Mom's New Mexico Visit 2012

Dean says that we need to take a vacation together for a change--people are going to start talking because we never seem to go anywhere together!!  But sometimes our schedules don't allow it, so he got to visit Casa de Campo in June and I went in August!!

Terry, Cyndy and Tricia were all able to come out at the same time for the better part of the first week of August!  One evening, Popper wanted to take his "girls" out to dinner at Pendaries (pronouned "Pan-der-ay") Country Club.  It was a beautiful evening (once the sun got out of Mommer's eyes) so we ate outside on the patio.  It was fun to be just the six of us again--and we didn't even embarrass Mommer by running around the table!!

By the end of my 10 day visit, we had several arrivals of family members which culminated on the day before my birthday with Terry & Ferrell, Cyndy, Shaun, Kelli & Emma, Tricia, Chris, Taylor, Addie, Aubrey, Jordyn, Ashton, her friend Jack Larsen & last but not least, Wesley!  On Friday evening, Terry prepared a Mexican feast, and for dessert, Taylor made a delicious Carrot Cake for my pre-birthday celebration!  Then, of course, we had to take family pictures before some of the family had to head for home the next day.

Of course, we have the obligatory 'crazy pose' picture...

And the 'cousins' picture...

Someone thought it would be fun to re-create a picture taken years ago when Wesley was maybe 2-years-old and sitting on Popper's knee--both of them wearing their bolo ties.  This time, the tables are turned and Popper is on Wesley's knee!

And this picture was Popper's idea--a re-creation of a photo of him, sitting on this same foot stool when he was maybe 3-years-old...

Finally, I leave you with a picture of a lovely New Mexico evening sky that Tricia took on our way home from our evening out with Mommer & Popper.  Happy trails!

Pam

I want to get Direct TV...

...just because John Cleese told me to.

And I ♥ him.




Massive fur coat.
Hideous custom tailored blue suit + hat.
Shark tank.
Arm-shaving butler.
Gigantic lobster.
Ping-pong playing eskimo.
Hunting in his drawers.

Awesome commercial.

Yup, more sand

Just thought I’d post a few pictures of my road trip within a road trip the other day.  Even my mother thinks I’m weird.  In the middle of a 1250 mile road trip with Sarah and the kids, I took a day and drove 300 miles to see some sand dunes.  See what I mean about weird?  I think they used to call that a busman’s holiday.  Anyway, the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is located about 25 miles north of Alamosa, Colorado, and I had heard of it for some time and have been wanting to see it, so I took the opportunity (and Mommer’s Forester) and made the trip. 

Their dunes are the tallest in North America and cover a much larger area than ours (330 square miles) .  For a size comparison, the specks on the next picture are people who are out walking on the dunes.

They have some streams that run around the perimeter of their dunes, which I thought was kind of neat, since we have no open water at all.  This one is called Castle Creek and was only running about an inch deep.

As a national park, they don’t allow vehicles out on the dunes, so walking is the only way to get out there, and as I’ve done my share of sand hiking for my lifetime, I didn’t go out very far.  But I did find some pretty Sand Verbena flowers and almost all of them had a big green caterpillar busy eating the leaves on them.

Anyway it was a fun trip and another tick off the bucket list.  I didn’t get any sand because we already have them in our collection at the park, but you can see the difference in color between them and us.

They might be bigger, but I think we are prettier.

Capitol Reef

About two weeks ago, I got to go spend a week in Capitol Reef National Park with my landscape photography class.  Bummer...i know.  Kristen, unfortunately, didn't get to go with me.  I had an awesome time hiking and taking hundreds of photos.  Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip.

These first few photos cost me $75.  The reason being that a few of us heard about this waterfall but the only one we found had a restricted sign.  But we figured if we came up to to it from a different direction it would be fine.  So we took a bunch of pictures until we were stopped by the always vigilant park rangers who informed us that it didn't matter where we came from, the falls were still off limits.  So we got fined $75.  Totally worth it though in my mind.

I realize that this is somewhat late, but I have heard of problems posting on the blog and wanted to test it. So here are a couple of pictures of the recent eclipse. We probably had about 75 people here watching and photographing the eclipse, and one of the guys I talked to sent me a couple of the pictures he took. So I have to admit that I am not responsible for these pictures, though I wish I were - he did nice work.

The upper picture is a montage of the images he took throughout the eclipse and just into sunset.  Also notice the crescent shaped shadows in the sand formed from tiny beams of light coming through the foliage of the tree.  Pretty cool.
Anyway, don't forget to blog once in a while and let everyone know what's going on with you and your life.  And I'll try and do the same.

Long-Name-No-Can-Say

Do my siblings remember listening to this story on a record when we were little? I was so tickled to find it on youtube! I'm not positive, but I think this is the same recording. When you've got 20 minutes or so, see if it sounds familiar!

Ticklish Rowan

First baby giggles- whether natural or forced- are just the best.  Don'tcha think?

Story of a Poor Boy

So Facebook wouldn't let me post this video there because I used a copyrighted song but I still wanted to show everyone the video I did for one of my finals.  I had a lot of fun making it and hope you enjoy watching it.

New news.

Wow, it really has been a long time! Rachelle and I have been keeping busy with the usual, but are grateful that no major curve balls have been thrown our way. We are trying our hardest to shake off the winter and move into spring. In the meantime, we have a new member of the family.

His name is Mac. My eighth grade class gave him to me as a Christmas present. He should get a lot bigger and should turn a stronger color of yellow as he gets older. So far, he is doing well, even though he tries to bite me when ever I get close. Hopefully we can come to some agreement, since he is supposed to have a life expectancy of 20+ years ... that is twice as long as most dogs... twenty years... the rise and fall of entire civilizations have taken less time. Ugh, a tie would have been a lot less intimidating, but I have to say, I do like the little guy a lot.

Wave Again

Well, Sarah beat me to the punch in chastizing all of us about not doing any blogs lately. I've been meaning to put this one up this week, so here goes.

The weather here has been so nice for winter that I just couldn't resist, and got a permit to hike the Wave again last Tuesday the 31st. I went by myself and took about 250 pictures and had a ball. The weather was great for hiking (high 40's or so) and the only snow I saw was on the north slopes, and there wasn't much of that. I'll just share a few of the pictures with you.






I'd better stop here or I'll go crazy - like I said, I took about 250 pictures that day. Anyway, hope it brings back some memories for those of you who have been there (not too painful, I hope, Aaron) and encourage those who haven't to come make a trip out there if we can manage it.

Post NOW!

Okay, guys. How has it been over 3 months since anything was posted here?!

What's going on with everyone? What's new? What's not new? What's happening? What's going to happen? Anyone?

Well, I'll start.

We've known for some time that Aaron's job here would be over pretty soon, and a couple of weeks ago the announcement was made public that the plant here in Modesto would be closing. Aaron found this out prematurely, so he had this pretty heavy information weighing on him for a while.

Fortunately he won't be out of a job, but unfortunately it does mean that we'll be moving- again. Nothing is finalized yet, but his bosses want to put him in a position at their corporate offices in Jackson, Michigan. He will fly to headquarters later this month for his official interviews, then hopefully we'll have a little more information.

In the meantime we plan on staying here in Modesto until the kids finish school at the end of May, then we'll probably head out there some time in June.

In other news, I'm about a week and a half away from my due date and am getting very anxious for our little guy to make his appearance. It probably won't be too much longer, so hopefully we'll have some more exciting news to share very, very soon!

And now I leave you with a bunch of random photos that Aaron had on his phone. Enjoy!

Pyper's Baptism Video

This is the video Pyper begged me to make to play at her baptism. She'd seen some other kids do this and just had to have one, too.

Of course it brought on many tears while I sifted through 8 years of photos and tried to find just the right music to use. In the end I was glad I took the time to make it, and Pyper loves watching all the images of herself growing up.

Mom wanted you all to be able to see it, so I thought this would be the easiest way to share it.

I dreamed a dream.

I had a dream last night that we went on a huge trip to Holden Beach as a family in a rented suburban, and since we were spending all of our money on gas, the only food we could afford to eat was bread with sriracha chili sauce and seasoned salt on it.

It was mildly unpleasant.

I'm all for the beach part, just please never make me eat a chili sauce sandwich.

Umm...

Why can't I see the photo at the top of the blog? It flashes there for a second when the page loads and then goes black so all that I can see is a big black box with the white words in it. Anyone? Anyone?

Starving college student.

Yes, this is my second year of college. However, this is my first year of having to actually feed myself, since I was in the dorms last year and had a meal plan. I foresee some weight being lost due to good ol' apathy and the unwillingness to dirty dishes just to feed myself.

However, I am now accepting ideas anyone might have for quick/easy/cheap dinners that I can try out. I've been on this cooking/baking kick the past couple of months and I get really excited when I get to try out new recipes, so don't be shy! Help a baby sister out. (:


I can only eat ramen with peanut butter, soy sauce, and sriracha chili sauce so many times before my heart gives out...