rats & rainbows

Hello everyone! I have finally had a few days that are worth mentioning on this blog!

Sam and Annemarie visited us last weekend, and we did the usual pilgrimage to pay homage to the Swedish furniture gods. Since Aaron and I weren't interested in buying anything, we amused ourselves by hiding stuffed beavers, hedgehogs, and hippos throughout the various furniture displays. My favourite was the hippo that we squashed into a kitchen garbage bin that was labeled "look inside"...he practically jumped out of the bin when you opened it!

So, after a few good laughs, we figured we were finished, so we went downstairs into the huge kitchenwares section to find Sam and Annemarie. But lo and behold! Right at the bottom of the stairs was a huge bin of plush rats, just the perfect size for putting into jars and such! So we gathered up an armful and got busy. My favourites were the rat in the wineglass, the three rats in glass cannisters (they looked like mimes trying to get out of their glass boxes) and the rat that we shoved into a vase that had a very narrow neck but was quite large and round below the neck. I'm sure nobody will ever get it out! Oh, and perhaps my favourite of all was the rat that we flattened in the middle of a stack of clear glass mixing bowls. Pancake rat! My tummy hurt from laughing.

On a different note: There have been several fantastic rainbows in the past few days. It has something to do with clouds getting bunched up against the mountains, but when the sun gets low enough over the ocean to peek under the clouds, everything just lights up like crazy! It's very beautiful, and it makes people on the street smile and comment to one another and take pictures.