Travels, Snow, and Old Pictures

It's been a blissful Friday night, probably because it's the first day of our week long vacation. We both miss the lengthy vacations that we had as kids, but we're making the most of this one. Our first task of the evening, weekend, and vacation, was building a snow man. We built a snowman each year in Alaska. I do mean snow man, not snow men. In AK the first snow man lasted all winter. We positioned him at the end of our walk to welcome our guests just before they turned to climb our steps. His name was Edward. We've decided not to name this snow man; chances are he won't make it through the weekend. That's alright though because it adds opportunities to build more than one in a year! The snow also sticks together much better here.

Afterward we came inside and had a delicious pumpkin black bean soup, beer bread, and tea. Now we're sitting next to the fire with the cats baking their brains near the flames.

This will be a post of rather random updates, so bear with me as transitioning may be nearly impossible.

Last weekend we went up to Seattle for our nephew's birthday, the annual cookie bake, the jingle bell run, a bit of shopping, and to see Ana, my friend from college. Kyle, our nephew, is a big fan of fire trucks and emergency vehicles generally, so his birthday was at Engine house 9 in Tacoma. Their claim to fame is the large brass fire pole which is the oldest in the northwest. Because of plummeting temperatures and a good amount of snow, we opted not to actually attend the jingle bell run in favor of leaving Lucas' cheeks on his face. Our other option was having frostbite steal them away. We had a wonderful time at the cookie bake. While it was sad that Joe's parents and Christina, Tony, Cameron and Kyle weren't able to attend, we had a wonderful time with Kym, Aaron, Sarah, Kacey, and Lucas at Auntie Marian's house. As always she was an incredibly gracious host and made the most amazing food. The veggie lasagna was by far the best lasagna I've had in my entire life. On Monday we did some quick shopping and met Ana for lunch. It was so good to catch up and I only wish we'd had more time. We could talk for hours and still be going strong. I'm looking forward to when we have the opportunity to really test our conversational stamina.

Okay, I'll leave you with a few photos that we found on a memory card we forgot we had. They are old pictures from Alaska, but I was overjoyed to find them.


This is Luke playing when he was just a wee kitty. Joe and I had thought that we had no pictures of Luke as a kitten, and he was smaller than this when we first got him, but he's still definitely a kitten in this picture and that makes me so happy!



Here's one of Eleanor in Alaska. In the picture she's looking out our front door and standing on her shoe box. She loved to look outside, but wasn't quite tall enough to see out easily. The shoe box was just what she needed.

The Joys of Homeownership

Kerry and I have been in our house now for nearly a year now. In that time we've installed a new dishwasher, replaced a water heater, put recessed lighting in the kitchen installed a sump and pump in the yard and painted a bathroom (twice). As if that wasn't enough, during a recent visit from Auntie Marian it started raining in our living room. Not that this event had anything to do with Marian's visit it just serves as a nice time stamp and is a nice indicator of the convenience.

A view of our upstairs shower...from the living room.

It turns out that this was not the first time there's been a problem with the upstairs shower, as indicated by the superior patch job by the previous owners. So as Kerry comes down the stairs, there I am with perched on a chair cutting a hole in the ceiling with my Leatherman. The amount of water that was in the ceiling was staggering.


I wanted to make sure that there was plenty of time for the ceiling to dry out before I attempted any repair. So after about three weeks of drying I decided to get to the repair. With a tube of silicon I carefully caulked the shower drain within an inch of its life, letting it dry overnight. The moment of truth came the next day when we ran water down the drain. It took about 10 seconds before Kerry yelled from downstairs to turn the water off; it was actually leaking worse than before. In the words of Dubyah: Mission Accomplished!

In the two weeks that it has actually taken me to write this post, the shower still leaks and there is still a hole in our living room. Not long after we installed the water feature in the living room, the refrigerator died. When this sort of thing happens, one really doesn't have time to sit back and wait for the Sunday ads. One trip to our local appliance dealer (recommended by Home Despot), and a U-Haul rental later we had a new refrigerator. Kerry took some great pictures of the move, but my iPhone is being a wee bit temperamental.

Because Kerry was in a meeting the hunting and picking was left to me. Of course I ran everything by her via text. Here is an excerpt:

Me: Found fridge. White Amana. Will get truck and pick you up. No deliver until Monday
Kerry: Sounds Good
Me: Truck has ramp, will do my self.
Kerry: Ummm....okay....
Me: Second thought, really big. Waiting for you.

The Birthday Master

For those of you who didn't know, I turned the ripe old age of 26 last Monday and Joe made the entire week a fabulous tour de birthday.

On the day itself Joe gave me a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for my morning present (more on these later). This was the perfect present because I love Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but recognize that it has no nutritional value and is therefore best for recreational eating. That evening we celebrated with my mom who was gracious enough to give birth to me on her own birthday. While this is fine now, she admits to not being exactly thrilled to share the day when I was 8 and had 10 screaming girls over for a slumber party. In any case, Grandma Jean and my Uncle Robin joined us for a delicious dinner, dessert, and good times.

Both Joe and I like to have an entire day with each other to celebrate our birthdays. Because of this October 7th was our two-some-birthday day. Now for some background. First, the morning present tradition comes from the Evans side of things. When I learned of this tradition it didn't take me long to claim it as my own as I was essentially offered a bonus birthday present. Who would reject that tradition? I got lucky this year and got two morning presents because Joe couldn't fathom not presenting one on the day itself, or on our two-some day. I need to remember that for future birthday arrangements. Next piece of background: More than anything in the world I wanted a guitar for my birthday. However, I had not asked for one. In fact, I expressly forbade the guitar gift option. I have one, but it's not particularly good and occasionally sounds a bit like a ukulele. The real issue is that I'm not particularly good. I'm just learning and had figured that I could have a guitar once I had earned it with stellar skills. Despite all that, my desire for a guitar was great and I secretly wished that Joe would choose that as my gift, though I was sure he wouldn't because I told him flat out not to.

Okay, background delivered, we're back to the morning of October 7th over the fabulous breakfast Joe made me. When I came down there were two packages next to my plate, which I opened over breakfast. The first was a guitar tuner (yes! good sign!) and the second was a new set of strings for my current guitar. Joe explained to me that they would make it sound less like a ukelele which would help me enjoy playing more (hopes dashed. so sad inside.) I tried exude happiness and joy, but, as I learned later, it was so apparent that I was disappointed that he nealry insisted I open my real present immediately.

Let's just ignore the work day, because that is not exciting. We did go out for lunch at McMenamin's where the voodoo veggie wrap had been removed from the menu but they still graciously assembled one for me. What birthday luck!

Joe picked me up after work and took me home. When we got home it became apparent that he had already been there because there were balloons on the door! He made me close my eyes and walked me upstairs where he instructed me to relax and read one of the magazines he'd picked out for me. Moments later he came upstairs with a gin and tonic and the promise of dinner in a few minutes. After 20 minutes with my Glamour he came up and escorted me downstairs. He'd put up streamers and set the table beautifully. He'd also ordered take out from our favorite terrible ambiance restaurant and displayed the appetizers beautifully. I was so glad that dinner was at home because I was a bit tired and didn't really have it in me to go out. He had also ordered my favorite dish. Again, next to my plate there was a very small package. I was very nervous because it wasn't the size of anything that I wanted. I knew I may have to act so I prepared myself and thought of how perfect the dinner was. After centering myself, I opened the package. It was capo (which is a guitar thingy). I knew that a $20 item was not my real gift so I started to get so excited I could hardly contain myself. Joe took me into the living room and there was the most beautiful guitar and exactly what I wanted. I was positively giddy.

I truly have the best husband in the world.

He didn't even stop there. On Friday he cooked and tidied for a gathering with my highschool gals and their others. Kathryn, Ben, Virginia, Marg, and Casey all came down. It was so good to see them and get to spend some real time together. I think my favorite part was Kathryn and Marg painting their toe nails while the rest of us bummed around.

Yea Birthday and Yea Joe!

10 cubic yards

When we bought our house we knew that there would be some serious yard work to be done. The yard was small, filled with mostly dead grass, collecting puddles in many places and in the front there was an area which we called our "desert scape". For some reason someone had decided that dumping a lot of very small rocks all over the north side of our driveway would be the most appealing addition imaginable.

As soon as we moved in we started in on these areas. Drainage was our first project and it lasted nearly 7 months. What held us up so long you ask? Well, it was a $35 catch basin. It turns out that only contractor type people can get these things. Home Depot only carries 5 gallon basins and we needed a whole lot more than that. Luckily, my uncle, Grant, is a landscaper and he ordered the basin for us so we could go and buy it. I should add that Grant has been amazing about providing advice and even drawings for our future yard! Once we had the basin, the rest was fairly easy. I dug a massive hole in the clay (which creates the problem) with some help from Joe. Joe added a new circuit to our wiring system and installed a new outlet outside for the sump pump. The sump pump went into the catch basin and the whole thing was covered in rock. When it rains it should pump right out into the perimeter drain.

In the last month we've taken on the dead grass. The fundamental problem here was again the clay. In the sun the clay cracks and dries terribly, which parches the grass. When it's wet, the clay refuses to absorb any water and the grass drowns. To end this vicious cycle we spent the last month killing off what was left of the grass, which seems a bit cruel since it put out such an effort, and yesterday we spread some serious dirt.
















I realized that I was very foolish not to take a picture of the actual mounds of dirt in our driveway. If I had you would be far more impressed at how industrious we were yesterday. In any case, we came home on Friday to 8 cubic yards of dirt in our driveway and 2 cubic yards of compost. Saturday morning at about 11 we began spreading dirt. All day we spread dirt. We paused briefly to eat and rehydrate and our friends Matt and Sara stopped by briefly. Other than that we spread dirt from 11am until 8pm. It was actually quite pleasant. We'd load up the wheel barrow, dump the dirt in the desired location, spread it, roll it, even it, roll it, sprinkle it with grass seed, sprinkle it with compost and roll it again. The only problem we encountered was the sheer volume of dirt. It turned out that 10 yards was far more than we needed. So we had to figure out where to put all that dirt. We thought we would be filling our flowerbeds later on, but since we had so much dirt, we filled them up. But there was still a lot of dirt. Eventually we decided that this dirt would need to go in the raised bed we'll be putting at the back of our yard. There was one problem here; we haven't yet installed the retaining wall. This little situation required that we stack the dirt on top of itself and not let it trickle down into the area where we will be putting the retaining wall. All of this happened at the end of the day when we were both feeling our hours of shoveling and wheel barrow pushing. But we (mostly Joe) pushed through and shoved that wheel barrow up the hill many many times. Each time we loaded the wheel barrow we estimated that we had 3 loads more. I think by the end of it we'd shoved about 18 wheelbarrows full up that hill. We'll let you know how that retaining wall goes. We're hoping to just be able to rake the dirt back down. Right...

All in all it was a great day. We felt so productive and we always like working together. It's amazing how much faster a wheelbarrow fills up with someone else shoveling with you. We were both tremendously satisfied with our results. Yes, we just have dirt now, but the dirt was actually kind of fabulous in it's rich brown even way. Smoothing the dirt with the roller was incredibly pleasing. Also having the yard covered evenly rather than segmented oddly by stunted grass made us realize that it's really not that small at all!

I hope I didn't bore you with a task-y entry. We actually really love projects, so you may see more in the future. There's also still plenty more to do in the yard. Keep your fingers crossed for our grass growth; as much fun as it was, I think we'd both prefer not to do it again.

Waldo Lake

When we last posted we figured that we had included everything worth mentioning from our vacation. That is until we did more...

Waldo Lake is Oregon's second largest lake, located in the middle of the Cascades at an elevation of about 6500'. Did you know that it is easier to get a sunburn at higher elevations? We didn't think that we would blog about this adventure but the lake was so amazing that we had to at least share some of the pictures.

This will definitely be a destination for future camping trips. Don't plan on taking any fishing gear though. In the 1960s Fish and Wildlife tried to stock the lake with fish which didn't go so well; the fish died. They figured that it was the lack of food that killed the fish, so they tried to stock it with whatever it is fish eat; that died too.

We made the trek out to the lake with Virginia and Margaret who camped out at the lake. Their campsite was amazing and we had a blast paddling around the lake with them.




Kerry, Virginia and Margaret at the campsite


















We









See? It's clear!

This is what Kerry sees when she kayaks!











Joe, Kayaking












Kerry, Kayaking

Labor Day, DC, and Vacation

Since our last post we have been busy! Between Labor Day and today we've only spent three days at work, which creates the illusion of a two week vacation, rather than just one.

We traveled north to Washington for Labor Day weekend to spend time with the Evans side of the family at Cyndi and Kelly's fabulous lake house. We've really enjoyed being able to spend more time with the family and this was just another opportunity. There were great family "play alongs" featuring Christina on the autoharp, Joe on the guitar, Kacey on the harmonica, and Kelly on the gutbucket bass. The women made vinyl purses with direction from Sarah. I was quite pleased with my results and may give it a go again. Cameron also made a spiffy lunch bag. It was chillier this time than last, but we had the chance to get outside around the campfire and spend time at the play ground. Kyle and I made many trips down the corkscrew.


After three intense days of work, we headed to the Airport to head to DC to see Kym, Aaron, and Lucas. We were lucky enough to be upgraded to first class, so we slept and ate well. It was fabulous to see K, A, & L. We did see many of the obligatory DC sites, but the main focus of our trip was seeing family! Saying the sites are obligatory is a little strange because they really are magnificent. Kym, Aaron, and Lucas took us to the Jim Henson exhibit at the Smithsonian, Union Station, the Building Museum and the WWII, Korean War, Lincoln, Vietnam and FDR Memorials. In the next few days we went to Arlington National Cemetary, where we checked out the tomb of the unknown soldier and JFK's grave, the Washington Monument, the White House, National Archives, Botanical Gardens, and spent a lot of time walking along the mall. Of the sites, our favorite was the FDR memorial. I pictured walking G.W. through the memorial and explaning to him how if he just governed by the quotes he'd be okay.

The true highlights were watching Lucas smile, laugh, talk, and cuddle, as well as chatting, running, and eating (oh so well) with Kym and Aaron. Joe hit it off with Lucas right away, and spent lots of time making faces with him, reading books, playing the guitar and throwing him around with Aaron. I'm not as gregarious, so it took about 5 minutes more for me to bond with Lucas. While I didn't throw Lucas as far as Joe did, I did swing him around and remark that he was quite the monkey. He responded by shoving his fists in his pits and saying ooh ooh ooh ah ah ah!

It was sad to have to leave, but the trip was so worth it.

Since we've been home we've spent the week relaxing. We took a trip to the local pool to swim a bit, biked into town and had a lovely lunch, and today we trekked up to Mary's Peak for a short hike. While we were heading up the mountain and enjoying the fabulous scenery, Joe perked up most at the site of a utility vault. It made me laugh.


We've also been playing guitar; more precisely Joe's been playing and I've been learning. Soon our friends Virginia and Margaret will be here for dinner and tomorrow we're all headed to Waldo Lake for kayaking.

It's been a great two weeks and we are looking forward to more vacations like it!

Not Pregnant, Not Moving

For the last few years we've been enjoying the blogs of our friends and family who have relocated or reproduced. If you are hoping to get some salacious bit of information, you will certainly be disappointed as we have no real news. Initially we assumed that we would have no blog until we had a huge life changing event, but recently we've begun to see a blog as a way to record the fun times we have together and encourage us to take more pictures.

That said, here are some of the life changing events of the last three years that this blog has missed.
We got married, moved to Alaska, got a cat named Eleanor, made some fabulous friends, got another cat named Luke, learned to ski, had an interesting (read: a strong mix of ick and fun) time at APU, caught big fish, swamped four-wheelers, shot guns, were admitted to grad school, moved back, went to school, bought a house, and are now both gainfully employed (almost).

Now that that's out of the way, we'll tell you about the balloon launch.

On Saturday we got up at o'dark:30 and drove to pick up Kerry's mom for the hot air balloon launch. The launch is an annual event that Kerry went to as a child and somehow Joe hadn't made it until this year. Joe had a great time which is probably due to a combination of fire, hot air, and of course being with his lovely wife.

Here are pictures for your enjoyment.

A partially inflated balloon, and a very un-inflated balloon

Kerry and Her Mom

We