This Olsen Life

Great moments.

Kristian j. — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:35:38 +0000

Tuesday's forecast: 50 degrees and dry. Noah has been asking to go to the park for weeks and was having a hard time understanding why cold weather and rain aren't conducive to such an idea. I have been telling him that we will go to the park more often when it warms up. On Tuesday when I told him we were going to the park he just kept saying "it warmed up!" His favorite is to go to the park near orenco station and then walk to the train station and watch as many trains go by as possible which never gets old for him, great moments indeed. We waited for four trains to go by (one was a new train, which is the ultimate to him), and then walked back to the park and Noah went down the slide.

That afternoon we met up for our Tuesday afternoon playdate with Noah's friends Ella and Keira at a park in Beaverton. And once again, Noah was delighted.

My Birthday Bash

Kristian j. — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:16:34 +0000

Celebrating with friends at Bella Gioia in the pearl.

Great Italian food, great company, and great conversation.

A great way to celebrate my 28th!

7 months along.

Zaya will be joining our family soon!

Thanks to Sarah for hosting!

We finished the night with a St. Cupcake for all and girl talk until way past my bedtime. I am so grateful for good friends. I am blessed to have so many.

(Rebecca, thank you for the pictures. I can always trust you to not only bring your camera, but capture all of the fun moments!)

Photo of the Day - Jan 10-16

Kristian j. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:03:24 +0000

I am learning a lot with this project. The first thing is I don't know the first thing about real photography. Here's to hoping I am a bit better by the end of the year.

Jan 10th - Noah with his Froggy galoshes

Jan 11th - Our little blue microwave [my mom gave this to me as a college graduation president. Ten years later it is still going strong. Truly the gift that keeps on giving. Thanks Mum]

Jan 12th - A new pillow Emily picked up this week

Jan 13th - Decorative Olive Oil bottles on the back of our stove

Jan 14th - Light Rail train whizzing by. Taken the evening after work

Jan 15th - Waiting for a ride. Scenes from the train stop.

Jan 16th - My left eye. While I did not take this photo, the dr. did, I include it just because...well it's cool.

Christmas videos.

Kristian j. — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:19:18 +0000

Saturday Photo

Kristian j. — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:32:49 +0000

Photo #2 for your viewing pleasure. Going forward I will post a week at a time. So come back next Saturday for daily photo fix.

family photo shelf

365 minus 7

Kristian j. — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:55:58 +0000

So today I saw a pretty cool idea on a blog I read from time to time. They are attempting to take a photo a day for all of 2010. So being the theif that I am, I too am going to attempt a photo a day for the remainder of 2010. [Wish me luck...I tend to get distracted fairly quickly]

The photos will be completley random. No theme, no message, just something that catches my eye that day.

After work today I asked Noah what he wanted to do. His answer was the same as yesterday, and the day before, and the 5 months worth of days before that, "Play with my train". Well we quicky got busy building a track to do what Noah loves best. Playing trains. He is a train boy through and through. I think if my job was that of a conductor he would consider me the luckiest of fellows. Ya know what? I'll let you on a little secret. I am not sure who loves playing trains more...me or him.

Benched

Kristian j. — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:04:03 +0000

A little more than a year or so ago I got a wacky idea that I thought it would be fun to build a bench. Well here we are, just over a year later, and I was right. It has been fun. You must be thinking to yourself, wow, that has got to be one incredible bench if it has taken a year plus to build. Or perhaps you thought, man Kris is one slow bench builder. If you fall into the later camp of thinkers you would be correct.

Since I had almost two weeks off of work I thought I would use that time to get back in the saddle. I am happy to report the 2 weeks have been productive. I am so close to completion. I should finish up tomorrow but I can hardly contain my excitment so I thought I would share a few photos today.

Actually, the phrase "finish up tomorrow" might be a bit of a lie...my guess is I won't be able to truly finish until June or so. Why you ask...well after tomorrow all that will remain is the application of a sealer. However, this being the rainy season in Oregon, the wood has absorbed so much moisture out of the air that I want to wait until it has a chance to dry. And as rainy seasons go, it will probably be Juneish before we get a long enough dry spell.

Anyway, here are a few photos of the bench in progress.

A new year.

Kristian j. — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:30:37 +0000

This year we celebrated the new year on east coast time, 9:00 pm here, which we thought was a great idea on R and B's part, the throwers of the new years eve party we attended. That way the kids can come along to the party and celebrate but still get to bed at a decent time. We had fun. We didn't really see Noah much. He spent his time upstairs playing with the Thomas the train set, they have an extensive collection.

He did agree to be torn away from the train set to join in on the countdown.

Happy New Year!

A new year's kiss from my Noah.

Besides discussing and setting goals together on New year's eve, Kristian and I have a tradition of making 10 predictions about the coming year which we keep to ourselves and seal up until the next new year's eve. Our predictions range from family events to pop culture to mormon culture. We then open them the following year and see who out does who. This year Kristian was awarded best guesser with a score of 4/10 just beating my score of 3/10.

Kristian's correct predictions:

1. Emily will be pregnant.

2. 2009 will see global temps remain flat or fall, but not rise.

3. An apostle will pass away.

(Does that really count? Isn't it way to general?)

4. Kristian will increase his salary with a raise.

(Nice job on the raise honey!)

Emily's correct predictions:

1. Emily will be pregnant with a girl.

(Yes! I totally called that one.)

2. The democrats will already be compaining about Obama.

(To be fair I acknowledge that there would be complaining no matter who the president is with the way things are going right now.)

3. Noah will know how to do a somersault.

(By the way, I forget my predictions about 5 minutes after writing them down and had no influence on this one coming to fruition.)

We are looking forward to the new year ahead which will consisit of a new addition to our family, Noah turning 3, 2 weeks to spend with family in Utah, and a lot of time spent continuing to strengthen our little family. 2010, we are ready for you.