Thorey's Baby Shower

Here are a few photos from Thorey's baby shower.  I was lucky enough to be able to go since it was on the Saturday that we were in SoCal.  It was so much fun.  So many wonderful women came to show Thorey their support.  We had delicious food and a great time.  

I even won a shower game - the only shower game that I have EVER been good at.  It was a word scramble of baby related things.  I got 19 out of 20 right.  Horray for word scrambles...  :)  I also had a blast sitting next to Trena's mother and sister in laws.  Those Schulze ladies are great!  Once again Trena, thanks for marrying Aaron! :)

Trena, Katie and Thorey - the three Stier sisters:

Thyssen & Noni.  This is Katie's son.  He's a miniture version of Skippy and is just so adorable you want to nibble his cheeks off.
This is Thorey's belly, her hand, Katie's and Trena's.  
This was the most delicious cake made by a bakery that I have EVER tasted.  I am a huge fan of scratch cakes and this one totally tasted it.  Not to mention that it was super cute with sock monkey drawn in icing.

This is Thorey with her husband's grandma, Grandma Bauer.
Katie & Thorey.  Katie made this tutu for the sock monkey.  It was super cute!

These two are of Val and Thorey.  My favorite is the one where they are standing and you can see Thorey's belly.  I think they both look so great.

This is not from the baby shower but I really like it.  Thorey was sitting near the sliding glass door and the light was coming in on her.  I couldn't resist going over and snapping a few photos.  It turned silly very fast and I have some great blackmail photos of Thorey making faces!  Or at least something to show her daughter one day.

Bellingham Farmers' Market

Another group of photos from our trip.  These are taken at the Bellingham, WA farmers' market.  This cute little blondie is my adorable niece, Cora.  I love taking photos of her.  I have a whole bunch more that I will post when I've gone through everything.

There was a music group there that was OK.  The best part of them was that they had a guy tap dancing as part of their percussion.  It was really fun to see.  This is Uly and Gar dancing to their music.  One of my great joys in life is to watch children dance.  

These other two photos are just some beautiful wares of the produce vendors.  They make my mouth water!

Road Trip Photos II

This is a photo from our road trip.  I put it as a separate post because I did two versions of it.  I can't decide which I like better...

You can't really see it from these small images, but under the blue sign there is a sign that says Route 66.  I didn't realize that this was part of that.  I guess this is truly Radiator Springs.   

Road Trip Photos

Here are a few photos from our road trip.  We had a great time and saw a lot of beautiful scenery.  I love being stuck in the car with my favorite people.  I think that is one of my all time favorite things.  Even thought the drive was super long - close to 3000 miles and nearly two full days of driving - it was still a blast.  This is a photo of Mt. Shasta, in Northern California.  It is through our bug smeared windshield.  A true road trip photo!

This is Gar standing on a bulldozer - or Scoop as he is called (The bulldozer, not Gar) at our house.  This was near Palmdale, CA.  We stopped for an emergency pee break and found this guy to climb on and the following Joshua Trees.

This is a really cool tree out in the Middle of Nowhere, California.  It is heavily laden with people's shoes.  We didn't contribute any shoes - just watered the tree in one of our emergency pee stops.  This is really half of the tree.  There are many more shoes here than what you are seeing.  It is one of those landmarks that we always see but had never stopped at.

This is another spot that we have driven through but never stopped - the Train Museum in Kelso, California.  Kelso used to be a little depot town on Route 66.  It now has the museum and this shell of a building.  And trains.  This used to be the post office and general store until the 1940's.  

If anyone has some extra money and wants to invest in a good little restaurant/deli, this would be a great place.  The museum used to have a lunch counter but they closed that in the 1960's.  We were there for maybe half an hour and there were about 20 cars that stopped there.  If they had a store that sold food, they would be raking it in.  I'll add that to my list of fun little businesses to own after I make it big...

Can we really have a road trip without photos of trains?  Not in our family.  Trains are our friends.  We all love them.

I have many more photos - photos from Thorey's baby shower, kids, family and even a farmer's market.  I will post those up here as soon as I can.

RIP Arnolkardis and Mr. Krabs

So I need to change the header of this blog.  We no longer have pets.  We came home from our trip to find my favorite pet ever, Arnolkardis and his friend, Mr. Krabs dead.  An interesting fact about hermit crabs is that they leave their shell when they die.  We are speculating that is so other hermit crabs can inhabit their old shell.  

In retrospect, I probably should have asked the neighbor boy to watch and feed them instead of my uber busy sister.  Not to place blame or anything, but you did kill my all time favorite pet...  ;)

The War on the Rez 2008

We decided to take a few days and escape our regularly scheduled lives.  We hopped in the car (masterfully packed using my excellent Tetras skills...) and drove up to Bellingham, Washington for a few days.  We got to spend time with my brother, Owen and his wife Melinda and also my sister Sariah, her husband Randy and their beautiful daughter Cora.  And of course, my parents, Owen and Janet.    It was wonderful and much too short!

We were privy to the most awesome fireworks display I have EVER seen.  My uncle Mike and aunt Cynthia came up for the day and evening, bringing some really cool fireworks and then my parent's neighbors (two brothers) had a dueling fireworks display that went on for hours.  I am not talking about little ground flowers or fountains, I am talking about mortars that shoot into the sky and light up the world like Baghdad.  It was seriously amazing.  

This is a picture of my dad up on the balcony of the studio shooting one of his guns (blanks, of course) to add to the festive BOOMS.

We had an impromptu spoon carving event.  It started with Melinda and Owen looking around some shops in Fairhaven (an older and kind of kitchy area of Bellingham).  They went into a shop called Artwood.  They had some hand carved spoons for sale but wanted an arm and a leg for them.  Owen suggested that they could just carve their own spoons and so they came back to the house and the spoon carving extravaganza began.  Everyone wanted in on the action.  Here is a photo of Randy and Melinda working on spoons.  I will have to take a photo of the spoon my dad for me.  It's a bowl of soup spoon.  Ben made a really cool spork.  Have spork, will travel!

We got to spend some time with our wonderful friends, David & Rachel and their little brood of rascals - Isaac, Millie and Aaron.  That was a blast and we were sorry to leave them and also not to be able to spend more time with them.  Here is a picture of Millie, Uly, Gar and Isaac in the water at Mukilteo beach.  We ate at Ivar's, right next to the ferry and then walked over to the beach and let the kids play. 

We went to Boulevard Park for a neat event called Paddle to Lummi.  American Indian tribes all over the coast paddle their canoes to the park and have a celebration.  It was really fun to hear some stories and see dancing.  Then afterwards we went to a local ice creamery called Mallards and partook of delicious ice cream.  I had a two scoop cone with lavender and lime.  It was delicious, as usual.

We took the boys down to the Lummi Island Ferry dock and went fishing for a little while.  They are still too young for that kind of thing but they had a lot of fun anyway.  Ben was sad that he didn't get to really go fishing but we just were out of time.  We need to plan a day where he can really go fishing and catch "real" fish next time we are up there.  Unfortunately crabbing was closed in Whatcom County so we couldn't throw in our pot either.

I had a great time taking a ton of photos.  I went to burn disk copies for everyone before we left, but I took way too many photos so I am going to burn copies on DVDs and mail them.

  

All in all we had a blast and are looking forward to seeing Grandmamom and Grandad Walker again in September, in Moab, at the Walker Reunion.