http://www.matalie.net snapshots of life Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:34:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en So I spent a day trying to be a buxom blond. The only problem was I had this Joe Dirt character hanging on my arm ;-) *Saturday marked the last day of ski lessons with the annual celebration of Fur Day. We got pretty into it this year, no? http://www.matalie.net/2010/03/08/fur-day/ It's no secret we love to ski. Thankfully it's a passion we've passed on to our girls. Some days it seems they could ski forever and are reduced to tears when we force them to leave. Commonly we get the pity looks crossing the bridge back to the car along ... http://www.matalie.net/2010/02/23/ski-ski-ski/ For those of you around Seattle, you would attest this is an incredibly odd Winter. We've had Sun. That's right- SUN. Quite a divergence from the typical photon-deprived season the Pacific Northwest is prone to. For those of you elsewhere who've been hit hard this Winter, my apologies. Having said ... http://www.matalie.net/2010/02/16/warm-winter/ One famous photographer says, "The best camera is the one you have with you." Sometimes that is so, so true. The thousands of dollars invested in camera gear surely make for some great images we have captured into memories of every aspect for our girls to have of their time ... http://www.matalie.net/2010/02/16/a-look-back-from-a-different-angle/ It is hard to understand the severity of need in Haiti. It can almost seem like a distant dream. There's been a huge response and outpouring from our communities in giving. There's a sense that the selfish issues in our lives is irrelevant when compared to what is going on in Haiti. Yesterday our ... http://www.matalie.net/2010/01/25/help-haiti/ We woke up this morning to find an old email address had been hacked. Someone had gained access and sent out emails to everyone in our contact list, posing as us, stating in desperation that we had been mugged in London and needed money wired to pay for our hotel ... http://www.matalie.net/2010/01/12/hackers/ Here we sit on the eve of a new decade. 2010. Is it Two-Thousand Ten? Or Twenty-Ten? The Tens? Or how does one quantify the past decade? For me, this will be the third instance time has rolled in quantities of tens. The first marked turn of a decade I was ... http://www.matalie.net/2009/12/31/eve-of-time/ Our girls were up before the sun on Christmas morning. The Ooo's and Aww's softly filtering into our room as we heard them under the tree surveying the neatly wrapped, carefully placed packages. Their pre-dawn excitement obviously contagious, as we immediately joined them so that anticipation of gifts awaiting opening ... http://www.matalie.net/2009/12/28/christmas-morn/ Sitting at my keyboard, secluded away in the office (a.k.a. Sensory Deprivation room), in the dimly lit room I lift the steaming cup of tea, the heat radiating into my hands through the ceramic. From the living room I hear Araiya's sing-songy voice accompanied by Tallis' sniffly cough and the ... http://www.matalie.net/2009/12/26/christmas/ Every day from here on out is getting a little lighter and a little longer. I can't really say that we noticed the longest day of the year being any extra dark and dreary. Yet it marks a significant point in time, especially for us here in the North- the ... http://www.matalie.net/2009/12/24/winter-solstice/