not one person guessed right!  It does look like a fake berry (which had three guesses).  I'm thinkin' I better lay off the cropped-in-extreme close up.  I tried to make it hard because I though it was too easy to see that it is a red tip on my round bristle brush!  Here's a few shots that are a little more inclusive. 

Do you see it?  The brush I mean.  OK - keep guessing for next week!  They won't all be this hard. I'll ease up - I promise! :-)  For those of you who missed it, please go for it next week.  Every correct guess gets your name in a drawing for a prize at the end of the month.  And since the last day of January is a Monday you get two more chances! 

But definitely not my favorite video.  Although you do need to check out the psycho dancing girl at 2:50.  Wowza is all I'm sayin'.  I saw this video go very differently in my head.  A little disappointed?  Maybe.  But I still love this song and rock out to it every time it comes on in the car.  Yes, I'm that girl.  Enjoy! (or don't - I won't be offended, it's kind of weird.  But so are the Black Eyed Peas so should I really expect nothing less?)

Hubby's in Texas at a conference and I have a wonderful work-free Monday on my own.  So, what to do?  Well, so far I've slept in, watched 4 episodes of Friends, showered, went shopping for some stuff for work (and picked up some other fun stuff for me!) and went to the grocery store.   I would still like to finish my Precepts study for this week, vacuum every floor in this house and work on some stuff for a presentation we're giving next week on our Asia trip...to which you all are invited.  But, Nala keeps looking at me and I'm pretty sure this expression says "please take me to the park."  What do you think? 

And because I have two stinkin' cute dogs - here is a picture of Coco.  Who looks about to pounce.  I have to say she's cute, but a black dog isn't nearly as photogenic as a golden one.  I think it's because her shiny fur reflects too much light.  Hmmm....I took like 20 pictures of her and this is the only good one. 

So I guess I'm headed to the park.  In this lovely 60 degree, sunny weather!  Maybe it will help ease the headache I've been slowly developing all day.  Be sure to check out a new blog contest I'm going to attempt to run.  You all get to guess what is in the mystery photo this week!  Happy Monday, all!

Ok - I'm going to try something new!  Aren't you excited (all 5 of you who actually read this)???  I was verbally processing with Steven about how to create more traffic and intrigue on my blog while upping my photog skills.  My brilliant idea?  Start a weekly contest thingy.  However, I don't really have the time to sort through pictures - but I do have time to read comments!  And thus, Mystery Macro Monday was born.  I know - alliteration is a little cheezy.  But hey, gotta start somewhere!

My goal is to post (or schedule a post - love this feature!) every Monday with a mystery photo.  Then, all you faithful followers, get to guess as to what is the actual object in the mystery photo.  If you guess correctly, your name will go into a random drawing for a prize.  Wait, let me say that again.  If you guess correctly, your name will go into a random drawing for free stuff!!  Yeah!  I will probably have a winner each month to start out and see how it goes.  So if you guess correctly every week, that's at least four entries (five depending on the month) that you get for that month!  And then at the end of the month - so January will be a short month - I'll draw for the winner.  The posts will go up by Monday and you have until Wednesday at midnight to guess.  Any entries after that won't count.  Oh - and I turned on the moderator for the comments so you can't see what others guess.  So when you comment doesn't show up, don't worry!  I can still see it.  Then, after the guessing closes I'll approve them all so you can see what others thought.  Get it?  Got it? Good!  Let's go...

Here's the first entry.  Just to let you know, I'm not going to make this easy!  Have fun and guess well my friends.  I'll post the answer on Thursday and let you know who guesses correctly. *You can click on the image to make it bigger*

The week of Thanksgiving it snowed like crazy over here.  The day after Thanksgiving, Steven and I hijacked the girls for a photo session for my parents Christmas presents.  It was really cool (and extremely cold!).  This one is my favorite (although Katie probably disagrees with me). I love it.  The hat, her adorable dimples, gorgeous eyes and awesome backdrop.  Winter Wonderful perfect!  Check out I Heart Faces by clicking the button below to see more awesome entries. 

This past weekend we drove to Carson, WA (across the river from Hood River) and took some R&R for our anniversary.  Andrea and Grant recommended a little Bed & Breakfast in the area and we decided to give it a try (plus, they had a special running the month of January that was hard to beat).  It was an amazing weekend of cozying up next to a fire, taking a very wet hike in the woods and strolling around Hood River (where we scored some good deals at a shoe store getting rid of their winter surplus!).  We didn't really take a lot of photos...but we intentionally wanted to go on a hike by some falls and hopefully get some good shots.  Well, it was rainy.  And misty.  And really cold.  Plus we got a little lost and ended up on a hike we didn't set out for - but all in all it worked out.  

It was definitely west side weather!  The hike was gorgeous with moss, fog and beautiful scenery abounding.  I love moss.  On trees, rocks, whatever.  It just looks cool.  And the fog rolling down off the mountain created for a mystical effect.  The downside - all that mist, rain and fog means that our camera didn't get many photo opportunities.  Though our camera body is weatherproof and would be fine, our lenses are not.  Here's some shots from the hike...if you look closely in the first picture you can see raindrops on the lens (or mist drops - whatever they were from they weren't good for the lens!).

We didn't take any pictures at the Bed & Breakfast itself, but let me tell you -- it was amazing!  The first night we got there, we arrived so late that the office manager had went to her cabin and just left us a key in an envelope.  We found our cabin (hard to read numbers in the dark) and were so impressed!  It was one big room with a opening to a bath/jacuzzi tub area.  Fireplace, king size poster bed, the whole nine yards!  Lovely.  However, the faucet on our jacuzzi had fallen off and was lying on the side of the tub and someone had put popcorn kernels in the sink!  We tried to get the popcorn out of the sink but instead ended up jamming it.  Hard to explain - but it was stuck and couldn't really drain anymore.  The bonus?  The next morning at breakfast we told the manager about the tub and the sink and she upgraded us for free!!  They had just built three new cabins this past summer and, since they weren't at full occupancy, offered us one of the newer, more spacious cabins.  Wowza.  It was amazing!  After getting back from that cold, wet hike above and dining in Hood River we walked into a HUGE cabin with a two person jacuzzi and flat screen TV.  Welcome home!  It was ridiculous.  In love.  And it still smelled of new wood and all cozy and cabin like.  It was amazing.  We felt so blessed.  Last year on our anniversary at the Couer d'alene Resort we got upgraded too.  It is a blessing because we wouldn't be payin' for that otherwise!  

If you ever need to get away, it's a great place to go!  I'd be more than happy to recommend you (and get the referral reward, err, I mean joy of referring you).  Now, it's back to reality.  Steven started class again today.  It's his last semester in the MBA program at WSU!  Praise the Lord he is almost done!  Right now he is sleeping as I post this.  Poor guy.  Since he has to leave work early for class he gets there early to make up for it.  This morning as he was leaving I caught a glimpse of 4:45am on the alarm clock!  Whoa!  What a man.  I then proceeded to roll over and sleep for another hour and fifteen minutes. 

This week's challenge over at I Heart Faces is "smile" and I already had it narrowed down in my head when I heard it.  After perusing the options, Steven and I decided this one was hard to beat!  It's from a photo shoot we did waaaaay back at the end of summer.  Cute, cute, cute.  Toothless grin + baby rolls = love!  Check out more smiley photos by clicking the camera below.

Maybe I love this because I'm part Swedish (my great grandpa on my dad's side), but mostly because whenever I read it I sigh a little inside and picture this:

And because she's so cute, the deleted scene....which is hard to see and hear but just as cute.

If only every time we felt the need to sing, we'd belt it out like we were five.  If only if we did that people wouldn't stare at us and move farther away. 

Happy Anniversary to us!  It has been an crazy three years and we have so much more yet to discover, unravel and plod through together.  Here's to us...

And I have to share this series of pictures with our bridal party.  All of whom are still incredibly important parts of our lives.  If any of you read this, we love you all tons and are grateful for your continued friendship along the way!

They make me laugh every time!  

And I know I've said it before and I will say it many more times again, but I LOVE THIS MAN!  Can't wait for the rest of what lies ahead. 

Goodbye avacado green kitchen!  Hello New Year!  Starting out this year is an all inclusive update on the kitchen renovation.  It ended yesterday afternoon when our new laminate flooring finally got installed.  We hired it out.  Which isn't bad considering it's the first thing we've hired out since starting to remodel our condo nearly three years ago.  And it was the incredibly nice guy from this post who we hired to do it.  He did a fantastic job and if you know someone who needs to hire an installer for hardwood or laminate I'll be more than happy to recommend him.  The kitchen remodel started in the summer with new paint job on the cabinets and a new counter top installed by Steven and his dad.  It's still not done, as we need to paint, put in a backsplash and do trim - but it's so close!  And lookin' better.  No more green.  I love it. 

Here are some before shots (before paint and countertop too....sorry for the missing cabinet door by the oven - I'm not very good at documenting remodels and usually remember to take photos half way through.  That missing door was already getting painted).

Notice how the green counter top matches the green floor perfectly.  Blech.  Even in this picture there are upgrades from when we first bought the condo.  The microwave is new above the stove (required removing two cabinets) and the fridge is new.  The backing behind the oven was removed when we put in the microwave.  It looked really gross (had brown glue - eewww), so we stretched a tea towel over some cardboard and tacked it up there.  Can't even tell because the color matched the counter top. 

Here the cabinets are painted and there's a new counter top (don't worry, there's a better picture of the counter with cabinets below).  This is just to show that the green floor still overpowered the room.  The upside to this look is that I never mopped my floors!  (Shhh....don't tell my mom)  It was so gross you couldn't really tell.  Seriously, I probably only mopped once a month at most.  If that.  I mean, if your floors looked like that would you mop?

The carpeted dining room (with an absolutely adorable dog getting loved on by the hubby!).  I hate carpet in dining rooms.  Sorry, I just do.  And this carpet was the worst in the whole house.  Permanent stains around the table - it was bad.  (Do you notice no fish tank?  That's another post - but in short, we got rid of it)

And now, introducing the new floors!  Dun-da-da-dun! 

Does it even look like the same kitchen?  (And yes, the tea towel backer is still up, and slightly falling down - like I said, we're not done here)

Nice Raisin Bran box.  Ignore please.  Take note of the beauty before you in the floor, cabinet and lovely counter.  Sigh.  I could look at it all day. 

So the before pictures don't really show you, but we used to have pocket doors on the kitchen.  They were dark and ugly.  This summer, Steven and his dad also removed those, widened the doorways and made them look awesome.  Also love it  And now, with the new floor, the dining room and kitchen feel more like one continuous room.  Plus they feel bigger.  Bonus! 

So there it is!  Our new floors that I can't get over.  I'll admit though, the first time I saw most of the floor in I freaked out that it made the wall in the above picture look pink.  But now that all the floor is in (and the bookcase is breaking up the wall), it doesn't.  Whew.  Almost had to repaint!  :-)  I think it draws more attention to our fireplace too while defining the dining room space from the living room.  Yay!  Almost done.  We also put the new floor in the entry and in two bedroom closets.  I'll post the pictures of the entry later.  

So what do you think?  Do you like it?  What about the corner to corner look of where the carpet meets the wood?  Are you as glad as me that the green is all gone?  I'm so glad we hired it out.  We have had the laminate sitting in our garage since August and haven't had time to install it.  Plus, with everything else we have left to do it was nice to easily check this off the to-do list.  Happy New Year to us!  (oh, and to you too!)