Spankie's Christmas Miracle

I have mentioned my "puppy" Spankie several times on the blog. We got her when I was a junior in high school- 14 years ago. The years have been tough on this little black dog- she had a hip replacement years ago and that combined with arthritis makes it very difficult for her to get around. It was sad to see her "lose her confidence" and be scared to even walk across the kitchen wood floor sometimes since she can easily lose her footing. My parents have placed rugs strategically throughout the house to help ease this process. Some days she does amazingly well and goes on a long walk; other days, she doesn't want to get out of the car.

About a week or so before Christmas, my parents told me that Spankie had been extremely sick for nearly 5 days. She had horrible gastrointestinal issues and had stopped eating. My parents think that she might have eaten some bad garbage on one of her walks or her roaming around the yard while my parents shovel. Things were looking very terrible for the puppy- like she might not make it before Christmas. But, fortunately, there was a Christmas miracle! She completely recovered from the illness- her appetite returned with a vengeance and she was demanding treats repeatedly from everyone and she resumed her barking for patting. It was amazing to see that my puppy knows me. She doesn't run to the door every time I come home like she used to, but when she hears my voice, she wags her tail and gets all excited and flips over onto her back to have her belly rubbed. She really has become part of our family- the 4th Stults daughter. It meant so much to me to be able to spend a week with her.

Our beloved, spoiled Spankie :-) We are so happy that you are a fighter :-)

Hakone Gardens and Kyoto Palace Restaurant

The weather was BEAUTIFUL here on Saturday (for January at least :-) at about 60 degrees so we decided to take advantage of it and do something outdoors. It ended up being our Japan themed day, since both places were in relatively the same area.

We first stopped at Hakone Gardens, which is the oldest Japanese Estate Garden in the Western Hemisphere. It was initially the personal garden and retreat of the Stein family who helped establish the San Francisco Opera. Mrs. Stein traveled around Japan for a year visiting their gardens and wanted to create one for her family in Saratoga, California. It is only $5 to visit the gardens and we were surprised by fairly large number of people visiting. I am sure that the gardens are much more spectacular when the Wisteria is in bloom but it was still quite lovely.

The gardens are perched on a hillside (the drive up is extremely steep- nearly straight up at times) but provides gorgeous views of the surrounding area.

They had a fairly extensive Bamboo garden that was fenced off to prevent local deer from devouring it

The landscaped area in front of the moon-viewing house was definitely the most picturesque



My favorite part was the four waterfalls



It was just a nice, relaxing day- but I would recommend going during the spring/summer time when more of the trees are in bloom.

I have been trying to get us out of our dining out rut- we tend to go to the same places over and over again. In an effort to expand our horizons, Restaurant.com had a sale awhile back where you could buy $25 off gift certificates to local restaurants for only $2!! So, I bought several for San Francisco and Mountain View areas. Since Campbell is right next to Saratoga, we chose to head to Kyoto Palace which is a teppanyaki. Downtown Campbell is quite charming- neither of us had been there before so it was fun to walk around before our dinner reservation. We ate fairly early- 5 pm- and there were only a couple of tables that were filled. We actually ended up getting our own private show- aka no other couples were at our grill so it was almost like having our own personal chef. I was most impressed that he was able to flip an egg into the air and then perfectly crack it on the side of his spatula. The food was pretty much like Benihanna, but the meat portions seemed much more generous (to me anyways).

Poor William- he has to put up with my lacking chopstick skills. I have my own technique that works pretty well but William was trying to show me how to do it the proper way. Well, I was struggling with that, so much so that our waitress brought me special "trainer" chopsticks.

They have a paper wedged in between them and are wrapped in rubber bands. So embarrassing that she saw me struggling. It was quite easy to have proper technique with those but when I tried with separated ones, my hand easily tired and I kept losing proper position. I then went back to my old way but my hand were just too tired and so I just ate with my fork for the rest of the meal. William served his mission in Japan so he is quite dexterous with chopsticks so I am very glad that he is patient with me :-)

"I'm Gonna Be a Part of It . . . "

. . . . "NEW YORK, NEW YORK!!" I am truly BEYOND EXCITED for my trip to NYC next Thurs-Sunday with William. The primary reason why I am over-the-moon about it is because I just bought tickets to see "Spider Man", the musical on Broadway!! The music is written by Bono and the Edge and I have been so wanting to see it, and to make things even better, I was able to get an orchestra seat for only- $90!!!!! Thanks to another great Travelzoo theater deal :-) I would have paid that $150 for orchestra seats but I am more than happy to pay $90 so that I can see yet another show. I'm beyond excited- the only thing that would make it better was if Bono and the Edge were there themselves; sadly, they attended the performance earlier this week so they probably won't be there. But, I will be sure to keep an eye out for them :-) I am hoping to see a couple of other musicals while I am there, like The Addams Family and Mary Poppins, as well as going to some museums. If anyone has any recommendations including favorite foods/activities/etc. let me know. Lisa M, I am so sad that you just left NYC to be in Charlotte :-( I have taken your list into account though.

Why William is the Favorite Uncle

As if the Rubik's cube was not enough, William decided that he still had to give the best gift to Chris' son, our nephew, Charles. And what better gift for a 2.5 year old then a . . . .

NERF CROSSBOW!

This was the first present opened and kept Charlie- and the rest of the family- entertained for the rest of the night.

The only drawback (or maybe blessing for my brother and sister-in-law) is that Charlie is just a little too weak to fully pull back the launch mechanism. Thus, for the rest of the night, he kept going up to people and asking them to help him get it ready. Then, he would shoot it up into the air (not at people, although his dad Chris kept breaking that rule by shooting William) and each time it would be shot, he would yell "Yess" or "All right!" and then run and get the arrow. This occurred over, and over again all night.

The best is that Charlie calls William "Bill"- but he says it with this southern accent like "Bi-i-ll". It is HILARIOUS! I was going to get it on video, but we didn't end up seeing them another time before we left since their whole family was sick. Not only did he love "Bi-i-ll" for the cross bow, but also for the large bubble sword that he bought him and then went and showed him how to use it outside. The bubble sword was short lived in comparison to the cross bow- I mean who can compete with a great gift like that :-)

Brains vs. Brawn

As many of you know, William has a long standing "special" gift exchange with his brother Chris. I have the "special" in quotes because basically, it means finding the most unusual and/or difficult way to open the present for Christmas.

I call this year "Brains vs. Brawn" and the photos below will illustrate both of these camps.

BRAINS
After William's "snotty" gift last year, he decided that he would go to the opposite extreme this year and give Chris the following challenge: The Rubik's Cube.

As you can see, this is not-your-average Rubik's cube. There are several letters on each square and on every face of the cube.

I thought that it was pretty difficult to follow all of the letters across each face but that wasn't tough enough for William. He then scrambled it all up and gave it to Chris to figure out. William was kind enough to leave the package instructions for Chris, but even then, it stil took him awhile

MEANWHILE- this other part was occurring simultaneously

BRAWN

Chris REALLY wanted to make William work for it this year- from start to finish- and Chris made great use of the resources at his job at the lumber shop. As you can see, besides wrapping up the gift nicely, he also wrapped it in shrink wrap. Under the shrink wrap was this wooden box.

Looks fairly innocent right? WRONG. Not only are there several layers of wood that are nailed together in multiple places, but there is also an extra bonus of a layer of GLUE holding it all together. (FYI- all of the following occurred with the presence of my father-in-law, ensuring that we would not have a special Christmas Eve trip to the emergency room).

William first tried the crow bar with zero impact. He then went for the chisel and hammer, also to no real impact.

Thus, he decided to pull out the power hand saw.

And finally with this, he had some progress- slow, but progress none the less. Chris had warned William at the beginning that there was something "fragile" inside but William had just thought that it was a gift card. So, while the power saw did help him to get inside to the gift, he actually sawed off the top part of his gift.

It's kind of hard to tell but you can see that he cut right through the box of his all time favorite cereal- Reese's Puffs.

While he was able to access them, we did not eat them because we did not want the added "fiber" from the woody shavings that also made it inside the box.

WINNER??

Ultimately, it was a DRAW. Both brothers finished up at the same time- one expended forth more mental energy and the other one physical energy. This being said, I have NO IDEA what they will do to try and top this for next year . . . .

Museum of Ancient Life

My mother-in-law has a membership to Thanksgiving Point and so on Monday January 3rd she took us there to the Museum of Ancient Life. It is a great museum- with so many amazing dinosaur exhibits. We also watched this fascinating film about how they do modern day coal mining- I had no idea just how specialized it was.

We found our dream type of countertop- with iron banded throughout (it looks kind of like gold!)

The dinosaur models were the most impressive. They even had impressive modeling around the display bones, as well as a large number of skeletons.

The powerful T-Rex- definitely the most impressive skeletons at the museum.

And even a baby woolly mammoth

So, while William decided to put sand in his hands,

I decided to go bigger and put the whole world in mine :-)

I highly recommend this museum for those in the Salt Lake/Provo area :-)

3 Days vs. 3 Hours

As many of you know, William and I love to complete puzzles, especially when we are with his family as we were for about a week. Well, his Aunt Jeannine gave us a puzzle shaped like a Christmas tree and so we decided to complete it, since it was the season and all. This puzzle was the most difficult one we have completed YET even though it was only 500 pieces. It doesn't look that hard, but we weren't even able to complete the edges until nearly the end. Also, they had IDENTICALLY sized puzzle pieces that only slightly varied in color!! When we thought we were at the end, we had to switch out four different pieces since they were in the wrong places. It took us 3 days to complete this puzzle, with 4 people working fairly hard on it (William placed the most effort into it- I could only do a few pieces before I was frustrated beyond belief!). And here is the beast-

So, to regain our confidence, we then undertook this scripture puzzle which restored our faith in our ability to do puzzles since this 500 piece puzzle only took us 3 hours.

This other one took us several hours since we finished it over several occasions- we started it while on vacation at Disneyland and then finished all of the green pieces over the holiday. Still, with the two combined times, it still took MUCH less than that first puzzle.

The group together- all over 1,500 pieces.

If anyone is up for a challenge, let us know because do we have a puzzle for you.