Well we've been living here in Washington for about 3 months now and the weather still ceases to amaze me.  Just the other day I'm getting ready to go out for the day and I peek out the window to figure out what to wear.  There is no cloud in the sky (that I can see from my window) and the sun is shining brightly.  So I figure that even though the sun is shining it'll be a bit cold so I put on a short sleeve shirt and a zip up sweatshirt.  I get Alyssa all ready to go in her car seat, grab the diaper bag, keys, purse, etc.  With hands full I take one step out the door and I'm rudely reminded that it's 32 degrees outside.  HOW CAN THIS BE!  Okay back inside.  Change my shirt to a long sleeve shirt, put my sweatshirt back on and add my coat.  Now I'm sweating cause I'm all bundled up and it's in the high 60's in our house.  Back out the door and the cold takes my breath away.

It's so crazy because you have to bundle up to go outside, but then if you get into your car you're still bundled up and cold from the outside, so you crank up the heater.  Then pretty soon your hands defrost but your body is dying from heat cause you still have your coat on.  It is quite the experience getting ready to go outside in the cold.  Sometimes I think I may run to the store real quick, but then change my mind because it's such the ordeal to get ready to go.  I guess if it was just me and I wasn't hauling an infant carrier around it might be easier.  And you say - why haul the car seat around?  Well we feel really bad laving it in the car and putting her into a freezing cold seat.  I guess when she grows out of her infant carrier we won't have a choice, but until then.

It's also challenging dressing Alyssa for cold weather.  If you put a jacket and a hat on she's good to go while she's outside or in the car, but say she falls asleep in the car and you bring her inside for a nap in her seat.  Well then she wakes up sweating because she's so hot.  So I have to think ahead.  If we're going to a restaurant or shopping or something where we'll be getting her out of the car and she'll be awake I put her in a coat and hat, but if I'm just going shopping and going to keep her in her seat the entire time I just use a blanket that way if I come home and she's sleeping she'll stay sleeping until she's ready to wake up. 

Oh something else that catches me off guard is the rain.  When we first moved here I went to Babies R Us to ask about a rain cover for the stroller.  The lady who was helping me said 'did you just move here?'  I was shocked, but 'yes, I did just move here.'  She basically told me that it doesn't really poor down rain here.  It may rain all the time but it doesn't mean your going to get soaked every time you go outside.  She said I should be fine with just the stroller hood, but I could always come back and get the rain cover if I thought I needed it.  She said no one really uses them around here.  Hmmm.  That I did not know.  Very helpful, thank you Babies R Us lady.

Another thing about the rain is that it rains when it's not raining!  Yes really.  I used to get wierded out by this at first.  I would go outside and it would be raining, so before I left the cover of the eves I would put on my hood to rush to the car.  Then as I was out in the open I would realize that in fact it wasn't raining at all.  I guess that after it rains, the rain collects on the trees eves and such and it can sound like it's still raining when in fact it hasn't rained for an hour or so.

Okay so how boring is it that I just talked about the weather?!  hehe

For some of you this will be a repeat blog post, if you read my husbands blog, but for those of you who don't or just enjoy my versions of his stories...here it my bigger and better version.  Disclaimer:  His blog post is actually really good. :)

It all started with Christmas and the decision of what type of gifts to get our friends.  I always start early in initiating discussions with Luke about what to get our friends because I hate waiting until the last minute and then just opt for a gift card.  Which is actually not a bad thing because it guarantees they will like it, but it turns out not to be as thoughtful I guess.  So I think Jacob was the first to be crossed off our list.  He's usually always easy, although this year I selected the best gift ever! and Luke thought it was a terrible idea. I still think it's a good idea and may attempt to get it for his birthday...we'll see.  But instead we went with Tom Petty and he seemed to really like it.  Then there's Jenny's who's also pretty easy to shop for because even if she doesn't like something you would never be able to tell.  So then comes the harder ones to shop for...Albert.  I actually had a really good idea for his gift but I couldn't find it anywhere!  So there's always next year and this year I think he enjoyed his gift nevertheless.  Last but not least we wanted to get something for the De Haan's.  We first decided that we should just get them separate gifts or that maybe I should just get Melissa something.  I had a book that I knew Melissa would love (and she did), but for the life of us we could not think of anything for Matthew.  I mean there is always the Padres shirt or something of the like, but we are now 1000's of miles away from easy access to Padre paraphernalia.  So what to get them, hmmm.  

Well recently in Luke's daily blog readings and internet searching he came across a new photo website called Smugmug.  It's this very "pretty" website that is similar to Flickr (which we already were using).  We talked about it and thought it would be a perfect gift for our friends who were just about to have a baby and who we knew would love to have a easy way to share pictures with their friends and family who live far away.  The clincher was that they had recently bought a video camera and you are able to put video's on Smugmug which is a feature that I do not believe Flickr has.  I knew they would love it because it seemed to be a little more user friendly than Flickr and it so sooo pretty!  Instead of having all of your pictures on a sight with ad's and extra busy looking stuff around you are able to create a page that is similar to a scrapbook. Kinda like myspace where you can pick a background.

So it was decided.  Smugmug gift for the De Haans.  So Luke was in charge of getting it all set up. We had plans to download pictures and create their first page for them.  But as he began to fiddle around with it, he ran into problems when he tried to purchase it as a gift. He felt like he was on the phone with the Internet provider...you know when you call for help and they're like "Is your computer on?" "Please restart your computer" etc.  So that sort of thing annoys him since he pretty much knows what he's talking about working for Microsoft and everything.  But he always complies and tries to be patient.  The only thing is that we were running out of time.  Christmas was approaching and the emails back and forth to Smugmug were taking up time and we didn't always have access to the Internet in our travels to California.  So Christmas came and went and we had to just verbally tell Matt & Melissa that we had wanted to get them a Smugmug account, but weren't sure if it was going to work or not.  In telling them it was kinda lame because I felt like it was one of those things where someone says to you, oh I really want to get you this....and then it never happens.  Luke was pretty disappointed and kept telling me that Smugmug was going to get a blog post from him, which is really unusual because I'm the one usually angry about stuff and say I'm going to write letters to companies, etc.  So it was kinda funny hearing him talk about it and be so frustrated.

The Exciting Part

Luke finally finds time to sit down and write a blog post where he describes his situation and talks about how he was disappointed with the service and wished he could get it all worked out.  Unlike me, he rarely elaborates or goes off on tangents and so it was a pretty factual account of his experience.  He then emailed Smugmug again and included the link to his blog post.  About 20 minutes later he gets a comment on his blog from the founder and CEO of Smugmug!  Crazy huh?  He totally apologized for our experienced and asked Luke to contact him so that he could help us with our situation.  At the same time Luke also got an email back from Smugmug from another person and said they were really sorry as well and offered us a year for free!  So cool right?!  Oh it gets better.  Then later on the CEO/founder contacts him again and said that as soon as he posted his comment on Luke's blog he went in and gave us as well as our friends a lifetime subscription to Smugmug!  I could hardly believe it.  I mean wow, that is some customer service.  Luke was soo ecstatic (AKA he was smiling while I was jumping up and down and running in the next room to tell everyone)  So in the end our gift that was turning out to be lame became the best gift ever.  Matt and Melissa love Smugmug and are really enjoying sharing pictures of their new baby boy (Cayden Matthew De Haan).  Luke's mom is now also using Smugmug to show her dogs that she breeds as well as uses it for family use.  She's not totally in love with it because she doesn't really like how it takes a long time to upload the pictures from her computer to the website.  But hopefully over time Smugmug will come up with an easier way to upload pictures so she doesn't have to upload them while she is sleeping. hehe

So all in all I think our friends really enjoyed our thoughtful gifts this year.  And how cool is it that Smugmug gave us a Christmas present this year.  I would begin to say that it was the best gift we got this year, but seeing as how I gave Luke a positive pregnancy test for Christmas, I think he may think that that was the best gift he got this year!  Although Smugmug comes in pretty close behind that I think.  hehe  Well I guess it's time to start thinking about next year.