Bloody Eye

So I woke up this morning with a bloody eye.  I guess I popped a blood vessel in my eye somehow.  I'm not sure when it happened.  I just noticed it while I was putting on my makeup.  It doesn't hurt or anything, but it looks kind of dramatic.  The funny thing is that it's curving around my contact.  If I didn't have my contacts in would the blood just slide right into my iris?  Kinda gross.  The good news is that you can't really see it unless I look down or pull my eyelid up.

Sea Kittens

This is really funny.

Apparently the other day PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) announced that they want to start calling fish "sea kittens."  They hope the name change will "make the vertebrates more endearing to those who would eat them."

"A lot of people don't realize that fish are capable of feeling fear and pain, that they develop relationships with each other, and even show affection by gently rubbing against one another," says Ashley Byrne, PETA's sea kitten campaign co-ordinator. "Knowing that the fish sticks in the school cafeteria are really made out of tortured sea kittens makes most kids want to lose their lunch"

I think it's ridiculous, but hilarious.  Perhaps I'll even have some sea kittens for dinner!

Sea Kitten Article

Happy Birthday (to me)!

Warning: this post gets a little gross in the middle. Read at your own risk, and probably not prior to or while eating.

We have just been busier than ever since Christmas. Mostly working. (Just for the record, on Christmas day Toren and I saw a movie and enjoyed a Christmas dinner at Chevy's...it was the only place open. It wasn't a traditional Christmas, but still enjoyable. My family was in Seattle and Toren's were on their way to Las Vegas and Lake Havasu). We didn't do anything too exciting for New Years, either!

But then, January 5th arrived -- my birthday! Luckily, I had the day off from both of my jobs and no other responsibilities. So, how did I spend the day? I took Baxter to the vet. He had been oozing really bad from one of his eyes, shedding A LOT, and scooting around on his bum. The vet rinsed his eye out to check for any scratches, talked about his diet (his cheap dog food is most likely causing the shedding), and emptied his anal sacks (I'm still not really sure what those are or what they do). Anyway, he had bacteria built up in his eye (and she prescribed eye drops), she told us to change his food and prescribed allergy medicine for the shedding, and she let me know that his anal sacks were VERY full (of what I didn't ask, nor did I really want to know), which led to the bum scooting. She thought the better food would also help this problem. It thanked her and walked back to the reception area to pay. The lady there, in her sweet voice, says, "That'll be only 99 dollars." I nearly fell over. I paid the lady and considered the visit my birthday present. After this, we went home, took a nap and later enjoyed a delicious birthday dinner of enchiladas and cake!! I know the story is a little gross and uninteresting, but it's what I did on my birthday!

In honor of my life, I thought I'd post a few fun pictures of me from the last few years. Originally I wanted to add more, but I'm at work and these are the only pictures I have access to. At least they might make the boring/gross post a little more interesting.

Me and (best friend) Amanda in New York City

John, Laura, and me at Disneyworld.

Dumbledor's Army (Our Harry Potter Book Club)

Me with Kelsey and Lael at Ocean Shores

One of our Engagement Pictures

One of my Favorite Wedding Pictures

Sunday Night Monopoly

The Little Terror as a Baby (doesn't he look so innocent?)

Cedarpoint in Ohio

Under the Caribbean Waters in Mexico

A Christmas Eve Christmas

We had a very non-traditional Christmas this year. Toren's family was scheduled to fly out Christmas day for Las Vegas (in route to Lake Havasu, Arizona...we're 100% bummed that we couldn't join them), so we decided to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning on the 24th.


To kick things off, we gathered in the dinning room, lit the fireplace, and enjoyed a delicious prime rib dinner by romantic candle light, accompanied by Josh Groban's magical voice on the CD player. After dinner we watched a short Church video of the Nativity story, and then Toren read the actual story to us out of the scriptures. Then, upholding the Forsberg tradition, we opened our Christmas Eve present, which, of course, was pajamas. We all changed into our new PJs and began celebrating Christmas Morning!


The gift opening was as exciting as ever. Toren and I got tickets to the play Wicked! I couldn't be more excited!! See the picture below for the present Toren was most excited about.

Toren's gift from Blair. Don't worry, it's only a matter of time before Bax devours it.

Baxter couldn't have been more happy shredding all the wrapping paper.

Our family. Notice the new PJs!

Santa's On His Way!

Even though night has yet to come in Oregon, I'm pretty sure Santa has already been busy delivering gifts for hours. He's already been to Asia, Europe and Africa, and right now he's in the South Sandwich Islands.

Click here to see for yourself where Santa is now.

The Arctic Blast

I mentioned in an earlier post that we were blessed with some snow here in the Northwest. Well, since then we've been DUMPED on (hence the cancelled flights and dramatic trip from Seattle to Portland)! Schools were in session only one half-day last week. Church has been cancelled the last two Sundays. Many stores in the mall were even closed!! Roads have been closed and chains, required. The news stations are calling it The Arctic Blast. At the house we got more than 18 inches! At first it was kind of exciting, but now we're just ready for it to melt.

One of the most important things to do during The Arctic Blast was make sure that the satellite dish was clear of ice and snow so we could all watch our favorite shows.

Here's one of the big trees in the backyard totally weighed down by all the snow.
The house. It doesn't look like we're living in Oregon, huh? Our poor van, which hasn't been driven in ages...
I wanted to post a couple videos of The Arctic Blast, but I can't get them uploaded properly. I'll try to post them later.

Weekend: The Bad News

Saturday night I got online to print our boarding passes for our 8:00 flight to Portland the next morning, just to find that our flight was cancelled (due to the snow). All the other flights to Portland that day were listed "On Time," so we were confident that we could go standby on one of the other flights. So, we arrived hopeful at the airport at 6:30 am Sunday. As soon as we walked through the doors, however, we realized our hope was short lived. Soon we discovered that the line to reschedule a cancelled flight (just on Alaska Airlines) was 6 hours long and we were 2 of hundreds who had a cancelled flight. We clearly didn't have 6 hours to wait in line, so we decided to proceed through security (where I had to throw away my new 10 oz bubble bath) and try to get on standby for another flight.

Once we got to the gate we waited in line to get a standby ticket. After an hour or so we were put on the standby list (which was now 45 people long) and wait. The next flight was scheduled to got out at 9:20.... then it was delayed to 10:20.... then 11:00..... then 11:30.... 11:55.... and, finally, 12:00pm. They boarded the flight and began boarding the standbys. We were minutes away from getting on the plane when the boarding agent made the announcement: our flight was delayed indefinitely due to freezing rain in Portland. We had been at the airport now for 6 hours with no luck. It was time for plan B.

My parents picked us up and we headed south in my Dad's 4x4 truck. The ride was snowy and took longer than normal, but at least we were making progress. Toren's parents met us in Kalama, Washington (about 1 hour north of Oregon City). We switched cars and my parents headed back to Seattle while we continued South. Our car was parked at the airport, and after we trudged through the parking lot in snow up to my knees, we found our Yukon surrounded in an inch of solid ice. Toren spent the next 30 minutes pounding and scraping off the ice. I spent the time thawing inside the car. After our 16-hour adventure, we finally made it home safe and sound.

I was too frustrated to take too many pictures, but this one shows how I felt when we arrived at the airport and saw our car.

Toren pounded the ice off with the end of a shovel. This is about 20 minutes into the de-icing.