I figure since I am in bed before my new bedtime, I will spend some time updating the family blog in addition to my own. Mom and Dad are in Olympia this week as Mom mentioned so I have the house to myself. Had a scare this morning though. I was getting ready for work and it is still dark here at that time of day so I like to prolong really waking up as long as possible so I turn on the least amount of light necessary to get ready. So the only light that was on was the light in the shower/toilet portion of the upstairs hallway bathroom. After I was done getting ready and it was time to go, I loaded my four different bags onto my arms in my room and walked into the bathroom to turn off the light. As I was only partially awake at this point, I thought I had turned off the light and then I walked downstairs. Once at the bottom of the stairs, I looked right and out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I saw the bathroom light flip on. (I am scaring myself writing this because I remember the feeling this morning) I was scared. Like pushing doors open while standing as far away as possible before I walked in the room scared. I cautiously climbed the stairs and quickly ran into the bathroom, flipped off the light and booked it back down the stairs, picked up my bags and out the door. I have watched Poltergeist way too many times.

So other than getting scared to death during my morning routine, all is well in my world. I've pretty fully adjusted to my new work schedule and I am really enjoying work as I start my fourth week there tomorrow. I have really thrown myself into the work there as there is quite a lot to get done. The company is undergoing a lot of changes right now so it is exciting to be a part of implementing all of that. I have quite a long list of projects to do right now and seem to add three or four new ones every day. Being so busy is really making the days fly by though, which is really nice. There is nothing worse than counting down the minutes until work is over.

Now that my schedule is more of a routine for me and my body, I've been able to get back into my training schedule pretty much full on. It is hard to convince myself the take the earlier exit to the gym after driving an hour in traffic home from a nine-hour day of work but I have been pretty successful in winning that argument with myself and am hoping it'll turn into more of a habit as weeks go on. I am doing the mudslinger trail run with Anne, Peter, Dave and Adina a week from Saturday so I am pretty excited about that. Is it wrong that a lot of the reason I'm doing it is for the pictures of all our muddy selves?

As I mentioned, my commute is pretty rough. It's about 40 miles each way (Brent knows all about it as he has the same one) and can be a killer at rush hour in the evening. It's about 40 minutes to work in the morning but can be up to 2 hours to get home at night. I have started to take "the back way" home (thanks, Brent!), which usually significantly shortens the ride - it is basically going up and over the mountain instead of around it. While I was driving down the mountain today, the Twilight soundtrack came on my iPod and a fog rolled in around a curve at the exact same time - could've sworn I was about to see Edward stalk around a corner.

So I'm pretty excited for moving into my own place closer to work in April. I'm just starting to look around for available places. Most that is posted now is immediately available or they want someone in March so I am not jumping on anything too much now. I went to Nordstrom tonight and the salesgirl who was helping me actually lives right in the area that I want to move and she gave me some excellent insider advice on what areas to avoid - like stay north of Everett - and where to try to be - like as close to 21st and 23rd as possible. If I do get a place in that area, I'll me about 15 miles to work instead of 40 so that should give me a good 30 minutes more time to sleep-in in the morning, which will be nice, and a faster ride home.

Ok, clock is striking 11pm so I need to start preparing for sleep. One last tidbit - we got all of the pictures up on the grandkids picture wall so I wanted to post a picture of the final product! Pictures will be updated and added as time goes on, I am sure, but for now this is what we have.

...blogger says I am out of space for pictures...so here is a link to see it. Stupid blogger...