Fun at the Gateway

A couple weeks ago my family met up at the Gateway for one last hang-out before my sister Corinne and her family went back to Arizona. The kids had a great time playing the fountain and there's no better cuisine than found in the food court!

 Annie & Eric with their kids, Marshall & Belen

Me & Seth

 Bryce & Ella

Reid

The Whole Family (ignore the trash can on the left)

It's always fun to see my family. What an amazing group of people! Love you guys!

Birthday Bowling

I mentioned in my previous post how we'd gotten together to do some bowling for Corinne's birthday. I thought I'd post some of the pictures I took... those kids were too dang cute.

Belen is already a professional bowler... she could hardly wait for the pins to reset to push another ball down the ramp! Look at that concentration!

Look at those mini bowling shoes! Ha!

Lily and Ella take a break for some apple beer.

I have never seen a cuter bunch of tow-headed kids. 

Don't worry Eric, you can be cute too, even though you're a little older than 7.

iFly! Ok, Corinne flies.

Yesterday afternoon I met up with both my sisters and their families for some bowling and pizza up at the Solomon Center in Ogden. After we were through bowling, J.R. talked Corinne into doing iFly for her birthday. Surprisingly none of the kids (or adults) wanted to do it with her. She was the only one brave enough to give it a shot. She did awesome though!

Ready to fly...

 

She had a really good time, can you tell? (hehe)

Happy Birthday Corinne!

The Lighthouse

On the second day of our Oregon trip, Seth and I decided to go check out one of the nearby lighthouses. We ended up at the Coquille River Lighthouse just outside of Bandon. We were going to go to the Cape Arago Lighthouse, but somebody pointed me in the wrong direction. I'm not sure who it was...SETH.

We were able to climb to the top of the lighthouse and check out the view with the tour guide. Apparently there was a family that lived there for a bit and took care of the place. The mother would row her kids across the river/inlet everyday to take them to school. Way cooler than riding the bus.

After the lighthouse tour we walked along the beach and dipped our feet in the freezing cold water.

Seth taking his shoes off...

Awe... look at Seth's cute toes!

After our walk on the beach, Seth showed me the trick to putting your shoes on without getting sand in them.

After our beach trip, per recommendation from the lighthouse lady, we drove into Bandon to check out the town. It was a cute little place with tons of touristy shops and a boardwalk. We bought some fancy chocolates and did a bit of window shopping then headed for home. It was a great day.

Oregon Trip: Tide Pools

I know you'll all be shocked to know that Seth and I took a break from all of our house junk and went camping on the Oregon coast for a week! It was a much needed vacation and we had such a great time with Seth's family.

On the first morning after our arrival, we decided to do a ranger guided tide pool tour. We were a bit skeptical of the "guided" part as it's usually kind of boring and too structured, but it ended up being our favorite part of the trip! We got to wander around the tide pools looking for different sea creatures and ask all the questions we wanted. The best part was, only four of us showed up so we got a private tour!

Looking at a small crab

We saw tons of these sea stars in all different colors. The white dot in the middle on top is it's butt. See! I learned something!

Group shot of the adventurers

We found one sunflower sea star... much bigger than the other sea stars and tons of legs!

The underside of the sea star with all its sucker feet

Seth with a half-dead crab

More to come!

Learn From My Fail

Seth and I spent Memorial Day weekend sanding our parquet floor. It was in pretty rough shape after years of neglect. There were scratches and uneven edges covering the entire floor so it required a lot of TLC to get every bit of it smooth and ready for the finish.

We rented a big orbital sander from Lowe's to do the main parts and bought a small hand sander for the edges and such. After sanding the floor with three different grits of sandpaper (36, 50, and 80 for those who are curious), the floor was finally done. It already looked so beautiful. We left for the night to let the dust settle and planned to come back the next day to vacuum and apply the finishing coat.

The floor after it was all sanded

On Tuesday evening just as I was about to leave work, Seth sent me a text. Included in the text was the following picture:

While sanding the floor we'd unplugged the fridge so it wouldn't suck the dust in. Unfortunately we didn't realize that the ice maker was full. After sitting there unplugged for over 24 hours, the ice in the ice maker melted and leaked out onto the floor. With no protection at all, the floor absorbed the water and buckled in several places (you can see the worst of it there in the center of the cabinet). Swears were uttered by both parties.

As of last night the floor was still drying out. We're not sure if we'll be able to get the tiles to lay flat again and/or if they'll be too damaged to use. Here's to hoping. So, in closing, if you're planning on refinishing your floors, make sure the ice maker is empty before unplugging your fridge. Eff.

Ramblings

This blog sure has been in a funk lately. It originally lost attention because of house hunting (now house fixing up) priorities. Then our main computer broke (still not fixed) and I was left to type on a shared laptop on a TV tray or lap. Not ideal or fun.


Then the writer’s block hit. I swear I’ve been wanting to write something amazing here for a long time but it’s like all my ideas have jumped out of my brain, never to return. So then I thought I’d write about nothing. Turns out that’s hard to do as well… as you can tell from this post.

And there are always things I’d like to write about. But I can’t. Either it’s just not the right time, or I can’t find the words, or I don’t have the courage to do so. So I let those things sit on the backburner and hope that one day maybe they can be shared. Or not. Maybe it doesn’t make a difference if I write them. Or maybe it would make too much of a difference and that’s what I’m scared of. I wonder how many people have the same sort of things they’d like to say but don’t.

Do you think it’s possible that in reality we could say what we wanted to everyone but don’t because of how we think they’d react? I mean hopefully we all have at least one person we can talk to where the filters are always down… where we can say what we think or feel without fear of judgment or anger. Do you think that is possible to achieve in all our personal relationships? Or does there always have to be those people that need the filters? It just seems like there are a lot of relationships that aren’t developed into something deeper because of fear. Fear of offense mainly. We don’t ask questions or talk about certain things because we don’t want to rock the boat… but should we rock the boat? I mean for the greater purpose of deepening relationships and increasing communication and understanding? I wonder sometimes if I’m too robotic in my approach to people. Where there’s not enough giving of who I am and not enough taking. ‘Taking’ in the sense of digging deeper into people… of asking them scary questions. And at what point does that questioning become nosy and intrusive?

Wow this turned out to be a much more serious post than I thought would happen. I guess it’s hard to know what’s in your brain until you let it out. Feel free to comment on my ramblings if you feel so inclined.